A tribute to my husband, Simon L. Klein, on the occasion of his birthday.

This past weekend, we read the words, “Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof, Justice, Justice shall you pursue.” It is the clarion call to make the world a better place. It is perhaps the guiding principle of our family. Our families have a long tradition of participating in social action. When I met my husband he was the chairperson of Temple Emanuel’s Social Action committee. His family has been extensively involved in refugee resettlement work in Tucson. So when we got married, it is just what we did. We worked on hunger, on homelessness, on peace, on domestic violence. And somewhere along the way, we learned that working with others was fun. And it builds community.

When you work at a soup kitchen, it takes more than just two. Some people need to cook the Chicken Divine. Some people make salad. Some people make rice. Some people go get the bread to distribute. Some people set up. Others serve. Still others might be on clean up. During the course of the time, there is much laughter. Much sharing of stories—both amongst the volunteers and the guests. There is a genuine caring that develops. That is community.

When you swing a hammer or paint a house, and you spend 8 hours on a Sunday volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, you stabilize a neighborhood, provide housing for people who need it and build your own organization’s community.

When you organize for justice, with an organization like Merrimack Valley Project, and you identify the top three issues in the community, and you then figure out how to achieve your goals, that builds community, and it empowers people.

These are just three examples. And it is not just me who makes this point. Rabbi Sid Schwarz in his book, Finding a Spiritual Home, examines four successful synagogues across of the American streams of Judaism. In each case, the congregation had a robust social action program and many times the social action program is what drew new members in.

Two weeks ago I was in Guatemala with American Jewish World Service getting a first hand glimpse as to how community is built with social action. There will be more of that discussion on Yom Kippur. But one of the texts we studied was this week’s portion. On Shabbat morning, Ruth Messinger, the president of AJWS, taught about what happens if a body is found out in the open, not in a town, the Torah asks who is responsible. The question is really about who needs to provide the burial. The elders of the town perform a complicated ritual and then proclaim, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done.”

Sotah, a section of the Mishnah explains.

Mishnah Sotah 9:6

The elders of that town washed their hands in water at the place where the neck of the heifer was broken, and they said, “Our hands have not shed this blood neither have our eyes seen it.”  But could it be that the elders of a Court were shedders of blood?  But, “He came not into our hands that we should have dismissed him without sustenance, and we did not see him and leave him without escort!”  And the priests say, “Atone for your people Israel whom you redeem to God and do not allow for there to be innocent blood spilled amongst the people of Israel.”

What Ruth went on to teach is our responsibility to be proactive. To see the person. As a person. Because they didn’t see him, they didn’t provide him with food or security so he left the town. That is a sin of failure to act. It is a sin of omission. “We are bound not only to intervene to protect people against danger but also to anticipate potential dangers and work to prevent them.” If they had seen the man and failed to provide him with food and security, then they would have been responsible, even if they didn’t directly kill him.

She sees a direct connection to Heschel: “In a free society where terrible wrongs exist some are guilty but all are responsible.

Today is my husband’s birthday. His 75^th. This year he has attended the March on Selma. the Religious Action Center’s Consultation on Conscious in Washington, and the Walk for Hunger. He spoke about his trip to Selma on Shabbat and how inspiring it was. He routinely writes letters to elected officials and signs petitions. He attended the American Jewish World Service meeting with Representative Peter Roskam. He has worked together with me on countless food drives, soup kitchens and Habitat Houses. It is what we do as a family. In truth, his commitment to social justice, to tzedek, tzedek tirdof, is a large part of why I married him. That, and his deep blue eyes.

Our next guest blogger, Dr. Beryl Rosenthal, is an anthropologist, a museum executive, a non-profit fundraiser. At one stage, we raised our middle school kids together and became fast friends. At another stage, at Congregation Beth Israel she was my boss, as the chair of the education committee. She hates it when I describe her that way. Now rarely a day goes by without me talking to her. She is the sister I never had. Her take on mechitza, the traditional separation between the men’s section of prayer and the women’s section,  is particularly relevant after a week of shiva minyanim with a mechitza and somewhat surprising for both of us. And written before this past week.

