How I Met Ruth

When I spent the night with Ruth, I didn’t even know what her last name was.  I didn’t know how old she was, or whether she’d had children, or what her line of work had been.

I met Ruth at a funeral home in Metairie.  It was raining and cold when I slid out of the cab, slammed the door shut behind me, and ran with bent head toward the back entrance of the funeral home.  I punched in the code and pushed my way in through the unassuming white door.  A woman named Sandy from the local Conservative synagogue was there to greet me and show me the way to Ruth, the deceased woman with whom I would be spending the night–I on the couch, she in a plain wooden coffin.

I’d responded to the email I’d received about a request from “the local Chevra Kadisha–or burial society…for people to sit with the body of a recently deceased community member.”   The Chevra Kadisha is a group of Jews who see to it that the deceased in their community are properly attended to between death and burial.  They are responsible for the ritual cleansing and dressing of the body before burial, and also for providing “shomrim” to watch over the body.  The work of the Chevra Kadisha is considered a “chesed shel emet,” or a “good deed of truth.”  It is a unique good deed because the deceased has no way of returning the favor.  Somebody who takes part in a Chevra Kadisha cannot have ulterior motives to the work that she or he does, because there is no possible way of getting anything in return.  I was looking forward to having some part in all of this, and also for experiencing what it would be like to spend the night alone in a room with a deceased woman. I called Sandy to let her know that I would be willing to be a “shomer” (literally “guard,” but in this case, somebody who sits with the body–or, as one of my housemates put it, “bodysitter”).

When I arrived, Sandy showed me around, pointing out the telephones, the coffee pot, the couch where I would be spending the night.  There was a book of psalms on the table (it’s customary to read to the body from the Book of Psalms), a coffin in the middle of the room.  “Call me if you need anything,” said Sandy.  “Call if you get scared.”  And she was gone.

I sat down on the couch.  I picked up the Book of Psalms.  I looked at Ruth, lying–laying?–in her coffin, covered by a blue cloth velvety-looking blanket with a Hebrew phrase on it, the meaning of which I failed to make out.

After a few moments, it occurs to me that I’m not scared, and I am slightly surprised by this realization.  I like Ruth.  I don’t know anything about her, other than that her name is Ruth and she’s dead and she’s in a coffin under this blue blanket.  Sandy told me that she would send me Ruth’s obituary in the mail, so that I’ll know who I sat with, but for the time being, she could be anybody.

With.  Sat with, and not for.  That’s how I’m feeling about all this.  It feels like the two of us are keeping each other company–it feels mutual.  I don’t feel like I’m doing anybody a favor, or watching over anybody.  I feel like I’m hanging out with an old friend.

This place is so big and empty, I’m glad I’m sitting with Ruth.  When I left the room that Ruth and I are sharing (it’s almost like we’re roommates), I felt lonely, the tiniest bit frightened.  I missed her presence, I guess.  Her presence is still and calming.  I wonder what her life was like, how she was in life.  It hardly matters now, and somehow, that’s soothing.  It’s soothing to think that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I do or whether I fail or succeed or how tired I make myself, in the end up I will end up like Ruth, beneath a blue blanket, in the presence of a girl and a book of psalms.
I’m grateful that Ruth is here with me.

Indeed, I think it’s striking how much Jewish rituals around death and dying are put in place for the mourners and those of us who remain here on earth, rather than for the deceased.  Sitting shiva, saying kadish, and even being a shomer–all of these rituals are, in one way or another, a way for the living to cope with and reflect upon death and dying.

A few days after my “bodysitting” experience, I received Ruth’s obituary in the mail.  I found out that she was the mother of four, the grandmother of twelve, and even the great-grandmother of nine!  She was influential in shaping early childhood education in New Orleans.  She was a dancer, a successful spelling bee participant, and an art docent.  She was a social worker, a sculptor, a teacher, a friend.

And we kept each other company through one rainy night in December.

-Michal (AVODAH New Orleans)

Don't be chicken. . .

By a unanimous (and rather hilarious) vote tonight, we have decided to look into getting. . . hens!

We still have much research to do for this endeavor, but it might have been our most amusing discussion yet at a house meeting.

That is all. We'll see how it goes.

Eating for $30 a week for two!

My sister just sent me this blog, and it had some good recipes/ideas. Enjoy!

http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/

The Great Pumpkin Parade

Cross Posted from Jews 4 New Orleans....

