Catching up on some blogging with things I have already written. This applies everywhere!
Turn on the cable news
channel of your choice. Fox, CNN, MSNBC, InfoWars, it doesn’t matter. Within a
few minutes – at most an hour – a commentator will likely say that “Someone should…”
Hang out at a sporting event. Could be kids playing little league, a minor league game or a showdown between the Yankees and the Red Sox, it doesn’t matter. Someone in range of your hearing – talking about almost any topic – will eventually say “Someone should…”
We hear it all the time.
Many of us say it ourselves once in a while. When we see something that could
be done better, or maybe something we think should be done that isn’t, we think
and sometimes say “Someone should…”
You have been hearing or
reading me talk about Jewish values a lot over the past twenty-six and three
quarters years. We built our new curriculum around the idea that Jewish values
are what make being Jewish valuable. They give meaning and structure to our Jewish
identity and give us roots and wings.
Today’s Jewish value is
Achrayut – responsibility. The Hebrew comes from the root letters
Alef, Chet, Resh. Put them together and you get Acher – which means “other.” So
one way to think about responsibility is that it can be the duty to think about
and act toward people and events that are beyond your own immediate needs. Kehilah – community – happens because we
all see that we have a shared achrayut or
responsibility to take care of one another.
Kehilah – and now I am
talking about youth education at our congregation – only works when adults actually
do something, rather than saying that “someone should…” In the coming months,
you will be invited to participate in ways you may not have done before. We
already need more substitute teachers. (Call me!) We will likely need a few new
teachers in the fall.
The Kehilah Vision Team,
which works with the Director of Education to imagine the future, make policies
and respond to new needs will need members. The Community Building Team, which
organizes special events and the room parents (who work to build relationships
between the parents in each class) will need people to fill those roles and do
those tasks,
“Someone should” is easy
to say. We spend a lot of time in Kehilah building up our kids and helping to
feel like they are really someone. For Kehilah to be successful, we need all of
our adults to demonstrate achrayut for
our kids. We need you to say “I will” instead of “Someone should.”
L’shalom,
Ira
