I am writing this column at the end of a very long Sunday. This morning our Hebrew School marked Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy and engaged in a series of projects to make the world a better place. The students shared their dreams and prepared gifts for those in need. It was a perfect way to celebrate this day in a very Jewish way.
The day continued with the second session of our new teen program that brought together 17 teenagers from Temple Emanuel, Congregation Mishkan Israel (Hamden) and Temple Beth David (Cheshire). The program is dedicated to exploring the issues of Social Justice with our teens, and one of the important elements of the program is the residential weekend in Washington, D.C., the ‘L’taken’ seminar organized by the Religious Action Center (RAC) of our movement, that we will attend in March. This Sunday, in honor of MLK Jr., we wanted to engage our students in both learning and action, allowing them to experience first-hand the opportunity to engage with the world’s problems, and to heal the world in a small measure with the work of our hands.
After a few ice breaker games, allowing the teens to get to know each other a little, Rabbi Brockman spent some time teaching about the ancient biblical laws of ‘peah,’ that required the farmer to leave the corners of the field unharvested, thus allowing the stranger and the widow and the orphans – the unprotected within the ancient society – to have access to food required for basic survival. In the following session, I asked the students to come up with the dinner menu for a family of four, create a shopping list and then price out the dinner. The four teams came back with $18.50, $21, $25 and $63 meals (the last one clearly sounded like a gourmet dinner!) You can imagine their reaction when I shared the SNAP (formerly food stamps) numbers with them: a family of four has a maximum of $17.73 per day to spend on food… A wonderfully sobering discussion ensued, one that helped us frame in very Jewish terms what we were going to do for the rest of the day.
With the help of Harvey Cheskis, a leader of the group ‘Life is Delicious’ from Congregation Mishkan Israel, our TE kitchen and social hall were transformed into a buzzing, pulsating ‘cooking central.’ Within a few hours, the teens had fully prepared from scratch a meal for nearly 120 homeless men. There was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, salad, fresh fruit salad and sponge cake. While the food was in the oven, we watched a recent documentary “A Place at the Table’ that discussed the realities of hunger and food insecurity in our country. Listening to the students discuss the film with Rabbi Whinston was one of the highlights of the day; they were not afraid to probe the issues, to raise their concerns and to listen to each other. They were truly engaging with the challenges of the world, making their teachers and their rabbis beam with pride…
The long day ended at an overflow shelter of Columbus House, a sobering room filled with over 100 homeless men who were yearning for some homemade food and a kind smile at the end of a very cold day… The students helped serve about 120 meals and then were cheered and applauded, quite appropriately, by a room full of strangers who appreciated their kindness. They did a great deed that day, but they gained far more than they shared.
I could think of no better way to spend the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, than to be able to go on such a journey of learning and service with a group of phenomenal Jewish teens.