In conversation with my friend Rabbi Margaret on the role of women in Judaism, I noted that for me, a mechitza was not necessarily an anti-feminist structure. I had the pleasure of attending an orthodox shul in St. Louis that was different from any other I had ever been part of. No, I am not orthodox, but it was close to our house and we had very young children who were welcome there.

Bais Abraham was an old European-style shul with a forward-thinking, brilliant and compassionate Polish rabbi who had been through some of the worst of the 20^th century. There was a high mechitza as well, segregating the women and young children from the men. It marked complete separation, of “otherness”. I kept thinking of my old, worn copy of “Purity and Danger”, and how under ultra orthodoxy, women were seen as something to be kept separate, as they were distracting, perhaps dangerous.

The feminist in me should have bristled, but I found it strangely comforting. The structure was a symbol of something else. It marked the boundary for a female community. Many of us were mothers of young children, and we watched out for each others’ toddlers as they ran up and down the aisles. We babysat each other’s kids. We ran all-female Rosh Chodesh services together, supported completely by the rabbi who was constantly being reprimanded by St. Louis’ chief rabbi for being so open-minded (!) Someone was always shushing the few matrons that sat in the back and talked through services. The same two elderly ladies were in charge of the kitchen for years. There was definitely an underground “power elite”.

We could talk freely about supposedly “Female Stuff” – not “plumbing-related”, but how to discretely help someone who needed financial help, who was organizing a shiva meal, and who would pick up an elderly congregant who could no longer walk to shul. It was about taking turns babysitting and reading to the youngest children downstairs during the High Holidays. It was about asking the men to build a ramp for aging congregants.

In point of fact, it wasn’t “Female Stuff” at all, it was the stuff of Judaic ethics. It was about taking care of people, of maintaining someone’s dignity. It was about being a mentsch in a very natural, “don’t-have-to-think-about-it” way. It was about walking the walk.

That, is the nature of community, and in that context, perhaps the mechitza helped maintain it.

While the men were at a shiva minyan, the women had a spiritual experience of their own this week. We went to deli for dinner. Food builds community, we learned in the last post. If you feed them, they will come. So nice conversation over dinner of matzah ball soup or sweet and sour cabbage and a pastrami, corned beef or tongue sandwich.

But the real reason for the “field trip” was to go to the Community Mikveh in Wilmette. Housed at Beth Hillel Congregation B’nei Emunah, it was one of the first mikvaot in the country to be more inclusive in its welcoming. 18 years ago, the Conservative rabbis in Chicago wanted a mikveh they could have easier access to. One that would recognize women rabbis and converts warmly. One that wouldn’t question tattoos and body piercings but would still uphold halacha. One that would be available for women practicing the laws of family purity during their monthly cycles. What they discovered is that there are many reasons people want to immerse. Any time there is a transition moment, there can be a reason to immerse. High Holidays (which is part of why we went now at the beginning of Elul). Passover. Shabbat. Starting a new job. Graduating from high school or college. Retirement. A milestone birthday. Marking a yahrzeit or a period of mourning. Starting chemotherapy. Ending chemotherapy. Healing. Domestic abuse. Rape.

And men immerse too!

There is just something about the water. It is something that resonates with me—but I have always been attracted to water—the Big Lake (Lake Michigan), Walden Pond, Ogunquit. Bar Harbor. Sunrise on the Atlantic. Sunset over the Pacific. There is something about immersing and allowing the water to envelope me that I find comforting. Calming. Peaceful. Invigorating. Energizing.

But mikveh is highly personal. How does this build community? It takes a community to support a mikveh. When a new Jewish community forms, it is incumbent upon it to build a mikveh, a school and a cemetery even before a synagogue or purchasing a Torah! Once the mikveh is built, it takes the community to support it. The mikveh lady, like Carol, the women who are the primary users, the people who support it financially. But more than supporting it, what The Community Mikveh has discovered, and places like Mayyim Hayyim in Boston, is that the mikveh supports the community, sustains it and enables it to grow.

