The People Who Keep Showing Up

Seeing myself last week on the cover of the Baltimore Jewish Times was pretty cool.

But it got me thinking about all the people who aren’t here anymore.

The people who showed up before us.

Every Jewish community has them.

The people who built the synagogues we pray in.

The schools where we send our children.

The JCCs where we gather.

The camps, organizations, foundations and programs that have become part of Jewish life.

Some gave money.

Some served on boards.

Some taught.

Some coached.

Some organized events.

Some made phone calls.

Some stayed late after everyone else went home.

Some probably sat through more committee meetings than they would care to remember.

And many simply just kept showing up.

Year after year. Coming back and believing in something greater.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve gotten more involved with the JCC of Greater Baltimore.

Like so many Jewish institutions, you can walk through the building and see names everywhere.

Some you recognize.

Some you don’t.

Behind those names were people who, at some point, decided that this community was worth investing in.

But there are also thousands of names we’ll never see on a wall.

People who gave what they could.

Volunteered when they could.

Taught a class.

Coached a team.

Made a meal.

Welcomed a new family.

Called someone who was struggling.

Did something that needed to be done simply because it needed to be done.

Many of those people are no longer with us.

But we are still living inside what they built.

I think we forget that sometimes.

We walk into our synagogues and schools and community centers as if they have always been there.

Of course they haven’t.

Someone had to imagine them.

Someone had to raise the money.

Someone had to convince other people to care.

Someone had to make difficult decisions.

Someone had to keep going when things weren’t working.

And then, eventually, they handed it to someone else.

There is something very humbling about that.

We talk a lot about leadership in the Jewish community.

We talk about what needs to change. What needs to be built. How our organizations need to evolve for the next generation.

Those conversations matter.

I spend a lot of my own time thinking about those questions.

But none of us are starting from scratch.

We inherited something.

Is it perfect? No.

Every generation inherits things that need to change.

But we also inherited institutions, relationships, traditions and communities that exist because other people cared enough to build them.

People who knew they might never see the full result of what they were creating.

That’s a different way to think about leadership.

Maybe our job isn’t simply to build something new.

Maybe it’s to take what was handed to us, care for it, improve it, make the changes our moment requires, and eventually hand it forward.

Hopefully a little stronger.

Hopefully ready for whatever comes next.

Seeing my picture on the cover of a magazine was special.

But a newspaper cover is temporary.

The paper gets recycled.

The next issue comes out.

People move on.

What lasts is what we leave behind.

A relationship.

An institution.

An opportunity someone else gets because we helped create it.

A community that is a little stronger because we were part of it.

We spend a lot of time asking what kind of Jewish community we’re going to leave our children.

And as we approach Rosh Hashanah, many of us will naturally think about the year ahead.

What should change?

What should we do differently?

What can we make better?

Those are very important questions

But this Rosh Hashanah, I want to look around.

At the synagogue where I’m sitting.

At the people around me.

At the schools, JCCs, organizations and communities that are part of our lives.

And remember that none of this just happened.

People built it.

People sustained it.

People showed up for it.

Many of them are no longer here.

So before thinking about everything that needs to change in the year ahead, I want our blessing to be to have to the opportunity to grateful for everything that was handed to us.

For the people whose names we know.

And the many more we don’t.

For the people who gave their time, their resources, their energy and a piece of themselves to build a Jewish community they knew would someday belong to someone else.

We are that someone else.

And this Rosh Hashanah, I will be thinking about them.

And saying thank you.

Shana Tovah