What Gives? The Jewish Philanthropy Podcast · Jewish Funders Network

Ronen Koehler - From Command to Community: Leading in Times of Crisis

·40 min·2 clips

Ronen Koehler says submarine sailors are the "best cream de la cream" and the crew must trust a captain instantly.

1. What Gives? The Jewish Philanthropy Podcast speaks with Ronen Koehler about leadership in crisis, shelter work in Tel Aviv, and Brothers and Sisters in Arms. 2. Andres Pokoini hosts Ronen Koehler, a former submarine commander and leader in Brothers and Sisters in Arms, and his current shelter work matters because it is happening during Israel's war with Iran. 3. The episode asks how military leadership, civil society, and Jewish communal action work when public systems fail. 4. Ronen describes joining the recording from a public shelter in central Tel Aviv while helping turn a neglected underground space into a safer place for families. 5. He says Brothers and Sisters in Arms and Brothers and Sisters for Israel opened the shelter's reception area, playground, and other basic services with the municipality of Tel Aviv, Deputy Mayor Itai Brand, and the Pills family. 6. He says hundreds of people arrived during alarms and reacted to the new setup as something that "wasn't here yesterday." 7. He says the same shelter project expanded within a week to six more shelters, including one in the central bus station in southern Tel Aviv. 8. Ronen says around 30 percent of Israelis lack adequate shelter and fewer than 50 percent have a mamad, or safe room, in their homes. 9. He frames the group's original 2023 protest movement as a response to what members saw as an effort to weaken Israeli democracy. 10. He says October 7 pushed the movement into emergency relief because reservists were mobilized and the government was slow to match the scale of the crisis. 11. He gives the example of 40 Tel Aviv restaurants cooking warm meals for soldiers after the team first called the restaurant The Brothers. 12. He says volunteers with their own cars moved the meals to platoons and brigades, bypassing normal bureaucracy because "no one asks who is going to pay for my fuel." 13. Ronen says submarine life is an "extreme lab" for organizational leadership because sailors need both empathy and instant obedience. 14. He says the hardest part of submarine command was helping electricians, sonar operators, and mechanics see that their roles mattered as much as the captain's. 15. He says conflict in a submarine starts with separation, de-escalation, and then putting arguments in proportion, like a five-minute shift delay. 16. He says sleep deprivation is the biggest physiological strain in submarine service and claims his body still falls asleep quickly at age 61. 17. He says the movement struggled when members split over whether to keep protesting or focus only on aid, and he calls the handling of that split "a very lousy job." 18. He says the episode's model of leadership is "trust and check," not unstructured chaos, because strong people need responsibility and review. 19. The conversation is an interview with a reflective, operational tone, mixing wartime reporting, organizational analysis, and personal memory. 20. People interested in Israeli civic leadership, emergency response, and Jewish communal innovation will get the most from this episode. 21. Listeners wanting a light, entertainment-first conversation without Israeli politics may skip it.

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