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Written by: Elyse Seidner-Joseph
17 Elul 5782
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הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר: אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר
Hillel says: Do not separate yourself from the community.— Pirkei Avot 2:4
We are doubly blessed to live part of the year in Aspen and part of the year in West Chester, PA. There are lots of different communities that we are in nourishing relationship with, depending on the time of the year. We are a part of the community of music-lovers at the Aspen Music Festival, the volunteers at the Ideas Festival, the members of AJC (especially the Wednesday morning minyan folks), our friends in the Roaring Fork Valley—these are our summer communities. We miss them when we are here in Pennsylvania, where we have just returned after a multi-day drive from Colorado. Amidst the unpacking and shopping, we are eagerly reconnecting with our Chester County communities of friends, family, civic and volunteer organizations and more.
Some communities, large and small, have been easily adapted for pandemic times. My friend Sylvia and I have a 2-person book group. She’s the only person I know who reads more fiction than I do. We have about a 95% overlap in agreement, whether “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” or “don’t even bother.”
My piano teacher Seymour, age 94, pivoted to teaching his students via FaceTime. We’ve had a piano lesson twice a month but have not had an in-person lesson since March 2020. It’s not the easiest thing to do virtually, but we make it work, and our small community continues to thrive.
My spiritual writing group, multiple rabbinic groups, the AJC Wednesday morning minyan and many other minyanim, and countless ways of maintaining and/or creating community, have expanded and flourished in the pandemic. We all grieved the loss of live, in-person gatherings of communities during the pandemic. The creativity we’ve seen, in shifting to virtual, or birthing brand new communities in the Zoom realm, has been breathtaking. People sometimes talk about “when things get back to normal,” but there is no chance of that happening—there is a NEW normal for communities. What an opportunity for us to stay connected across the country and beyond!
Hillel, and the Rabbis who have interpreted this pithy statement over the centuries, would be astonished at the ways in which we “do” community since early 2020. However you “DO” community, Hillel reminds us to be involved, to stay connected during Elul, into the High Holidays, and beyond.
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Written by: Ethan Oster
16 Elul 5782
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In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police Force. He became known as the “Father of Modern Policing,” and his commissioners established a list of policing principles that remain as crucial and urgent today as they were two centuries ago. As a new member of the Aspen Police Department, these principles are central to what I am doing each day. The 7th principle resonates with me specifically when thinking about my role in our community.
“To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
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Written by: Tom Kurt
15 Elul 5782
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An Elul Message: Community Synergism in Shared Togetherness
This year’s closing Aspen Music Festival the Berlioz Requiem began with going to Jerusalem in the opening chorale. And, this awakened me with a jolt to the sobering Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur closing by saying “Next year in Jerusalem.”
Spirituality includes eschatology as well as day-to-day reality.
Rather than wishful thinking of a sugarplum heaven, think about climate change.
Focus on the shrinking Colorado River while 24 tunnels carry Western Slope water to the Front Range cities. While this may seem selfish, the Utes did not have this problem 150 years ago. Look in the mirror. Immigrants have caused these problems.
And, despite all this ambitious focusing for remediation of ourselves and this planet, simply begin each day with "Thank G-d for the gift of this day." Wherever you are.
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Written by: Rabbi Shira Stutman
13 Elul 5782
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I want to tell a story about a young woman named Lisa, who moved back home to DC, only to learn that her parents were moving to Florida. Understandably, she felt a little abandoned.
In response, she did what many contemporary 20-somethings do: she got a tattoo. In Hebrew. “L’olam lo l’vad” it says. Never alone. In that moment, it was an aspirational statement. But by the time she got married, a few years later, she was surrounded by what she called her “synagogue family”: the people with whom she had built community over the intervening years. Under the Huppah, when she lifted up her arm to drink from the Kiddush cup, surrounded by her community, you could just about make out the tattoo. L’olam lo l’vad. Never alone.
Of course, getting a tattoo was the easy part. Building community was hard. Lisa had to invest.
In Robert Putnam’s now-famous book Bowling Alone, he argues that having “a social network” matters. But he doesn’t define “network” the way we might. It’s not your Facebook friends and it’s not just what he terms “warm and cuddly feelings, but a wide variety of quite specific benefits…[that] flow from the trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with social networks.” Social networks, he says, “translate an “I” mentality into a “we” mentality.”
