Everyone remembers their first boss. Michael Brooks was mine.
Michael was an iconoclast in the American Jewish community. To me, he was a mentor and a motivator. Sometimes he inspired me by saying the most outrageous thing. Other times, he left me scratching my head because he had said the most outrageous thing.
I was very active at Michigan State Hillel during my undergraduate years, so I had heard about the legendary Michael Brooks, who grew the University of Michigan Hillel into the powerhouse that it was. But I met Michael only once before he called me to interview for a job in Ann Arbor. After a terrible fire destroyed the MSU Hillel building and forced the institution to rebuild, Michael came to East Lansing to meet with our Hillel board. We had no full-time director at the time and were distraught. He sat at the table with us, the smell of smoke still lingering, and said, “This is a wonderful thing!” It was only many years later that I fully understood what he meant. Sometimes we need to build anew for the sake of future generations.
Looking back, working with Michael at Michigan Hillel in my first job after rabbinical school was a gift. Whenever I was feeling bored, Michael would challenge me to take on a new project. When we had lunch together, he would begin the conversation by saying, “I want to know what’s on your mind.” It is not hyperbole to say that Michael Brooks understood community better than almost anyone I have known in the Jewish professional world.
Michael was odd, witty, and famously an outside-the-box thinker. He taught me how to sit back and give others the opportunity to put their visions into practice. He taught me to allow people to fail before stepping in. He understood that leadership was not always about being the person with the answer. Sometimes it meant creating the space for someone else to discover it.
But for all his wisdom and mentorship, one of my favorite memories of Michael will always be on the racquetball court. Michael beat almost everyone he played, but before our first match, I conveniently forgot to mention that I had been playing racquetball regularly since middle school. Being thirty years his junior certainly gave me an edge, but I proudly became one of the few people who actually beat Michael Brooks on the racquetball court!
I am grateful to Michael for giving me my first job more than 22 years ago, and I feel tremendously fortunate to have had the blessing of being inspired, challenged, and mentored by the legendary Michael Brooks.
May his memory be for a righteous blessing. Yehi zichro baruch.