What I learned working at a mikveh, Mayyim Hayyim in particular, is to create a non-judgmental, safe space where people can explore their Judaism. I learned about intentionality. When you walk through the gate of Mayyim Hayyim and are greeted with Enter in Peace and stroll through the beautiful gardens to the light filled atrium, that is intentionality. When the Community Mikveh welcomes you with a tour with Carol’s calm, soothing voice, and all the toiletries you need complete with plush purple towels, that is intentionality. When a mikveh has hours that support conversions during the day and women’s needs at night, they become an important place to refer people to increase their spirituality, to celebrate, to heal. It builds community.

So eight women went on a field trip. We ate. We laughed. We learned. And we built our own community. Just a little bit stronger.

Our next guest blogger, Nori Odoi, is a long time friend, all the way back to Simon’s days at Wang Laboratories. She was one of the first people Simon introduced me to and it is she who baked our wedding cake. She has been featured in Yankee Magazine for her baking—including her hamantaschen. After leaving the high tech world, she became a professional baker and caterer, delighting many with her noshes. She is also a published poet so her writing about food and community, is evocative. I can almost taste the cookies! It seems like the perfect post between the food of the shiva minyans and funeral lunch and the celebrations of Simon’s upcoming birthday this weekend. Both sadness and celebration, as Nori points out, involve community and food.

I often bring food to meetings. Sometimes chocolate chip cookies — crisp, melt-in-your-mouth, with pools of still liquid chocolate — or maybe lemon bars — tart lemon curd cradled in butter rich shortbread — or even small squares of flourless chocolate mousse cake — dark, bittersweet, rich with chocolate, naturally without gluten for those who care.   When I open my offerings, people gather around; some gasp as the aroma of fresh baking awakens their senses. Later we may argue about the proper way to solve a problem or disagree about issues, but for a few moments everyone is smiling and nibbling, and sharing the pleasure of food. For a few moments, we are a unified community.

When we join in community, we each bring our samenesses and our differences. A healthy community thrives on both. Our differences enrich each other, create a greater perspective on the world, teach us about other ways of being. They can make a community stronger and more able.

But the word community derives from “common” — it is our samenesses which joins us. And one of the most basic things we humans share is our bond with food. We need it to survive — we all know the pain of hunger. But we also know the pleasure of filling that hunger.   In fact, satisfying our hunger has been made into an art form, an entertainment we can enjoy together.

Throughout history, communities come together over food, to celebrate, to grieve, to join one another. And as we eat together, we acknowledge both our common vulnerability and our common strength. In giving food to each other we can express love and caring in a wordless yet profound way.

Our holiday foods are more than just sustenance. They have history that go back to our roots. Often recipes survive from those who have left us. In my family, it is traditional to have 24-hour salad, a fruit salad that requires creating a lemon custard and peeling numerous grapes. It was a recipe that my Aunt Sue always made for us, but now she has passed on. When we eat this, we feel her here in spirit, and our hearts are warmed with memories of her. She is still part of our community.

So in this time of reflection, of coming together, I wish you foods that sustain you and give you hope, foods that tell stories of the past and speak of the future, foods that join your spirits in joy and love, foods that bind you ever to the human community.

— Nori Odoi

My congregation is a congregation that has as part of its Vision Statement a pillar that proclaims, “Embracing Diversity.” It is the hardest pillar to describe and to meet its invitation. I believe when it was conceived it was about welcoming interfaith families. But it actually is about much more than that and I have challenged the community to live up to it—or to live into it.

Diversity also means that we welcome people with physical and mental disabilities. We have recently completed the remodel of one of our bathrooms so that it is accessible. We partner with Keshet so that our teachers can better handle a ranges of special education needs. We welcome members of the LGBT community. We welcome members who were not born in this country and in fact have individuals who were born in 17 foreign countries!

Diversity also means we welcome a wide spectrum of Jewish thought and practice. As our president is fond of saying “We are all just Jews.” Sometimes navigating that range of practice is challenging. We have some members who always stand for Kaddish and some who rarely if ever do. We have some members who love instrumental music on Shabbat and some who feel its not Jewish. We have some members who like to wear a kippah and some who never have had that practice. And with lots of discussion and lots of reminders from me—it is all within normative Judaism. It is like the old joke, “Two Jews, Three Opinions.”

