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DIANE TRODERMAN SPARKS A GLOBAL JEWISH RENAISSANCE In conversation, as in life, Diane Troderman is peripatetic—yet focused like a laser beam. Targeting a key point, she leans toward you, gazes intently into your eyes, touches your shoulder and speaks passionately—as if you're the only person in the world, and the world needs you to understand. Swiftly, succinctly, she makes her agenda your agenda. And her agendas are many. Troderman is a one-woman super sales force for Judaism, education, Jewish education, philanthropy and women in Jewish philanthropy. She will go to the ends of the earth to champion these causes—and she has, numerous times, for numerous Jewish organizations.
Indeed, Troderman alone could have justified the invention of the BlackBerry. Among her extensive list of commitments, she chairs the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and sits on the boards of the Jewish Funders Network, the American Jewish World Service and the Hillel International Board of Governors. She and her husband, Harold Grinspoon, were founding partners of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. During the 1990s, she directed The Harold Grinspoon Foundation, which funds programs supporting Jewish education in Western Massachusetts as well as initiatives in Israel and the former Soviet Union. "She's deeply committed to everything Jewish," says Jonathan Woocher, JESNA's president. "She brings a passion and enthusiasm to everything she does, which we're blessed to have. She's an unusual leader with wonderful insight." At Hebrew College, Troderman is the driving force behind the Early Childhood Institute (ECI) Online, an innovative distance-learning program, piloted by Hebrew College Online (HCO) in Western Massachusetts (see article). Funded by The Harold Grinspoon Foundation, this national model combines Internet, classroom and videoconference instruction to enhance preschool educators' Jewish knowledge and curriculum design. Troderman is also vice chair of Hebrew College's Capital Campaign and sits on the Board of Trustees. Actually, Troderman does anything but sit. Last year, she cruised down the Volga River in the former Soviet Union, making stops to give Torahs to women, investigated a training-and-education initiative in Cambodia and traveled to Israel twice to visit schools receiving aid and to cultivate future Jewish educators. Earlier this year, her itinerary included California, New York, Colorado and Israel—and that was just in January and February. "Diane has more energy than 10 people," says HCO Director Alan Zaitchik, who has worked with her to develop ECI Online. "She's not necessarily in the same time zone three days in a row. She has the vision, the connections and the energy." It's almost unfathomable that the same woman was brought up with little exposure to Judaism, received public assistance in her early 30s and did not set foot in a plane until she was 39 years old. Two decisions changed the course of Diane Troderman's life. The first was sending her oldest child, Lorin, to nursery school at Young Israel in her native Brookline, where Troderman met mothers she admired: women who were, she says, "solidly identified with Judaism." They recommended that she send her children to Jewish day school—and she was off and running. A biology and special education teacher by training, Troderman found teaching jobs—including one at Maimonides—and obtained scholarships so that Lorin, and then Sarah and Joshua, could attend Jewish day schools as the financially struggling Trodermans moved 11 times in 15 years. "This was the biggest gift I could give my children, and one of the best decisions I ever made," she says. Troderman's second life-changing decision was her marriage in 1984 to Western Massachusetts real-estate entrepreneur and philanthropist Harold Grinspoon. The couple first met when Troderman interviewed to become Grinspoon's administrative assistant and ended up researching a book he was funding. (A newspaper ad for the researcher read, "Wanted: reliable, energetic person to study man's responsibility to himself and to society.") The book collaborators became not only life partners, but also partners in philanthropy. "I adore Hebrew College because it stands for community," says Troderman. In 1989, along with the MassMutual Financial Group, the couple co-"adopted" a Springfield, Mass., classroom through the I Have a Dream program, which guarantees college tuition for disadvantaged students. This program was the first beneficiary of what was to become The Harold Grinspoon Foundation in 1991. Grinspoon gave Troderman her own funds to donate as she deemed fit, and once again, she was off and running. "When I was on welfare, my problems were what to pay and how to pay it," recalls Troderman. "I take philanthropy just as seriously. I'm not worried about putting bread on the table, but I am worried about spending our philanthropic dollars wisely." When your life's work is, as she calls it, "the renaissance and renewal of Jewish life worldwide," where do you begin? For this philanthropist, you begin with reinvigorating Jewish education. "What nationally can be done to make Jewish education excellent?" asks Troderman. "We need to change the culture so that Jewish parents are kvelling about 'my son, the teacher.' What needs to happen is the professionalization of the field, which will require real standards for teacher certification." As you improve the quality of Jewish education, Troderman suggests, you create a more vibrant Jewish community. "Building community is how we'll bring people in," she stresses. "It's not getting people into synagogue; it's getting Judaism into people's hearts." In Troderman's view, all denominations are doorways through which this transformation can occur. Illustrating her point, she and Grinspoon are members of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox synagogues in their hometown of Longmeadow, Mass., and they belong to Reform synagogues in the Berkshires and Colorado, their homes away from home. They also support Elat Chayyim, a spiritual retreat in New York. For Troderman, Hebrew College exemplifies this "big tent" sensibility. "I adore Hebrew College because it stands for community, whether it's the transdenominational Rabbinical School, the teenage Prozdor program or the Me'ah program for adults," she says. "It's a model for the entire Jewish world and the United States specifically as to what community is and how it needs to be built." The College—and its ECI Online program—embodies her prescription for effective education: "starting where people are and then taking them from there." Troderman may be an exception to this meet-them-where-they-are mentality. "I will go anywhere to learn," "I'm on a Jewish journey, and I believe every Jewish person is on one," Troderman says. "Living Jewishly is the highest form of making meaning in my life. It's not about charity; it's about rising above yourself." |
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she says. "Anywhere" has meant to talks given by Maimonidean scholar Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik z'l, to graduate school for an MBA when her children were teenagers, to a six-week Ulpan program in Israel when she was 58 years old and to the Internet to study Hebrew for two years. She became a bat mitzvah in the Berkshires when she turned 60, and she and Grinspoon have hiked, kayaked and pursued spiritual enrichment in Pakistan, Nepal, China and the former Soviet Union.