Our next guest blogger, Suzy Zemel, is a member of Congregation Kneseth Israel where for many years she directed the children’s choir. Currently she sings in the adult choir and the house band and serves as Sisterhood president and on the education committee. I am reminded of a line in an old Woody Allen film. When asked what Jews do when they get in trouble, he answered, “They sing.”

One of my favorite things to do is to sing. I sing when I am happy. I sing to help me become happier. I was fortunate to have a dad with a beautiful voice. I cannot hear “Old Man River” from Showboat without thinking of my dad’s low, low notes sounding so powerful, or the way he hit the high notes at the end of the song, and the strong emotions that came out as he sang. One of my favorite family memories growing up is our singing together. We often sang in the evenings, instead of turning on the TV. Driving in the car on long rides gave us more opportunities to sing. When other family members were around, they joined in.

Yes, we were a family, magically we became a community of singers.

I was in singing groups growing up from third grade and well into college. Singing in choirs, small groups, music camps, and musicals, to name a few, were great ways to demonstrate how strong a community could become. Picture back to high school days. There were the various groups of students that hung out with only certain peers. Somehow, when we sang together, our clique status didn’t matter. We worked together practicing over and over the various voice parts, and as a whole, until we blended into one sound. We were individuals that through music, pardon the pun, found our voice. We might not have associated together outside of the choir room, but when we were a community, working for the betterment of our cause, which was to sing our hearts out and to sound as good as we possibly could.

Ah yes, our school halls were alive with some beautiful sounds of music!.

Then, there was also our synagogue’s High Holiday choir. I was fifteen when I joined this choir. This was quite a change from my singing at our local high school. We had a good-sized group. Many of them were friends of my parents, thus it seemed as if they were pretty old! There was only one person younger than me.

Age and stage of life didn’t matter. This was a group that did more than make beautiful music together. There was bonding, support, laughter, friendship, and indeed the lovely, moving traditional music.

At Congregation Kneseth Israel, where my husband, children, and I joined close to 30 years ago, I feel fortunate to have music play an important role in my participation within this community.   I had the opportunity to lead our children’s choir for 11 years.

I was also in a couple of Sisterhood musicals. What fun we had, and the closeness that occurred from performing these. I also was the director of our High Holiday choir for a few years.

Lucky for us, we now have a professional musician that is our director. He does a great job and has a lot of patience through all the silliness that seems to happen regularly at our rehearsals. Laughter and music go together. I find that after our rehearsals, I come home feeling more relaxed and cheerful. We had a few new people join the choir this year. New voices, and more opportunities to work together as we strive toward making moving and meaningful music during the High Holidays. Somehow, these new members have added magic to our group. We now have more power, so as I sing soprano, I can hear the low notes from the bass singers. Our voices blending with each others’, is exciting. I love to listen for the harmony, or even to hear us singing the same note well. This small “band of singers” is an important community within our synagogue. It is an honor to make music together. I will admit I really did not know some members prior to our commencement as a group. Today, I consider all of them my friends.

Would this have happened without our choir? Probably not to the degree we have today. Just think about this, all I have written about is community through singing. I never even mentioned our small synagogue band. Just think about all the communities created through choirs, bands and orchestras everywhere. Ah, this makes my heart sing!

Suzy Zemel

Our next guest blogger, Gareth Mann Sitz,  is a member at Congregation Kneseth Israel, is a director and producer of plays, a poet, and a retired teacher. Except she still teaches a memory writing group and a poetry workshop at Gail Borden Library. Her latest play will debut at the Elgin Fringe Festival the weekend of September 17-20. http://www.elginfringefestival.com Here she teaches us about community:

As an only child, I have spent most of my life reaching out to other people. I have always had an instinctive need for community—to be part of a supportive and nurturing group of people.

