Eitzah enables clergy and lay leaders to develop the personal leadership skills, leadership teams, and leadership structures necessary to create, vibrant congregations in which decisions are made, healthy conflicts are resolved, and organizational transitions are dealt with effectively.

Congregations come alive in the world when professional and lay synagogue leaders, individually and together, take it upon themselves to learn the nature and practice of leadership and organizational development. Eitzah offers itself as a place to support such growth and development.

Eitzah is the collaborative creation of Dr. Bill Kahn and Rabbi Terry Bookman.
It grew out of their mutual concern for synagogues and the people, lay and professional, who serve those institutions in leadership capacities. In 2010, after several years of working together on community projects, Rabbi Hayim Herring, Ph.D joined Eitzah as a principal.

Eitzah is a not-for-profit charitable organization dedicated to strengthening synagogues and those who serve them.

Dr. Bill Kahn earned a Ph.D in Psychology from Yale University in 1987. He is currently Associate Professor and Chair of Organizational Behavior at Boston University's School of Management. Bill's teaching, research, and consulting focuses on caregiving organizations - those organizations whose members minister to, heal, develop, and educate their patients and clients. Bill has published widely in academic journals on subjects ranging from organizational change and consultation, group dynamics, and leadership. As a core faculty member of the Executive MBA Program, Bill teaches courses on leadership, managing teams, and organizational change. He was awarded the School of Management's Broderick Prize for Teaching in 1994. He is married to Dana Sobel and is the delighted father of Noam, Eliana and Zachary. He resides in Needham, Massachusetts.

Rabbi Terry Bookman was ordained rabbi by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1984. He holds two Masters of Arts, one in Hebrew Letters and one in Systematic Theology (Marquette University), Certification in Secondary Education (University of Colorado) and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (City University of New York). Terry is widely published on a number of contemporary issues and is the author of three books, A Soul's Journey: Meditations On The Five Stages Of Spiritual Growth, The Busy Soul, and God 101 (Putnam/Perigee Press), as well as poetry, short stories, and three CDs of original music (with Cantor Rachelle Nelson) - "Bless Our Days", "Bless Our Years", and "Bless Our Holy Days". Terry has trained at the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy, is certified in pre-marital and marital counseling, and has served as one of the Central Conference of American Rabbis' mentors and is the Coaching Steward for the MFL. He has led two synagogues in a process of renewal--Temple Sinai in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Temple Beth Am in Miami, Florida where he currently serves as Spiritual Leader. In the spring of 2008, Newsweek Magazine named him as one of the top 25 pulpit rabbis in America. Terry is married to Karen Sobel, and is the very proud father of four boys - Ariel, Jonah, Micah, and Jesse.

In 2007, Terry and Bill published "This House We Build" (The Alban Institute).

Rabbi Hayim Herring is a Principal of Herring Consulting Network, LLC, a consulting firm which specializes in preparing today's leaders for tomorrow's organizations. Prior to forming the Herring Consulting Network, he was executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), a national foundation which helped to revitalize synagogues through efforts like Synaplex™ and executive development leadership programs for rabbis. Herring also served as congregational rabbi for ten years and as a senior staff member of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation. Herring is a national thought and action leader on Jewish life and has pioneered local, regional and national innovative initiatives for close to 25 years. He has tremendous passion for creating a vibrant Jewish community and proven ability to take "big ideas" and make them operational. He was cited in 2007, 2008 and 2009 in Newsweek Magazine as one of the fifty influential rabbis in America. Herring has published over 30 articles and studies about the contemporary rabbinate and the American Jewish community, and is currently working on a book about non-profit and faith-based leadership (www.toolsforshuls.com). He graduated from the Joint Program of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Columbia University (magna cum laude), was ordained from the Seminary in 1984 and received his doctorate in Organization and Management from Capella University's School of Business in 2000. Herring serves on national and local boards and volunteers in the Jewish community of Minneapolis, where he has resided since 1985.