It’s easy to learn from the people we like. What about the people that we find more challenging? It is a spiritual practice to do as the quote above proposes to us. It is hard to do such a practice consistently. But sometimes I learn something about myself. Why are my buttons being pressed? Sometimes, if I open myself to listening with greater compassion and less judgment, I come to know something about a person that underlies the behaviors that I find challenging. My heart opens a little more.
There is a concept in Jewish thought – tikkun. You may be familiar with the phrase tikkun olam, which is often mistranslated as ‘social justice.’ Indeed, social justice is one way of acting in the world that brings about tikkun, but the word means much more. It is literally a ‘repair’ – to repair the world. To fix, or repair can happen on many levels. When I hear someone more deeply and a challenging relationship is turned into something more understanding and more loving, that is a tikkun.
When I think back to interactions in my life that have been transformed in this way, I recognize that these moments have contained within them some of the most profound teachings in my life.
Lorrie Wexler is a member of Congregation B’nai Israel and serves on our board. Active on our Social Action Committee, Lorrie was responsible for all coordination of our service trip to Alabama, corresponding with Bob Gross, our wonderful point person at Temple Emanu-el in Birmingham, booking our flights, and bringing us all together. We leave the final words on our week’s experiences to her.
When Rabbi Gurevitz asked me to write the last piece for the blog, I immediately felt a sense of pride. To think this all began with an email sent to Rabbi Prosnit from Rabbi Miller from Temple Emanu-el in Birmingham, Alabama asking for help with the tornado relief. Three months later we had 12 remarkable people volunteer to help a community in need, just because.
We arrived in historical Birmingham on Monday and by Tuesday afternoon we were in a town called Cordova diving into the work that needed to be done. Cordova became our community that week and we became theirs. Just by being there gave the people who had lost everything a feeling of hope. It was an eye opener for us to learn about their faith, their way of life and delicious culinary delights like vegetable goulash, fried green tomatoes and fried okra.
The church in Cordova was a central location for volunteers to find tools to rebuild homes, eat lunch and dinner, choose furniture and every household item imaginable. These were all donated items.
Suzanne Phillip, George Markley, Lorrie Wexler and Elaine Chetrit outside house no. 1
One afternoon we were fortunate to have the family whose house we were working on stop by. The look on their faces was pure joy.
They never imagined that this house could even be salvaged, let alone turned into this wonderful home that would enable them the opportunity to rebuild their lives. Through our hard work we turned their house into something that was warm and inviting. We schlepped furniture, primed walls, planted trees, put a brick walkway in, hung shutters and stocked their kitchen.
Rabbi Gurevitz, Ari Matz, Emma Pearlstone and Brittany O’Connell outside House no. 2
The social action committee would like to thank Margo Schiff, Lisa Knicos, George Markley, Suzanne Phillip, Steven Soberman, Andrew Soberman, Elaine Chetrit, Brittany O’Connell, Ari Matz, Emma Pearlstone and Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz.
Andrew having way too much fun on a tractor
This wonderful group of people volunteered their time and their own money to make this happen. We worked hard together, sweated together, laughed together and cried together. What a truly gifted community of people to share the week with. Lorrie Wexler
Below is some video footage that shows the devastation caused by the tornado in Cordova in the immediate aftermath – while most of the debris had been cleared by the time we arrived, the scale of the destruction gives some sense of what it means to rebuild this community:
Today’s blog entry from our social action volunteers in Alabama is written by our three teen participants, Ari Matz, Brittany O’Connell, and Emma Pearlstone
Beginning to take down and recycle cinder blocks, one by one
Hello from the jew crew in Cordova, Alabama! Helping in the relief efforts continues to be an exciting adventure for all of us. Being the energetic youth of our group, Ari, Emma, and Brittany were able to help. We spent today tediously chiseling cinder blocks off a partially demolished garage. In order to recycle the blocks for another house, we had to individually remove all of the cement from the edges of the blocks. On prior days of working we were in the midst of cleaning and organizing the equipment in the house when we stumbled upon some bullets, a few of which were loaded and also a bunch of casings. Emma wanted to take them home with her to Connecticut, but since she was taking only carry on and no one would carry it for her, she and the explosives were forced part ways. Later that day a kind man came to the Cordova church to donate 75 watermelons from his farm, since we take our time eating lunch we were there to help volunteer unloading these watermelons. While unloading Emma soon became distracted once again and was found in the midst of playing with a small grey kitten she had found! The kitten was a stray, was very hungry, and wanted love. Happily Emma was there to supply it! Resulting in instead of carrying watermelons she played with her new cat, named Watermelon.
