Elan Burman

On the magnetic pull of two Jewish organizations and seemingly inconsequential tasks

Elan BurmanElan Burman, MA'06
Capital Campaign Director
Maryland Hillel

Like some students who come to the Hornstein Program, Elan Burman MA’06 had to get to the end of his undergrad education before he realized that working as a Jewish professional leader aligned with his Jewish identity and perspectives.

“I tell people that Jewish communal work is the family business, one that growing up I vowed I would never enter,” says Elan, now the Capital Campaign Director at Maryland Hillel where he also worked on a previous occasion. Prior to this, Elan was at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and then the United Jewish Campaign (UJC) in Cape Town, South Africa, another organization where he worked on two different occasions.

Not everyone returns to places of previous employment but Elan has, twice. “These two enterprises — Maryland Hillel and UJC — and the magnetism of each were, and continue to be, a very compelling pull,” he says. Furthermore, “To quote Nelson Mandela, ‘There is nothing like returning to a place that has remained unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.'”

Elan's return to the UJC after close to three years was both a homecoming and a jolt. He laughs. “Documents I'd prepared and filed were exactly where I'd left them. The same people sat in the same chairs.”

Elan is quick to praise the Jewish community in Cape Town and the team at UJC. “Although some things were the same, the opportunities for growth were there. I was given license to create some new systems which I was now prepared to develop and implement.”

Elan and Jackie Burman with their childrenElan and Jackie Burman with their two children, Ariel and Dina.

Family was the reason for Elan's return to Cape Town. His grandfather, with whom he is very close, was ill and Jackie, his wife, also a Hornstein graduate from the Class of 2007, was expecting their first child.

Elan's father, Harris Burman, operates the Highlands House Jewish Aged Home in Cape Town. It's the business Elan refers to when he says Jewish communal service is the family business and where Elan learned important lessons about Jewish values, communal service and fundamentals about running a business.

As a young teen Elan volunteered at Highlands House. Expecting to work in the office the first day on the job, Elan was surprised to learn that his father had put him on bathroom-cleaning duty — no small task for a home that serves about 250 persons. “Literally, I was going from bathroom to bathroom all day long,” remembers Elan.

“After the first day of this I asked my father if he could give me work that was more meaningful. ‘Elan,' he said, ‘there's nothing more meaningful in this home than maintaining clean bathrooms. If we can't preserve sanitary conditions we have failed in our most rudimentary responsibility. What you are doing is absolutely important.'”

“That experience has stayed with me,” says Elan. “So often we don't recognize how important our contribution or actions are to the success of a higher endeavor.”

While Elan's specialty is development and fundraising, he views himself as a Jewish educator.

“When I started out, I didn't naturally gravitate towards development,” says Elan, “but I find it very fulfilling.”

“At my Hornstein orientation, David Mersky, professor of Hornstein's class on Jewish philanthropy and fundraising, urged me to consider development and philanthropy as a track,” says Elan. “At the best of times, I get to have conversations with people about their deepest concerns, their visions for the future and what can be done to realize these aspirations and visions. It's a privilege to have people open up like that and then watch them follow through.”

Elan gravitates towards leaders and people whose actions are driven by principle. “I watched as a rabbi I had a particularly close relationship with forewent his pulpit rather than cave to pressures to adopt halachic strictures he did not believe in.”

Leadership in Jewish communal work means putting the needs and best interests of the community first says Elan. “Unlike a business that sells a product to an end-customer, [in the Jewish communal profession] we're fashioning something that we ourselves are consuming. We're creating the world we want for ourselves and our community. It's both a duty and a privilege.”

“The beauty of Judaism is the ability to draw from multiple giants. The rabbi I referenced above would say to me that pedagogy often evokes images of sitting at a grandmaster's feet. However, this is not the Jewish view. Jewish pedagogy, he argued, is about inviting the child to stand on the shoulders of giants so that they may behold vistas of which the giant only every dreamed.”

In His Own Words: An Interview with Elan Burman

This interview with Elan was published in the Hornstein Program's Impact Newsletter, July 2016. If you would like to quote any part of this conversation, please attribute content to the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University and link to this page. All rights reserved.

“The beauty of Judaism is the ability to draw from multiple giants. The rabbi I referenced would say to me that pedagogy often evokes images of sitting at a grandmaster’s feet. However, this is not the Jewish view. Jewish pedagogy, he argued, is about inviting the child to stand on the shoulders of giants so that they may behold vistas of which the giant only every dreamed.”

Elan Burman, MA'06