As an adult, I find that one of my purposes in life is to build community in any setting in which I happen to find myself. My world is the theatre, and I have been directing plays since I was seventeen years old. I have always felt that being in a play builds community. For the duration of the rehearsal period, the cast and crew becomes a family. If the director does her job well, this communal spirit enables the artistic process to proceed smoothly.

As a theater practitioner, I want my actors to become close to one another, to have a sense of belonging. I want them to feel accepted as they are, and I want them to feel that their contributions to the creative process are valuable. When cast members arrive at rehearsal, I want them to feel an immediate sense of knowing and being known, that they are part of a community.

In 2008, I founded an all female improvisation and acting troupe called Femmeprov. Over time, we have developed into a writing and performing cooperative. We meet on a regular basis to process our ideas, and we develop scripted material through group process. Time passes quickly during our sessions, and we laugh a lot, tickled with the wit of our comrades.

Our quality time together extends beyond the confines of our theatrical activity. In addition to working on our scripts, we have lunch and dinner together on a regular basis. We sometimes attend plays in the Chicago area with other group members, and we make an effort to attend productions in which any of our members is involved.

Our group ranges in age from 16 to 75 years of age. What we have in common is a commitment to creating theater that will entertain and enlighten people about issues that are important to women.

Our core group of women has morphed over time, yet any of the women who have participated in script development since 2008 are included in our social activities, whether or not they are still involved on a regular basis.   We have been known to have 15-20 women gather for half price burgers at our favorite local pub. It’s not uncommon for people to bring their friends or relatives to join us.   Once in awhile, we even welcome a man to our table! Newcomers to the acting troupe, usually referred by other members, have been embraced fully into the process. Our community has been enriched the past year with the addition of younger members, and we love the intergenerational aspect of our work together.

I lovingly refer to Femmeprov as “my gals.” The degree of comfort and mutual admiration is phenomenal. I feel very fortunate to be part of such a close knit artistic community.

Today on the American calendar is Labor Day. It is a day where thanks to the organizing of the labor movement, if you are lucky you don’t have to work. It is the end of a three day weekend. It is the unofficial last day of summer. Perhaps there is a barbecue or a picnic or a parade or one last trip to the pool or beach. And you better not wear white after Labor Day!

The Labor Movement really got its start in two places. In Lawrence, MA with the Bread and Roses strike. Plenty has been writing about this. While it maybe apocryphal that the women in Lawrence carried signs saying that “We want bread but we need roses too”, the myth has stuck and every year on Labor Day the State Park in Lawrence hosts a Bread and Roses Concert.

Long before there was the Bread and Roses Strike, women were working to improve working conditions. Jewish women in particular were at the vanguard of organizing other young Jewish women to fight for better wages, safer working conditions and even the women’s right to vote. One of those women has Rose Schneiderman, whose speech, “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too,” is what became the title of the poem, Bread and Roses, and later was set to music.

Rose Schneiderman was born in Swain, on the Russian/Poland border and actually went to Hebrew School, usually reserved in those days just for boys, in Chelm, before coming to New York. Her father died when she was young, leaving the family in poverty. Her mother, trying to keep the family together worked as a seamstress, but for this immigrant mother, it wasn’t enough and she had to give the children up for a short time to an orphanage.

From this beginning, Rose understood the importance of community and taking care of others. She was already a union organizer by the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 and that tragedy propelled her activism further. In 1920 she ran for US Senate. She didn’t win but her platform called for the construction of nonprofit housing for workers, improved neighborhood schools, publicly owned power utilities and staple food markets, and state-funded health and unemployment insurance for all Americans. Today these are all things that we think a strong community needs.

Along the way, activists made friends and colleagues—maybe even comrades. They created their own community, including theater, movies, poetry readings, lectures, dinners. An entire social network.

They also understood, many from their Jewish roots, the value of rest. Of not working 24×7. Of a work week that was only 40 hours. Of government mandated breaks in the work day. Of child labor laws.

