MONTREAL —Andres Spokoiny could be forgiven if he feels a little like Barack Obama. The expectations of the new executive director of Federation CJA are high.

Andres Spokoiny

The Argentine native didn’t even apply for the job. He was headhunted in Paris where for the past 12 years he worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).

In this cosmopolitan, multilingual 41-year-old, the federation is confident it has found someone with a fresh outlook and new ideas.

“I was not brought in to be a manager of the status quo,” said Spokoiny, who is youthful looking and has an easy, warm manner. “There is an expectation for change, [which] means different things to different people.

“My job is to try to begin to articulate the change the community needs. To some it means being more efficient and cutting budgets; to others developing more services and programs; or creating greater connections between the different segments of the community or improving our relations with the non-Jewish world.”

Spokoiny said he is a great believer in trial and error, and he hopes new things will be tried without long deliberation. He wants to hear from the community at large about what it thinks should be done.

“We cannot be afraid to experiment…We need a positive and energizing narrative about what it means to be Jewish in Montreal,” he said.

Having had no previous connection to Montreal or Canada, Spokoiny says he has the advantage of coming “without preconceived ideas. I do not presume that I have the answers.”

He intends to do a lot of listening to the leadership and the grassroots and to “those who do not say anything.”

Federations and Jewish community centres were created by North American Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in response to the circumstances of those times, he observes, and these institutions are being challenged to stay relevant.

“Being Jewish is about swimming with and against the current. We have to keep what is unique about us but not disconnect from the times we live in.”

The federation liked that Spokoiny is an Ashkenazi who speaks French and Spanish, as well as Hebrew, Yiddish and English, definite assets in a diverse Jewish population, and “building bridges” is something he thinks he is good at.

He was on the frontline of the rebuilding of the Jewish communities in Poland, the Baltic states and parts of Russia after the fall of communism and also involved in other projects to develop communities internationally.

He had his earlier experience in the private sector working for IBM in South America.

His education is well-rounded and includes seven years at a rabbinical seminary – he was never ordained – an MBA degree equivalent, and Jewish education studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Spokoiny was born in 1968 in Buenos Aires. Both his paternal and maternal grandparents emigrated from Poland in the 1930s. Although relatives remained in Europe and some died, Spokoiny said he has chosen not to define himself by the Holocaust.

He and his younger brother were raised by their divorced mother, who still lives in Buenos Aires. His childhood coincided with tough economic and political times, and the local Jewish community centre was a refuge.

He grew up in a strongly Zionist home and, with assistance from the community, attended Jewish schools. “I knew the names of the streets of Haifa before I knew those of Buenos Aires,” he said.

At his bar mitzvah, he discovered that being Jewish involved a religion, as well as a culture, and entered a Conservative seminary.

He thought he would make his career in the corporate world until he received a call from the JDC in 1997 to come and work in Paris. They had first known him when he ran High Holiday services for the Jewish community of Cuba as a rabbinical student.

“I thought I would stay with the JDC for two years and have a little fun before going back to my normal job. I stayed 12 years,” he said.

It was rewarding but not fun work. “Rebuilding Jewish communities that had basically been wiped out by Nazism and communism was like taking revenge on history. It was fascinating, but daunting and emotionally heavy.”

He was travelling 15 days of every month, which became a strain after his two children, now 5 and 3, were born. His wife is also from Argentina.

At first he was reluctant about the Montreal offer, but the more he learned about the community, the more interesting it became, he said.

The federation had been without a top executive officer since the resignation of Danyael Cantor in April 2008 after 11 years.

Spokoiny also believes it is one of the best places to raise Jewish children, and certainly offers a stronger Jewish environment than Paris.

“Working in another community in North America the same size would not have interested me, but Montreal, both the city and Jewish community, has a complexity and richness that is very intense and interesting.”