Summer Sparks

There is a lot going on in our small but mighty kehilah this summer.

Throughout the month of Tammuz (June 30-July 29, 2022), the KSS Shmita Hive has been engaged in a collective creative practice and meditation to help us gather strength in the final months of this shmita cycle. Norah Zuniga Shaw (artist, teacher, writer, and creative director) joined me in my roles as art educator, Jewish farmer, and Jewish lay leader to create space for participants to experience her practice of “leaving a trace.” Norah used traces gathered from a group of friends around the world during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic as material for her visual and sonic poem recently presented at the Wexner. You can watch it here: Upwelling. Our Shmita Diaries project has been a rich experience. We hope to share some of what we shared with one another more broadly this fall.

At one point, Joanie Calem shared a scene from her backyard with the caption, “Fireflies are the flickering promises of hope that there will always be some light.” This idea lies at the heart of tikkun olam, our ongoing attempts to find and release divine sparks scattered throughout the material world through mitzvot and acts of loving kindness. And it relates to the second summer project I want to recognize today.

This newsletter comes during a time of mourning in the Jewish calendar known as The Three Weeks. The Three Weeks begins on Tammuz 17 (7/16/22), the day that Moses broke the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were engraved in response to the Israelites creation of the Golden Calf. It ends on Av 9, also known as Tisha b’Av (8/6/22), the date when both the First and Second temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. Much more has been written about the bad luck encountered by Jews over many centuries at this time of year. I’ll leave it to you to look that up if you so desire.

Today I want to focus on the Three Weeks as yet another time for us to remember, and to reengage with, the flip side of all this tragedy – light in the darkness. I’m sure I have quoted Robin Wall Kimmerer (mother, scientist, author, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation) before and will again; she’s one of my favorite “rabbis.” In a recent interview on Krista Tippet’s On Being, she said:

“We can’t have an awareness of the beauty of the world without also a tremendous awareness of the wounds.”  

And so it seems right that our kehilah chose this time to help welcome a refugee family from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Columbus*. Working locally with US Together and in cooperation nationally with HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)** we are supporting a mother, father, and five children (ages 5-15) as they make their way from temporary shelter in a refugee camp in Uganda into a new life in the United States. While many of us are disheartened by the overall direction our country seems to be going, in comparison to what this family has left behind, we are relatively safe, free, and living in abundance. As we learn more about the hardships they left behind, we are met again with the horrible reality faced by so many of our fellow earthlings.

And as our welcome team went through training and are starting to work through task lists, we are learning how hard it is to help just one family. We acknowledge and mourn those we can not help. And as we do so, we are becoming more attuned to the blessings in our lives – that we rarely question that our basic needs will be met, that we live in safe neighborhoods where our children can attend school, were we play in parks, walk our dogs, visit libraries, hear live music, and so much more.

A hearty yasher koach (Thank you for the strength you have shown through good work!) to Paul Eisenstein for leading the resettlement team. Paul sent me the following note Sunday. It is a heartwarming reminder of how you get so much when you give of yourself.

“The welcoming committee work has been demanding.  Completely, unbelievably incredible, but also exhausting and time-intensive.  You should have seen the scene in Whetstone Park today:  The parents were filming their kids on the swings while Joanie and I were pushing them.  Kids were laughing.  Amy showed up with Leo and Sophie who played frisbee and kicked the soccer ball with them. Amy brought bubbles for youngest to blow.  She brought a whole watermelon and cut it.  It got devoured.  I played Congolese music on Spotify for the parents, and they were singing along with the lyrics, moving to the music, smiling.  It was all pretty cool.”

Thanks also to Joanie Calem and Maureen Zorndorf for being Paul’s right and left hands on the welcoming committee, and to everyone else revving up to lend support on the housing, health and benefits, finance, employment, education, and cultural orientation teams.

Finally, It’s not too late to join the effort. Email peisenstein8@gmail.com to learn how. And click here to make a donation towards this effort.

Jodi Kushins
KSS Board Chair

* To learn more about the growing Congolese refugee community in Columbus, click here.
** To learn more about the HIAS Community Catalyst program, click here.