So today, while those of us who are lucky to enjoy a Labor Day picnic or barbecue, let’s remember those in the Jewish community, who built community, strengthened community by making sure we have fair labor laws, including today being a holiday. And let’s remember to thank those people who are working today so that we can enjoy time with our families.

A note: There was a problem with WordPress in terms of credentials. Simon had administrator privileges and could edit. I as an editor no longer could. We’ve decided for the next few days there will be two posts in order to catch up.

G-d said to Abraham, “Lech lecha, Go.” There is lots of commentary on this text.  Abraham is told to leave his land, the place of his birth, and his family and go to the land that G-d would show him. It is a model of concentric circles. It is hard to leave your land. Harder still to leave the land of your birth. Hardest still to leave your family—everything familiar. And yet, that is what G-d asked Abraham to do.

This resonates with us today. Today we live in a very transient society. It is common for kids to leave for college and not return to the land of their birth. It is common to hear people say, especially at holidays like Thanksgiving, that their friends are the ones they choose to celebrate, that those friends have become their family. There are even famous scenes in every sit com in America–Seinfeld, Friends, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother–all about the family we choose.

It seems to me that there are pluses and minuses in this. On the one hand, if you are not living near your family, it creates independence and self-reliance. On the other hand, if you have an emergency or just need a babysitter for a night out, your parents are not around the corner and your extended family may be in another state. Grandchildren may not have a close relationship with grandparents. Parents may not teach kids how to change the oil in the car or hang a picture or water the garden or mow the lawn. Mentoring may be harder to come by.

And the nature of community may change.

Yet, people still want to belong. They want to experience something bigger than themselves. They want to feel connected. They want to know that there are people they can count on—and those people may not be in their own families.

So when they leave their families, and the land of their birth, they begin to create community. It maybe a college extra curricular club. Or cheering in a football stadium. It maybe a group of people that gathers for a casual dinner or pizza on Friday night. It maybe the people you meet at the health club. Or the neighborhood pool. It maybe a group of parents who meet on the playground or who gather for a playgroup. It maybe the soccer moms or the Little League coaches. It maybe a PTO board. Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts. Or the Torah school parents who sit at the round tables on Sunday mornings.

Or it may be your workplace. The lunch room. The water cooler (do people still have these?) The cookie exchange. The Kiwanis or Lions or Rotary. For me it maybe places like the Martin Luther King Commission or the U46 Clergy Council or the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders. At one time it was the dance academy that Sarah attended and through which she danced five years of the Nutcracker. Each year the kids would make an ornament to place on the tree that grew–and the director talked about community. Sarah might tell you that she is part of the theater community or the running community.

In each case there is an expectation that these are people that you have a shared experience with and that you can count on. They are the families that you choose.

Community—your family, the place of your birth and wherever you wander, wherever G-d might lead you. Each is a place of community.

Our next guest is Tina Wolf. A member at Congregation Kneseth Israel for almost 20 years, and a day care owner, she always has a warm smile and a can-do attitude. I’m delighted that she has chosen CKI, and continues to do so!

The communities to which I have belonged have changed throughout my life. Stitch n’ bitch, book club, and concert going affiliations gave way to such communities as Boy Scout Troop 56 and St. Charles North’s soccer, swim, and music boosters – then returned again. However, as a soon-to-be twenty year member, CKI is the one community that I have CHOSEN to belong to for the longest period of time.

Originally joining to provide my children with some type of Jewish education and identity, I remain a member of CKI because of the sense of connectedness that I have with others within this organization and its Sisterhood. This sense of connectedness, or community, stems from shared values and common goals and interests. More importantly though, the CKI community, like all good communities, develops and maintains this sense of connectedness by exhibiting concern about the welfare of those who belong to it. CKI provides me, and all its members, with support – it helped me celebrate simchas, mourned with me when I lost loved ones, and provides me with the resources (whether they be educational, spiritual, social, or material) to grow and become not only a better Jewish person, but a better citizen of the world.