This week I participated in a funeral for the mother of a member. The funeral was held in Skokie at a Jewish funeral home and the service was Orthodox. I spoke both at the service and at the graveside. The rabbi officiating called me rabbi. The rabbi had been the family’s rabbi for many years and knew Sharon long before she got sick so it was most appropriate for this rabbi to take the lead. In actuality there were at least four rabbis present representing a diversity of Jewish expression.

The family elected to do seven days of shiva—the most traditional option. And the minyanim would also be Orthodox. That meant that there would be a mechitza, the dividing line between a men’s section and a women’s section. In order to say Kaddish we would need 10 Jewish men over the age of 13. This took some people out of their comfort zone. Why are we doing it this way instead of the way most of our members are used to? Why is the daughter not saying Kaddish?

Shiva allows a family to grieve. To tell the stories of their loved ones. To have their needs taken care of. To not have to think about what the next meal is. To pray–in a community–and to recite Kaddish for their loved one. To experience the deep pain of mourning. Unfortunately it can also be exhausting and stressful. That’s where community steps in.

Our congregation would be handling the logistics. Now our congregation is really good at at shivas. We know how to bring baked goods and deli platters. We have several people who can lead a shiva minyan. We know how to show up.

And that’s what we did. Each night. Some nights were harder than others. One night the recent Bar Mitzvah boy had to call his friend, another recent Bar Mitzvah boy to make the minyan. And he goes to another congregation entirely! In the process, we comforted the mourners, because that is what it is about—comforting the mourners–even if sometimes some were not comfortable. And in the process, we built even deeper connections in our own community.

We are a small congregation, about 120 families. Counting on people to show up four nights in a row when it is the end of summer, the first few nights of school, lots of people had prior commitments, or are out of town, is tough. But that’s what people do. That’s about community. That’s part of what community is for—to share good times, like a Bar Mitzvah, and hard times, like a funeral and the subsequent shiva.

Our next guest blogger, The Rev. Denise Tracy, is the president of the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders, a police chaplain, a mentor for U46 and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. As I write this, Elgin has just gone through a heavy thunderstorm, a tornado watch and a flash flood warning. The choir at Congregation Kneseth Israel practiced tonight in an interior hallway. But note carefully the date here. Tonight is the 60th anniversary of the flood the story is about…

In August 1955 there were 17 days of rain. As Hurricane Diane moved up the eastern coast on Aug 18, it dumped 13 inches of water on the State of Connecticut. Our family lived on a small river and three times in August we were evacuated for fear of dangerous flooding. On the night of Aug 18th my Dad drove my mother, sister and me to an overnight baby shower in Hartford. He returned to our home to help sandbag and keep watch.

He built a fire, and fell asleep after a busy evening. Up stream the dam at Barkhampstead Reservoir was threatening to burst. A decision was made to release water to relieve pressure. This decision would impact those who lived on our street.

The train trestle that ran across the end of our neighborhood trapped the water, which rose 13 feet in 35 minutes. My sleeping father was awakened by our dog. The water pressure was already too high for him to exit through the doors. He broke the living room window and jumped, with our dog, into the rising flood waters. As he swam, he looked back to see our home lift off its foundation and collapse. In the moonlight there was still smoke was drifting out of the chimney. The dog led him to higher ground.

Eleven people died on our street that night. My Father walked to safety. He joined in the efforts to rescue others. He neglected to tell the Red Cross that he was a victim. His name was on the list of the missing.

We had nothing. My mother, pregnant with her third child had me and my one year old sister. She began her search for my father. She went first to her church. She knocked on the parsonage door. Her clergyman came to the door. My mother explained that she needed some help. He said he was sorry and closed the door. She started to cry.

As we turned to leave, we saw across the green, at my Father’s church, there was much activity. We walked there. We found a soup kitchen, a clothing depot, women were caring for children so their parents could do necessary things, like find housing, figure out what to do since the bank had been washed away. We were enfolded, by people who lived their faith, by being both God’s arms and heart. A caring community of faith in action.

Four days into this ordeal we were reunited with my Father. I can still feel my arms around his boney knees as held my Mother and sister.