Brittany and the Watermelons
Emma and Watermelon
On our way home from a long day’s work, we listened to our complimentary Sirius Radio. In our quest to find the perfect station, we came across Gospel Music. Stunned by its presence, we immediately broke down into laughter and song. We soon realized the role of religion in Southern society.
Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant, with blessings for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews on the silverware wrapper – an indication of the role of faith in Birmingham, AL
One of the greatest parts of this trip was the van rented from Alamo. We had rented a new navy blue Town & Country, and it was “Like driving a boat”. This giant car was also capable of the amazing powers of the stow and go, allowing the passengers to fold down all seats resulting in a giant flat space that we had come to dedicate for loading materials, taking naps, and having dance parties. When “stowed and go-ed” the passengers had to ride in an alternative vehicle resulting in us riding in the hitched trailer full of cinder blocks.
Transporting the bricks… and a few teens too
At the end of the day we were able to gain a new perspective on the people around us, and the good grace that has fallen upon us in our own lives. By the end of the week we managed to help brighten a victim’s outlook, and build many great memories along the way.
This morning we all traveled back to the town of Cordova, Alabama, a town some forty-five miles away from our base in Birmingham. The second team has been working on a house that is part of a program called Flipping for Families. While “flipping houses” often connotes trying to rehab houses for profit, here in Cordova the purpose is to rehab old houses and make them livable for families displaced by the tornadoes. When our work coordinator, Andrea, inquired yesterday morning as to who in our group was interested in “staging” a house, hands immediately went up, led by our trip coordinator Lorrie Wexler. She was soon joined by Elaine Chetrit, Suzanne Phillip, and George Markley who, despite his lack of decorating skills, saw benefits to working with three of the women in the group. The house to which we were assigned had been abandoned many years before the tornadoes. Andrea had managed to secure the house by promising its owner that it would be rehabbed provided he would allow the house to be occupied for a year rent-free.
Yesterday Team 2 promptly went off to their house on Johnson Drive, having been told that the house was ready for its occupants to move in except for some decorating. When we got to the house, we soon discovered that, while the house was barely structurally sound (for example, our bathroom has a gaping hole in the floor through which you can see daylight), it hardly was ready for its occupants to move in. It still lacks a stove, a kitchen sink, a toilet, doors on the closet, running water or electricity. We soon learned that the goal of disaster recovery is to get the tornado victims back into homes even if the conditions are sub-optimal. So, we got to work doing our cleaning – washing the walls, sweeping the floors, cleaning the refrigerator, and so on.
You want this where?
Once the house was cleaned, we began “shopping” for furnishings for the house in a garage and parsonage that are no longer being use to house cars or a minister. Instead they are filled with donated items from communities throughout the state. We soon were laying claim to dressers, tables, mattresses and an assortment of “tchotchkes” that we then transported to our house. Today was spent washing windows and placing the furniture. We broke for lunch, served at the church, which was expertly prepared by several of the volunteers, including our own Margo Schiff and several members of the Reform congregation in Morristown, New Jersey. In the afternoon, Margo joined the group at our house, and we all continued cleaning and putting bedding in the house.