In return, I (and what I believe is a growing number of members) have become just as concerned about making the CKI grow and improve. I believe that this reciprocity is a necessary component of any successful community. CKI must view its members as an asset and strive to meet their needs, and we, the members of CKI’s community must view CKI as an asset and take action to ensure its continuation and development too.

Yet another characteristic of a good community is flexibility. I believe that CKI possess this trait because of its conscious effort to embrace diversity. This act is key to promoting tolerance of differing views and opinions as well as making all feel welcome, comfortable, and accepted – yet another key facet of a great community.

Tina Wolf

Today was the first day of Hebrew School in our community. The kids have already been in public school for two weeks in Illinois. Between Labor Day next weekend and Rosh Hashanah the following weekend, Hebrew Schools struggled this year to find the right time to start.

I always like the first day of school. The teachers are excited, having prepared for weeks. The crayons and markers are new. The textbooks may be updated. It is a chance for a new beginning, a fresh start, with new, higher expectations. This year we have a new education director and the expectations are very high. She comes to us as a director of a pre-school program and a Jewish summer camp/day care, having worked at Keshet, an organization that supports inclusive learning for all Jews.

School is also a community. This weekend I stopped by the O’Neal school, where our Resident Officer (ROPE) Bob Engleke was hosting a National Night Out for the neighborhood, to say welcome to the new principal and welcome back to the students and families of the neighborhood. Our synagogue neighborhood. What was clear is that our neighborhood is a community, as hot dogs were shared and kids bounced in bouncy-houses while parents and grandparents watched and stood around telling stories.

As I watched our kids and their parents arrive at Hebrew School, they were smiling, reconnecting with friends from last year and meeting new ones. By 9:15 there was learning going on in every classroom. In the 7th grade they were learning to ask questions and find meaning. They were looking at Hamlet and the Binding of Isaac. In the 5th and 6th grade they were learning about the four names of Rosh Hashanah, heard a clip of Kol Nidre, and played a bingo game to reacquaint them with the High Holidays. In the 3rd and 4th grade, they took a tour of the building looking for new and different things. I found them in the hall with the yahrzeit plaques. In the 1st grade they learned about the 10 commandments and each colored a poster. In Kindergarten they made Jewish stars with glitter and talked about themselves as a way of introduction.

The energy level was high during ruach, (spirit), the assembly, from the opening Boker Tov, Good morning, and a few songs. Then we had grape juice and challah as a way to further deepen the connection to Judaism, to build community. All together. And maybe that is what community is. Deepening the knowledge with spiraling curriculum. Deepening the connections by learning together. Deepening the connections with shared experiences. School is one way we do that.

Our guest blogger today, Sharon Cores, is one of the best early childhood educators I know. She just has a special way with young children, and their parents, that makes them feel special, loved, appreciated for who they are. She creates community wherever she goes. Currently she teaches preschool at the Lexington (MA) Chabad. What she doesn’t tell you in this post, is that while we met in Andover, MA, the community she is describing is Grand Rapids, MI, where her mother and sister live. It is posted today in honor of her father’s yahrzeit.

Av in the year 5750 was to be one like no other. We had lost my dear father in law, of blessed, blessed memory just a few weeks prior on the 6^th of Av after a relatively rare neurologically degenerative condition took him from us. Just moving out of the 30 days of mourning for him, shloshim, and barely on our feet, we were cruelly thrust back into mourning when my own dad, my mentor, our love, went into a rapid decline and was gone in three weeks on the 14^th of Elul. We found out afterward that it was his second cancer but was not known to any of us…was it known to him? We will never know.

Staggering doesn’t begin to define the emotions, the anger, the confusion that all of us walked through that year. Why these two wonderful men, who only lived to support their families, show them love, teach patience, respect, and commitment by example? None of the platitudes helped, none of the prayers and psalms comforted…there was only numbness, disbelief, and moving forward barely one foot at a time.

