I will admit that I was slow moving getting out of the house on Monday morning. It was a federal holiday after a challenging work week. I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in having difficulty getting to sleep on Sunday after the adrenaline rush of that amazing Patriots overtime. And my driveway needed to be shoveled.
But while some of us here were deeply focused on our Council meeting last week, much of our staff had been hard at work planning our fourth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and I wasn’t going to miss that. So at 9am, I happily joined a team of volunteers – mostly parents with teens – at the Haitian Church of the Nazarene in Waltham to help refurbish and revitalize their space. 43 volunteers painted and helped with other much-needed repairs to several areas of the church, which is preparing for its Annual Celebration on January 27th. And then I went to Temple Beth Am in Framingham, where 120 teens and adults had gathered to bake lasagnas and banana bread for soup kitchens in the MetroWest area that are supported by our partners at Jewish Family Service (JFS).
Before these teens – many of whom do service on other service initiatives through Jewish Teen Initiative and JCRC’s TELEM program – began their work, they gathered around for an overview of poverty and food insecurity issues, and to frame the day through the prism of Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof, or Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue – the familiar (to many of us) words from the Torah that call and inspire us to action.
Over the course of a bitterly cold day, over 300 volunteers joined JCRC at 10 project sites around greater Boston. Families sorted through donations of clothing and toys in the Cradles to Crayons Giving Factory— enough to help 210 low-income and homeless children. Volunteers and Hebrew Senior Life residents wrote 24 letters to Congress in an effort to keep the Temporary Protected Status program alive (TPS is a designation for people who could not return safely to their countries). We did refurbishment work at a public school in the South End and, in partnership with Rebuilding Together Boston, helped make repairs to homes in Mattapan and Dorchester that will make it easier for senior citizens to age in place in the communities where they’ve lived for many decades.
One important part of JCRC’s work is responding to Rabbi Hillel’s charge: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But Monday, and every day of our program year, JCRC places service at the center of our work in response to Hillel’s second question: “If I am only for myself, who am I?”
And if our enduring commitment to service is our way of connecting Boston’s Jewish community to the broader civic space as partners, then Monday was also a day for embracing the teaching of the Rev. Dr. King, who, in part echoing the words of Hillel, challenged us: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
When I came home Monday evening, I was re-energized from our “day on.” Renewed in my enthusiasm for a JCRC that responds to all aspects of the teachings of Hillel, including his third question, a charge to urgency: “If not now, when?”
Those are the words that get me going this – and every – morning, in service to our values and the common good.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jeremy