For the past two months, Jericho Road has been hosting “Community Dinners” for our members of the neighborhood to come together, share a meal, receive some sort of training and discuss events going on in the neighborhood. During our dinner in September one resident stood up and described his dream for a Halloween event in our neighborhood. He called it “Trunk or Treat” and described how in a previous neighborhood he had lived in, residents would deck out their cars with Halloween decorations and load up their trunks with candy. Last year he took some kids from the neighborhood to trick or treat in the Garden District, a far wealthier community only a few blocks away, and lamented the fact that little trick or treating took place in Central City. However, with only a month to go, a full time job, and little funding for this project, he felt that planning an event like this wasn’t a feasible idea, for this year at least. I sat there and nodded my head, I figured we’d do something next year, when there was a neighborhood association or something to sponsor it, I figured we’d stick to small dinners for now.

But the other residents didn’t agree, and were enthusiastic about providing a safe environment for trick or treating in. Two other residents volunteered to participate, and when the local church got wind of this, they donated their space, recruited volunteers and solicited donations from their members. I still wasn’t sure it could succeed, even up until last Saturday morning I was unsure if our work would pay off. Well, nearly a month after that idea was initiated, I’m glad to say that we did it. This Halloween volunteers donned bright orange shirts, residents opened their homes to trick or treaters, and children in costumes from Tinker Bell to the Batman to bloody vampires filled the streets.

My elation at the success of this event has helped quell a feeling of ineffectivenss I’ve felt since I’ve begun to work. For the past two months I’ve been constantly comparing my work to those of my housemates – at times I feel as though I am not carrying out social justice on such a direct level – I’m not helping someone find a job, or rebuild their home. The work I am doing is slow, methodical and aimed at creating a community where my housemates will be out of work because the residents will be able to find jobs that support them rebuilding their own homes. Furthermore we want the residents to create this stable community themselves, with us acting as the facilitators, not the creators of this neighborhood. This overarching goal seems like the very definition of social justice, but on a day to day basis I create flyers for events and make brochures for a neighborhood association that we hope will one day exist. The goal of a safe, happy neighborhood where all residents can support themselves seems like a distant one. So how does this relate back to Halloween? How do children in silly costumes and volunteers passing out hot dogs and mountains of candy relate to creating a self sustaining community?

Brad Powers, the Executive Director of Jericho Road has joked for the past few weeks that we’re going to write a book on using national holidays as vehicles for social change. I had been laughing at it for weeks, but since this weekend I’m beginning to think there might be something to it. While from the beginning I knew that this event was about more than just having a good time and creating safe Halloween fun, I think at some point I got so hung up in the details – in making sure we had enough candy and volunteers, and trying to get participants to come to the event – that I forgot what it was really about. This event not only provided fun, it gave this neighborhood, so plagued by blighted property and gun violence, something to dream about.

What this event showed me and the community (I hope) is that this dream of a Halloween event that one man brought to his neighbors on September 28 could be brought to fruition in a little over a month. We as an organization, together with the community, made this event that seemed so impossible, a possibility. And if we can make this a reality, what else can this community do?

While I might spend much of my time doing work that doesn’t seem as directly impactful as many of my housemates, the success of this event showed me that the work I do – organizing community meetings, writing agendas and setting up systems for collecting information about the neighborhood – are the building blocks for the work of transformation that our neighborhood will one day undergo. I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see this community transform, if ever so slightly in my year working for Jericho Road, but I know that there will always be so much more to come as this community is brought closer together and works towards their collective dreams.

Tales from My Job in NOLA

Background: I work as a case manager for the Defenders Services Program at the Orleans Public Defender’s office. In this role, clients are referred to us through their attorneys to be set up with various services that will hopefully prevent them from recidivating and ending up back in jail.

A few weeks ago, amidst updating resource databases and visiting some folks in jail, I had the privilege of traveling to Gonzales, LA to attend a meeting of the Louisiana State Public Defenders Board. Sitting among attorneys from all over the state, I listened to them harp on the details of distributing a budget one third the size it should be and develop a strategy to fight for more money even though the public defender’s office is “not the most popular kid on the block.” The discussion was fascinating (since I was watching a state body reveal its weaknesses and vulnerabilities) and vividly displayed the hardship associated with preserving every person’s Sixth Amendment right to public defense.

