Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is likely to seem a familiar face to some St. Louisans when he arrives in town early next month to keynote the Jewish Professionals Conference. In 2008, he made an appearance at the Jewish Book Festival here to mark the release of “You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right “, a work that explores finding common ground while accepting religious differences.

Hirschfield said during his visit to the two-day event, he will address how to build unity without creating uniformity. He said it’s possible to commit oneself politically or denominationally while still feeling they are a part of something larger.

“I’m going to talk about what it means to create a shared destiny based on shared values and the understanding that values are always deeper than what some people on the outside may see,” he said. “It’s perfectly OK, in fact it’s great for us to look very different from each other and even sound very different from each other because the values that we share demand expression in many shapes and forms and many tastes and flavors.”

Hirschfield said that Jewish communal professionals face a wide array of concerns today from funding troubles to their own job security. Still, he feels that the most important issue is the one that often goes unaddressed.

“I think that there are clearly realignments philanthropically and economically that create genuine pressures,” he said. “But I think the most significant is that almost all the work of Jewish professionals is work that by definition can never be finished. There’s always someone else in need. There’s always some way to make the world better.”

“I think one of the biggest challenges is learning how to be happy even though our work keeps us permanently dissatisfied,” he added.

He said there may have to be a paradigm shift in the future of Jewish communal leadership.

“I think it will have to reflect more directly the incredible freedom, the incredible power, the incredible success that we have garnered as American Jews in the last 50 years,” said Hirschfield who, in addition to his keynote, will also host a workshop on the ethics of diversity. “It’s going to have to move to a model which celebrates thriving and worries much less about surviving.”

Hirschfield said it’s hard to generalize about what professionals he talks to have said but one major concern that he hears is that some have trouble reconciling the lofty aspirations that brought them to the profession with the mundane logistical concerns which often hem them in on a day-to-day basis.

“I think you have to do two things,” he said. “You have to remember that the big aspirations are never achieved without day-to-day life and that oftentimes, especially for Jewish professionals, those day-to-day challenges that they experience sometimes as petty and small are very big and important to the people they are working with.”

Hirschfield said he looked forward to his return visit to St. Louis. He felt especially honored to be speaking at a JPro-sponsored event.

“I come into the talk with a real sense of optimism grounded in the organization that’s bringing me and the people in the audience,” he said.

“They’re really not an audience,” he added. “They’re my colleagues.”