It was then, during this month of Elul, that I learned about community…the community of saying Kaddish for one’s parent. While staying with my mom and sister for shiva and a while afterward I found community walking into two different synagogues, one Conservative and one Orthodox, for minyanim…entering as a stranger and being welcomed as a friend. People made sure I did not sit alone, invited me out to coffee afterward, asked if I needed anything. And yes, the first day I left my mother’s house after shiva to say Kaddish at an early morning minyan, there was a rainbow over the roof of the synagogue.

This was to be experienced over and over during the following year as I went to minyan as often as I could with a job and two sons at home. I found a support system among the familiar and the new, but the welcome was always the same, the prayer, always the same. This was community.

Sharon Cores

“More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.” Ahad Ha’am, an early cultural Zionist wrote before the founding of the State of Israel. As we turn our attention back to Shabbat mode, we pause. What did Ahad Ha’am mean?

I think there are implications for our ongoing discussion of community. There is something about Shabbat that helps sustain a community. Having the routine is part of it. The rhythms. The familiar prayers. The melodies. The aromas from the kitchen. The warmth of the candles. The sweet wine. Family and friends gathered together.

Coming together is only part of it. Prayer is only part of it. Coming together to share a bite to eat is only part of it. It is what transpires in that moment. Those moments. Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading Jewish theologians of our age talks about the Sabbath as a palace in time. It is the intersection of sacred space and sacred time. It is a foretaste of the world to come. It is heaven. Or heaven on earth.

Sometimes it isn’t a whole 25 hour Shabbat. I am a realist. And I liked the approach of Wayne Muller, who also wrote a book called Sabbath, after following Zalman Shacter Shalomi around for a year. For him it is not about the list of prohibitions on Shabbat. For him it is about creating that joy, that delight, that he experienced with Zalman. For him it is about creating Shabbat moments. I particularly liked the idea of the gratitude one individual expressed for a perfect glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, glinting in the morning sun. Ah, Shabbat!

But it is that coming together that creates that feeling of heaven. It is the extra soul we are given on Shabbat so we rise above the craziness of the week. It is the extra spice that is added to the food to give it that Shabbat flavor. It is rushing around (as I am supposed to be doing right now) and preparing the house for Shabbat so that when we sing “Shalom Aleichem” to the angels, the good angel says “May it always be so.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In the process we create community. We eagerly anticipate seeing our friends at synagogue as we catch up with them over lox and bagels, or challah and a little schnapps. I have often said, the better the food, the more people linger, the more people share their lives. That’s community. This week in my community, we will celebrate a Bat Mitzvah. We will pray with those, or for those in need of healing. We will help someone say Kaddish for a loved one. All of those build community too.

Ahad Ha’am was right. The Sabbath has kept Israel. It is one of our greatest gifts to humanity.

Our next guest blogger, Gretchen Vapner, is the executive director of the Community Crisis Center in Elgin, IL. The Community Crisis Center is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It offers shelter, hotline counseling for domestic violence and sexual assault, emergency food distribution, help with rent, utilities and transportation, and community education programs.

Always interesting subjects posed by you, Rabbi.  Always nice to be asked.

Community….for me, perhaps because of the political issues I face each day, begins with citizenship .  Being a citizen is being a part of the largest and most important community….and, it comes with great responsibility.  All other communities on each level are related to being a citizen.

Community is a shared experience….more than a group….shared beliefs , hopes and expectations.  I am a member of a community of activists working towards peace for battered women.  We understand each other; we speak the same language; we share similar visions and ethics.  We may or may not be friends….our purpose unites us, not friendship necessarily.

I believe being a member of a community is the only way we move forward….alone we cannot see or do what needs to be done. We cannot identify and certainly not solve problems.  I see communities as mostly positive, but I suppose they can be of negative origin and purpose. To be a part of a community one does not give up individuality but rather contributes it; combines with that of others; builds.