Being a defender is a hard job that leaves little room for gratitude and inspiration. When there seem to be so many people in need of support who did not make “bad decisions,” why spend resources on those who screwed up? This is a question that these people must confront everyday. Beyond discovering their own individual answers to it, they must then sell those answers to state bodies that financially support their offices (and have very little money to distribute throughout a state that desperately needs a great deal of services). Though this work is protected by American law, the cause of public defense seems to conflict with our inclination to provide support to those in obvious crises. And that can, in a subtle manner, impact the quality of defense offered by this occupation and this much larger institution.

Yet, the meeting was capped off with a more hopeful message, one in which public defense can be used as a tool for positive change rather than just mitigating problems. My two amazing supervisors offered an inspiring presentation about the work my specific division has done in its first year of existence (since it is the pilot program for the whole state). As Johnetta and Sophia revealed mind-boggling statistics, such as our client’s record low recidivism rate, 9% (in contrast to over 50% all over the state), and explained the variety of services we connect our clients to (substance abuse recovery, mental health support, employment, education opportunities, temporary shelter, etc), the board members were pleasantly surprised by and quite receptive to the success. I was overcome with an immense feeling of pride and motivation, for I realized that we are knee-deep in a novel pursuit to establish a criminal justice system that actually puts faith in people rather than dooming them to lifetimes of anger, isolation and limited opportunity. That statement may seem extreme, but in the past five weeks, this work seems to be calling for nothing short of a revolution.

Diversion programs work. Offering people relevant alternatives to longer sentences that are simply going to harden and break so many, offering a crack addict who recognizes that he or she has hit rock bottom and wants to live a different life a free rehabilitation plan, setting up a kid who has had few positive role models and little educational opportunity with GED classes and job training, is going to help create constructive members of society, not just more thugs rotting away in prison. Rather than ignore problems by stashing people who suffer from so many social injustices out of sight, this approach offers relevant solutions to countless problems that make me question the sincerity of American meritocracy.

Though these options and services may not be included in common Sixth Amendment rights, to me, this rehabilitative alternative to a criminal justice system that currently focuses solely on punishment, can send the message that our nation is motivated not by anger but by a responsibility for others and an accountability for its own shortcomings. But amidst all this large-scale excitement and hope, amidst the opportunity to be an ally to clients rather than an obstacle, I know that there are limitations attached to my role within this larger project. As a white, upper-middle class, college-educated Northerner, I have a very set idea of what success is and what the best decision might be. Yet it is not my places to impose that upon someone with a vastly different background and value system; that would be playing into a very dangerous racial, class-based power dynamic that limits agency and suggests a moral relativism with which I am extremely uncomfortable. To me, getting a GED and a job seems like an obvious superior alternative to homelessness and a crack addiction. But for someone who may only get as far as a minimum wage position with no benefits after pursuing the former and thus cannot support his or her dependents anyway, there is something very alluring about the freedom the latter seems to offer. I am not here to place moral judgments upon other people’s lives, I simply propose options. Only the clients can decide if they are ready for and want those alternatives.

In my job, responsibility to others does not mean “helping” people ‘better” their lives using a measuring stick established by my history. It means making options available to people who seek them and have few places to look. Yet as I try to accept my restricted position in this battle, it is so difficult not to be inspired by the successes of our work and want that for others. This balance of excitement for this novel strategy of systemic social change and understanding that it is an individual’s choice to fully immerse oneself in options we present is going to be tricky. I hope I am up to the task, but I worry how much I can truly contribute when these complex power dynamics will always be hovering over my head. I also wonder if diversion as an institution will be accompanied by this sensitivity, because ultimately, it is an individual’s prerogative to decide what is best for him or her. I guess we will just have to wait and see…..

PRX » Piece » Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students (54:00 and 59:00)

Anyone interested in education should check out this powerful audio story about closing the achievement gap.

PRX » Piece » Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students (54:00 and 59:00)

To hear the whole story, you'll need to sign up for a free account with Public Radio Exchange.  Do it!  You'll find tons more great stories and programs.

Mallory, AVODAH NOLA

Olmert's Visit to NOLA Sparks Dissent

Last week, Ehud Olmert visited New Orleans and spoke at Tulane University.  None of us in AVODAH ended up attending, in part because you had to have a student ID from some New Orleans University to get in.  But there was also very little conversation about Olmert's visit and what it meant for us as Jews and as activists living in New Orleans.