When you are poor, you stand in line. You wait your turn as you pray for help. One day we were waiting in a line when a woman came into the social hall of the church. She was holding a roasting pan. She surveyed the line. She smiled and walked towards my mother. “You will need this for Thanksgiving.” She handed my mother the pan and walked away.

That pan came to symbolize hope that our lives would be better. That pan was on our Thanksgiving table every year from that moment forward. When I bought my first house my mother gave me the pan and said. “Use it well.” And I have.

Community can be a congregation uniting to respond to a situation where there is need or one person helping another. I know that my life was changed by both. I also know that I will always be thankful. I do not know the names of those people who helped us in the basement of the church nor do I know the name of the woman who gave us the roasting pan. I just know every Thanksgiving when I make my stuffing in that pan, I say a prayer for the hands and hearts that helped.

The Rev. Denise Tracy

Our first guest blogger this year is Ken Hillman. Ken is a New Yorker where he attended Hebrew School at Bnai Jeshuran. A graduate of Williams College, he has done a lot of thinking about community in terms of theater, friendship, social media, networking. Currently he serves on the Education Committee at Congregation Kneseth Israel where his son became Bar Mitzvah. He also enjoys singing in the choir.

The idea of a synagogue as community is as old as the concept of the synagogue itself. In Jewish communities around the world the place of worship was the one place where all Jews could go for not only the religious aspects but also as a sense of community and gathering. The problem with this model is that it has not translated well into the modern Diaspora, particularly in those areas where the Jewish community is spread out.

It is more than just the over-busy lives of the members of the Jewish community (practices and activities during the week and games on the weekend) and the distance needed to drive to the synagogue but it is more the modern model of the Jewish community that has not kept up.

Modern Jews do not automatically look to their synagogue as an epicenter of community and identify primarily as Jews or even as Jews at all. One could say as an institution, the synagogue has not kept up with modern times as well as others. Perhaps we should look to institutions that have done a better job of modernizing to help us.

One institution that has done a phenomenal job keeping up with the times is the bank. The bank used to be the financial center of a community, you would need to travel to a branch to deposit or withdraw money and with every transaction you would be forced to interact personally with a teller or banker. In today’s society with credit cards, ATM machines and Internet payment it would’ve been easy for the bank to lose its place as the epicenter of the community. Instead, the bank has taught us how to use it without ever going in the building or seeing a teller.

An analogy bridging these two institutions came to me early in my life from one of my Hebrew School teachers. In referring to doing our homework she would remind us constantly that it was like a bank: if you needed to make a withdrawal (skip an assignment occasionally) you needed to make sure that you had made enough deposits (a track record of handing in your assignments on time).

This concept of making enough deposits and keeping up with modernity could be a key to helping the synagogue reestablish itself as a center of community in the modern Diaspora. We may want to start to move away from the traditional metrics of attendance and towards a new metric of involvement. If we can help our congregations understand how they can make deposits both spiritually and in terms of Tikkun Olam, we will be more likely to turn to the synagogue when we need to make a withdrawal. This dynamic of give and take in modern society could help the synagogue learn from the bank in terms of the value of what we can put in as well as the value of what we can expect to take out. In doing so we may reestablish the synagogue as an epicenter of our modern Jewish community.

Ken Hillman

This summer I spent time reading two books: Spiritual Community, the Power to Restore Hope, Commitment and Joy by Rabbi David Teutsch and The Spirituality of Welcoming How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community by Ron Wolfson.

Both books try to answer the question, what is community. I think we know it when we see it. I think we intuitively know why we want to join a community.

Teutsch says that “when communities are functioning well, they take care of their members.”

What people seem to really want is to be in communion with others. To know that they are loved and that others care. So that when there is a tragedy, or a loss, or an illness, friends show up and they know they are not alone. At any given time in our synagogue about 30% of the congregation are going through one of the top five stressors—a medical issue, a job loss, a death of a spouse, parent or child, a divorce, a move. People need the strength of community to navigate these waters and not feel isolated.

People also want community when they have joys to share—a birth of a child or grandchild, a promotion, a wedding, an anniversary or just the little moments day by day by day. I learned an important lesson one year. My soon-to-be-husband and I had just gotten engaged. We yearned to share our excitement. We went to tell our good friends, Alyn and Nancy. Nancy was busy digging in the yard, putting in fall mums. She didn’t miss a beat or get up from her post when she commanded, “Alyn, go get the champagne.” From that I learned you should always have a bottle in your refrigerator, for the big moments and the little ones. And that it is important to celebrate with community.