Emma, Ari and Brittany resting up after furniture shlepping
By the time the group was done today, the house was fully furnished , even to the extent of having a dining table complete with placemats and place settings for the mother and her 17-year old daughter who lost their home on April 27th and will be moving into this new “B’nai Israel house.”
George Markley, Elaine Chetrit, Suzanne Phillip, Lorrie Wexler, and Margo Schiff
Yesterday afternoon a team of 12 congregants from Congregation B’nai Israel, Bridgeport, CT, arrived in Birmingham, AL, for a week of volunteering in areas devastated by tornadoes, earlier this year. We had a little time late yesterday afternoon to get our bearings and visit part of the Downtown area. We took in the district near the Civil Rights Institute where a Civil Rights Heritage Trail walks visitors through the events that took place on these streets in 1963. The trail was erected in 2010 and consists of life-size original photographs of events on these streets and a brief description of the unfolding of these events. At Kelly Ingram Park, additional sculptures continue to send a message of the lessons learned from that era in Alabama’s history.
Sign held by child protestor reads ‘Can a man love God and hate his brother?’
Plaque next to a young Horse Chestnut Tree in the Park
Sculpture of Water Canon aimed at children during peaceful civil rights protests in 1963
The images and sculptures were striking and impactful. Striking and impactful are likely to be the two most relevant words to describe our experiences on this service trip to Alabama. This morning, we first checked in with the Christian Service Mission warehouse that coordinates volunteer efforts. This warehouse, which is the size of a Walmart, has been filled and emptied 30 times over since the tornadoes struck, distributing food, clothing, and supplies of all kinds to those in need.
Our group were soon dispatched to the town of Cordova, 40 minutes from downtown Birmingham to connect with a grassroots group of volunteers based in a Baptist church who have been working hard to revive their community and rebuild some of the 70 homes that were lost in the storms. Some images from the town are shown below. At this point, several months on, we no longer see much of the debris that was strewn everywhere, but the clean-up and rebuilding work is going to take several years.
The remains of the Main St in Cordova
The bank vault is all that is left of the Bank in town.
We met Andrea, a one-woman powerhouse – an Attorney by profession – who is almost singlehandedly coordinating the volunteer effort in Cordova. She told us what had happened when two tornadoes ran through the town in the same day. The first had caused relatively minor damage, but it took out power and the warning systems which is why, when the second one came through in the afternoon, so many people were caught off-guard. Her volunteer organization has been helping individuals rebuild but is also taking abandoned homes and flipping them to make them ready for new residents, rent-free for the first year to help rebuild the community in the town. Our team divided into two groups – one to work on a home that was almost ready, to clean up and start organizing some furnishings, and the other to do dry-walling work. I was with the latter team, with Lisa Knicos, Steve and Andrew Soberman, and the three teens on our trip – Brittany O’Connell, Ari Matz, and Emma Pearlstone.
Framing a closet wall for dry wall
An interesting find during house clean-up
One of our teams – all smiles at the end of day 1
I think that one of the big lessons of day 1 was humility; recognizing how small our contribution is, visiting for just a week, compared to those who are dedicating months and months to rebuilding their communities and their homes. Recognizing the limits of our skills as we seek to do things that help and do not hinder the work efforts (an amusing moment this morning, as our coordinator sought to find out what house-building skills we had brought with us was that moment of silence in which many of our group were silently thinking to ourselves, ‘We’re Jews! We know who to call!’).
Another big lesson, and one that generated interesting conversations among our group in private moments, was the enormous role of faith among the local people working to rebuild; not only to give them the strength to do the exhausting work that they are doing, day in and day out, but also to make sense and meaning out of the events that befell them. While we may not share the same theology, we recognize that when they speak of us all being God’s hands and doing God’s work, we might understand the God-spark in each of us being that which inspires us to do good, or we might understand ourselves to be God’s partner in the pursuit of tikkun olam (repair of the world). While we may express our faith in different language, we are inspired by the power of faith to sustain these communities through some of the most difficult times of their lives. Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
