The next guest commentator is a dear, dear friend. She is an anthropologist and an MSW. At one point she was my boss, but never bossy. We are deeply, deeply connected, having raised kids at the same time and having lived in close proxiemity. Now, a thousand miles apart we are still deeply connected: 

When we think of community, we usually think of a neighborhood, a defined area. For example, community centers are physical brick and mortar spaces for neighborhood activities. However, for me, community has many more definitions. Community is about identity, about people united by their culture, engaging in cultural maintenance and passing down a legacy and a history. Examples include religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. At the same time, community can have a broader meaning, when people of diverse backgrounds and identities come together to accomplish something that is mutually important to them. Community can also refer to members of relatively small, self-enclosed spaces, such as apartment buildings, nursing homes, convents, or shops in a mall. Regardless of their size or type, communities are about people with something in common that they all value. For me, that is the key. 

I view Judaism as a series of multiple, nested communities – individual synagogues, regions of origin (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Bene Israel, etc.), city/national identity. We are members of multiple communities, and have loyalties to each. However, the richness of these multiple communities is often reduced to a single identity – being a Jew. That sells us short, both as individuals and as a group. We have so much to draw on, so many communities that have formed us. When people ask us who we are, let us celebrate all our communities. 

Beryl Rosenthal