Teutsch ways, “Underlying the drive for community are several disparate yet complementary desires. Some people are looking for close friends; others hope to find a permanent companion to love and share life with. Some come to community to overcome loneliness; others come for a shared cultural, social or spiritual life; still others are seeking support. Some come knowing they have much to give.”

But the key—and he says it so well—is that “community transforms everyone, often in unexpected ways. Teachers become students; students turn into teachers. Those poised to give of themselves often find they derive more community membership than they give.”

Today was the Congregation Kneseth Israel Community picnic. It was billed as a Welcome Back Celebration just before school starts. A chance to meet the new education director. To see friends. To have fun. To get outdoors. To eat a hot dog (or two). To showcase the congregation. To come together as a community. To build community. And while two new members joined, it is because we are adopting a model similar to Teutsch–and it is working. We are building community—and so much more.

Tonight we usher in Shabbat. In my congregation it will be a festive evening with much singing, good food, good friends and good conversation. It will also be Rosh Hodesh Elul. In 30 days it will be Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the new year. In 40 days it will be Yom Kippur. This is an auspicious time. A time of reflection. A time of preparation.

For the past several years, I have given over this blog to members of my wider, virtual community and members of Congregation Kneseth Israel to reflect on a topic. This year’s Elul topic, a way to help us all prepare to think about the themes of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is community. So I invite you to think deeply about what community means to you.

Last week, I was part of a different community. I led Kabbalat Shabbat services surrounded by unsurpassed beauty, ringed by volcanoes, a couple of lightening bolts and in a circle of new friends—14 rabbis and staff people part of the American Jewish World Service Global Justice Fellowship. The singing and the davenning seemed to be out of this world.

The experience gave me the opportunity to reflect on community. This experience was a little like Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years. Or because of the beauty, the colors, the flowers, the birds, the fragrance, it seemed a little like landing in Paradise, Pardes, Gan Eden. Could this place, this community be real? Could we make it last?

The answer is yes. But it is complicated. Some of it depends on the intentionality of the community. This community was intentional from day one of being chosen as a Global Justice Fellow..

My Shabbat experience was amazing. From the beauty of Kabbalat Shabbat outside, to the ruach (spirit) of singing and Birkat Hamazon at dinner, to the ability to sleep late on Shabbat morning, to the guided walking meditation, to the davenning and Torah study, to a leisurely Shabbat lunch, a hike, a swim, falling asleep reading a book to Havdalah. It was a full day, a day of “vayinafash” and G-d rested which is the spirit in which Shabbat was intended.

Each of these experiences enriched my soul. Since we created these experience with each one of us taking a part, what we created along the way was community. It worked because after nearly a week bouncing on a bus and learning to rely on each other for translation, for snacks, for water, for hugs and smiles and encouragement, we had learned to trust each other.

So thank you to my colleagues now friends of the Global Justice Fellowship. Together we created community. Thank you! Todah. Gracias.

• To Jill and Marc who coordinated the whole 25 hours with such skill and grace and compassion
• To Nancy, who led the guided walking meditation which allowed me to go deeper and to think about blessing myself, not just others with peace, justice and compassion.
• To Laurence who led a traditional Ma’ariv, just like we might experience at home.
• To Stacy who led an Ilu Finu which was so beautiful, especially at the shore of Lake Atilan. It is really hard to imagine how we could ever praise G-d as much as the waves, as the song suggests.
• To David who taught about our circumcised hearts, and to Ruth to added to the d’var Torah and gave us text to use next week in a context of AJWS and Guatemala
• To Pam who lead chanting, allowing our minds to rest and our neshomas (soul) to fly
• To Faith Joy who led the singing and did the Torah leining with such joy and spirit
• To Eliot who made sure there was a mikveh experience and led the misheberach allowing each of us to pray for healing for ourselves or members of our families or communities.
• To Adina and Lilach, who led havdalah and called attention to how each of us used each of our senses during the 25 hours, creating memories along the way. I will remember the sound of the thunder and the canyons, the fragrance of the flowers and the woods, the range of the colors and the sight of the candles, the taste of my tostadas and the flan, the feel of being relaxed enough to just fall asleep in a beach chair.
• To Marla who decided that she didn’t want to lead, that she really wanted to rest and just experience, but all along the way encouraged those of us leading. It was an important role model for all of us.