(Enough rambling for this morning.  Perhaps a useful word or two.  My community work calls.)

Gretchen Vapner

This blog post was originally published earlier this week by Ma’yan Tikvehhttp://mayantikvah.blogspot.com/2015/08/earth-etude-for-elul-10-guatemalen.html  and by Jewcology. http://jewcology.org/2015/08/earth-etude-for-elul-10-guatemalen-etudes-for-the-earth/ 

Ma’yan Tikveh is translated as Wellspring of Hope. It is a congregation without walls in Massachusetts that spends much of its time praying outdoors. Its founder, Rabbi Katy Allen, is committed to repairing the world, particularly the earth. For Elul, Ma’yan Tikveh sponsors 40 days of Earth Etudes to preparing for Rosh Hashanah. This one is mine:

An etude is a song, a song of praise. This summer I spent time bouncing on a bus as part of American Jewish World Service’s Global Justice Fellowship in Guatemala. Part of a two year program, we studied text together, we lobbied together, we learned organizing skills together and then we experienced Guatemala together.

It is hard to reconcile the beauty of the land together with the brokenness of the country. In 1954 there was a coupe organized in part by the United Fruit Company and the CIA to protect US interests and land ownership. There was a bloody civil war, a genocide really, with a peace accord that was signed in 1996. But these struggles are not yet over. On September 6, 2015, there will be yet another election and land rights and land ownership are some of the hotly contested issues.

For the Mayan people, the indigenous people, the land is very important. We were witnesses to several Mayan blessings to start our meetings. The first was at an NGO Codecut which trains Mayan women to be midwives. Their circle included colorful candles symbolizing sun, rest, water, purity, blood, transparency, air, sky and the green natural world. We told the story of Shifrah and Puah, the two midwives in the book of Exodus whose civil disobedience enabled the Jewish people to survive. I watched as the head of Codecut, Maria Cecelia, beamed as the story was told. Unfamiliar with the story, she understood the connection as her face lit up with joy and appreciation at the parallels. Their song was an etude for the earth.

Later in the week we visited CCDA. By now the candle ritual was expected and understood, but this NGO added a Maize Dance. During this dance we learned the importance of the struggle for the land. It is not unlike the story of Abraham buying a burial plot for Sarah and the struggle that has ensued ever since. This is the very land that grows maize and provides nourishment for the people through the ubiquitous tortillas, also made as part of the dance. Their dance was an etude for the earth.

CCDA is a grassroots organization of small farmers in 11 regions of Guatemala. They advocate successfully for land rights, help local farmers increase their yields and protect land from environmental damage. Those increased yields help members gain access to health care and education. They can track accounts of human rights abuses against the indigenous, mostly Mayan farmers.

Some of this has come with the sale of their organic coffee beans, Café Justica, to global partners. Some of it is even more local. In their Patio Systemes, there was one woman who explained that with just one chicken on her patio, she was able to put her daughter through 6^th grade and now she is entering high school. The woman herself does not read or write. “We’re not just in the business of buying and selling coffee,” said Leocadio Juracán, Coordinator of CCDA. “We are using the resources we have to work for justice in our communities.”

What CCDA is doing is building community. We watched as the women tended to their children together. As the older kids went to school. As the dogs played on the lawn. As the members of CCDA work together to protect their land rights, learn better farming techniques, provide education to their children, advocate for themselves, they are building community.. One pound of coffee at a time.

This advocacy comes with risk. There are 84 arrest warrants out for leaders of CCDA. Yet, they are making a difference in protecting their land rights, frequently from large multi-nationals who would like to engage in strip mining or who would like to put in large hydro-electric dams which would flood their homes and villages.

When Rosh Hashanah comes, I will be proud to be serving CCDA honey on my table, and Cafe Justica in my cup, making it an extra sweet new year. And I will remember the Guatemalan etudes for the earth.