In fact, a few of my housemates have noted that it's striking that, although we've talked at length about ourselves, our Jewish identities, our financial situations, social justice, the history of New Orleans, racism, and practically every other topic imaginable--we never once discussed the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.

Then, today, I ran across this article, an account of Olmert's visit and what it meant to one particular student, Emily Ratner, and her community of pro-Palestinian activists.  She relates how she, along with more than 70 pro-Palestinian activists, demonstrated against Olmert's speech and took the opportunity of his visit to rally others for their cause and to start taking action.  You can read Emily's account of the demonstration yourself by going to The Trumpet Blog, but I wanted to highlight a few things.

At the end of her account, Ms. Ratner expounds upon the "positive responses" of the demonstration, which "resulted in a broadening of our local Palestine solidarity network into a community we had dismissed for too long.  Our new friends and allies at Tulane know first-hand how much they are up against in an institution [Tulane University] that is between one-quarter and one-third Jewish and regularly equates Zionism with Judaism, but they are aching to take up the challenge."

There is so much here that pains me.  I come to New Orleans from an institution--Vassar College--in which the political climate surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict issue was overwhelmingly one of peace and solidarity.  I spent my senior year working closely with a good friend and a Muslim student who was the co-president of the newly-formed Vassar Islamic Society to create such an atmosphere.  We worked together to open up dialogue about the Conflict in a civil and constructive manner.  We planned events during which members of the Vassar Jewish Union and Vassar Islamic Society could talk with one another, meet each other, and get to know each other as individuals.  We organized open-services during which Muslims and non-Muslims alike were encouraged to attend Muslim prayer services, and Jews and non-Jews alike were encouraged to attend Jewish Friday evening services.  We brought a Muslim imam and a Jewish scholar to campus to speak about the force of religion in the Conflict, and how it can be used to promote peace rather than violence.

Why is it that when people are confronted with a belief or opinion that challenges us, we so often immediately jump into attack mode?  Is it because we feel so threatened that we can only think to respond with threat?  Rather than the pro-Palestinian camp and the pro-Israeli camp each promoting one-sided propaganda that they think is "correct," can't we all work together in an attempt to find a solution or a compromise?  Can't we at least just talk to one another--and listen to one another?

Parts of Ms. Ratner's account do resonate with me.  "New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return, and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities," she writes.  This is valid.  But then she continues, stating that "there is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged."

Perhaps if we stopped attacking one another and calling each other names that are choked with negative meaning, we could work together toward some compromise or solution.  How much more inspiring would it have been if the response to Olmert's speech had been for Tulane students and others in the New Orleans community--Jews and Muslims and others--to gather together in the name of peace and coexistence?

What bothers me even more is that The Trumpet, the blog on which Ms. Ratner's article appeared, claims to be "the online component to the premiere non-profit news magazine of New Orleans."  As a publication that advocates for social justice, I think that The Trumpet has an obligation to promote peace, not hatred.

On the same note, as AVODAHniks who are advocates for social justice ourselves, it merits having a discussion on the Conflict.  What are people's thoughts about Ms. Ratner's account?  What are people's thoughts on the Conflict at large?  What does it mean to be Jews working for social justice in the United States?  Consider even the many responses to the Times-Picayune article on AVODAH New Orleans in which people brought up the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict ("Go ask the Palestinians what they think of the Jew's version of social justice"), even when the article had absolutely nothing to do with the Conflict--or did it?  What responsibility in this arena, if any, do we have as Jews?  Does this responsibility mean defending Israel no matter what, as some Jews think?  Or is it something else?

These are all questions I've been struggling with, and I would love to open up the conversation on this issue with you all.

Urban Kibbutzim

Check out this article on NPR about urban kibbutzim.  The similarities between the kibbutz movement and AVODAH communal living are striking, I think.

Welcome to AVODAH's Virtual National Retreat!

The purpose of this blog is to promote communication between AVODAHniks in Chicago, New York, DC, and New Orleans.  It is meant to serve as a means of discourse among Corps Members in all four cities, and to foster a sense of community among AVODAHniks nation-wide.  It is a place where we can express our frustrations, share our successes, and reflect on all aspects of our AVODAH experience.