Together, we created community and Shabbat.

For the next 40 days I invite you to reflect. What is community to you? How does it happen? Where? What makes it meaningful? What do you want from a community.

I went to Guatemala not quite knowing what to expect. Delighted to have been chosen as a Rabbinic Global Justice Fellow, by American Jewish World Service, I was one of 11 rabbis to complete a two year program. But this was a commencement and not a graduation, a celebration of our accomplishments and not a finale.

Why go all the way to Guatemala to learn about the needs for tikkun olam, repairing the world? Aren’t there enough things to do in Elgin? Certainly. But having a global perspective is like the quote from Hillel. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

It turns out this August was a very good time to go to Guatemala. The elections in Guatemala are happening September 6^th and there was much discussion of the elections in every meeting we had. In every encounter on the street. Even sitting on the plane on the way back to Miami. So if not now, when?

It turns out that Guatemala with its Mayan roots, is deeply spiritual. This trip was highly spiritual—from the texts we studied in chevruta and the very Jewish connections we made with the NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) we were visiting. Whether it was the story of Shifrah and Puah we told to Codecut, an association that trains midwives, or Rebecca assenting to her marriage to Isaac which we told to an NGO that works of women’s right to education, or Abraham’s purchase of the land and the subsequent struggle for it, which I told to CCDA, a coffee collective, this trip had a very Jewish feel. Perhaps David, a Conservative Rabbi in Boca Raton said it best, “This is the way we live out our Jewishness.” And it is important to remember we were not looking AT the people of Guatemala, we were looking with the people of Guatemala. So I return with Spanish language sex ed materials for the Community Crisis Center, thoughts about farming corn since as I always joke, we live in the middle of a corn field, and curiosity about that plant on Route 20 in Hanover Park. Does anyone know what is going on in that plant that processes bananas including those from Guatemala? So there are lots of local connections.

It turns out that Shabbat in Guatemala at Lake Atilan is gorgeous. Kabbalat Shabbat outside with a backdrop of volcanoes with a little bit of lightening over the mountains. A vegetarian Shabbat dinner and lots of singing, a guided walking meditation in a rose garden, enough time to really enjoy davenning, great Torah discussion, shared leadership so we all participated but no one was burdened, leisurely lunch and a late afternoon hike over narrow swinging bridges and a swim in an infinity pool. The flowers. The colors. The birds. The butterflies. The lake. It was perfect. But one of those roses, William Shakespear by name, was planted in 1983 at the height of the violence. How was that possible? What were the innkeepers doing (or not)? What are they doing now? Is this a sanctuary, a refuge or just another example of privilege? I never could decide, but I am grateful for my Shabbat of rest and healing. Ours is not to finish the task, so says Pirke Avot, neither are we free to ignore it.

So if I am only for myself, what am I and if not now when?

It turns out that the fellowship was designed to teach Jewish leaders, rabbis, to be better leaders. It is professional development. And through the course of the week, as we learned frameworks for education, we got more adept as leaders. We learned how to present our story of self to be engaging and to connect with the story of us and the story of now. We learned about upstream/downstream, while on a boat. We learned not to make assumptions with our observations and instead to ask more questions. We learned about moral courage. All of these models were good for the work I do right here in Elgin, building the community at the synagogue and coalitions in the wider world.

Guatemala is a beautiful country. It is a land flowing with coffee and honey, corn and bananas. It is a land that has been fought over for generations. It is a land where it is hard to reconcile the beauty with the brokenness. It is a microcosm of the world and our task as Jews is to walk with the people of Guatemala, to help them achieve what they want for themselves…a reduction of violence, education, health care, nutrition, basic human rights.

9 days and a lifetime. There are many more stories to tell. I thought that once I went to Guatemala my fellowship would be over. In fact, it has just begun.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?