As an AJC newbie these last six months, I have been so impressed by and grateful for the “we” mentality in this community. It ebbs and flows around year-rounders and seasonal folk, Aspen and Down Valley residents, serious spiritual seekers and kiddush kibbitzers. I know with certainty that if Lisa were to ever land in Aspen, she would be welcomed into this kehillah kedosha, this holy community, with open arms. May this continue to be true in the year to come.
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Written by: Jordan Sarick
12 Elul 5782
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The next morning, our front porch was filled – crammed – with the modern accoutrements of raising kids. Strollers, car seats, diapers, high chairs. We had received numerous offers of help from organizing the piles on our porch to helping with the kids. The night before, our family had grown instantly from 3 to 5 as we had become foster parents for the first time and suddenly had 3 kids under 4 years old.
We needed the help, supplies, and support of our community, in this case our little neighbourhood. But our community also needed to help us. Our friends and neighbours wanted to help and in doing so took a sense of responsibility for us and for our new charges. Just as tools are sharpened and honed by use, so too our community grew stronger because it grew to accommodate our needs.
Luckily for us, we haven’t always needed to be helped. There are times when we have had “baseball mitts on both hands” and unable to throw the ball back. There have been times when we have been able to help. But the thing about community is that it is not a zero-sum game. There is no tally and the score doesn’t matter. In fact the reverse is true. The more our communities accommodate one another’s needs and help one another, the stronger our community gets – together. The safety net of our community is strengthened the more we use it and the more we help when required and asked.
Our Aspen Jewish Community holds multitudes (to paraphrase Whitman) of communities and as a community and as individuals we are enriched when we contribute to it. But this isn’t a diminishing resource, we grow our community and ourselves by helping and being helped; by needing and being needed. This community is here for us and together we make it stronger, tighter, and more brilliant – whether we need it or are needed.
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Written by: Ron Kokish
11 Elul 5782
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A “community” is a cooperating common-interest group. Humans live in communities because we aren’t good at surviving alone but we are good at surviving in small, co-operative groups. Most of us, though, aren’t so good at cooperating with people substantially different from ourselves. Consequently, our communities develop in part, via “schizogenesis;” creation by division, the process of defining communities by their differences from other communities; different gods, dietary laws, economies, dress codes, skin colors, smells, sexual mores, languages, rules of conduct . . . So many differences. This process helps create us groups wherein we feel accepted, safe, even loved; groups within which individuals belong to one another and thrive. Community fosters the joys of Shabbat and the renewal of The Days of Awe. It lends meaning to individual lives and it lends meaning to wars that destroy them.
Many pre-Christian civilizations glorified war of aggression simply because they enriched winners at the expense of “others.” Victory parades featured booty and captives, some for ransom, some to be tortured for propaganda and entertainment, most to be enslaved. War was after all, primarily about enrichment. Today, our rhetoric is peaceful. Modern communities don’t admit to starting wars for economic gain. We don’t seem to fight less than ancients, but it comforts us to believe we are only defending ourselves from aggressors who would destroy our beloved community and its cherished values. “Aggressors” of course, claim to be defending themselves from us. Modern parades don’t openly feature slaves and booty and believing our rhetoric allows us to feel superior to heathens and barbarians who were more candid about their wars. Little else has changed.
Community! We can’t live without it. Can we live with it?
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Written by: Niki Delson
10 Elul 5782
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My ancestors came from the shtetl Orlova in Belarus. “Shabbat was kept very strictly in our little township. Everything was done to give it grace. Special clothes, holy quiet, cholent, pie, and grapes with the kishka added something special.”
Great-uncle Nachum Yudel , whose house had burned down, was first in my family to emigrate to “the land of gold.” One by one, relatives joined him and re-built Jewish Community in New York. Grandma Anna could hardly wait her turn.
Poverty defined Jewish immigrant life on NYC's Lower East Side. Living together and sharing resources was familiar. The 1920 Census lists my grandparents, their 4 children, my grandfather’s sister, her husband and their children living together. As older, successful relatives moved out, married children moved in until they too could afford their own apartments.
I was born in the Bronx. On my 5th birthday we moved into a house in Queens. We were four children. Relatives lived with us during most of my early childhood. Grandma Anna, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived within walking distance. Almost everyone I knew was Jewish. Orlova traditions were adapted, or forgotten, in this new, American shtetl.
In the 1970’s, my own young family of four followed a wave of New Yorkers to Northern CA. We bought a fixer-upper on 3 acres in the redwoods, within walking distance of the ocean. A friend converted an out building into a usable cabin. Another young family moved in with a trailer, one in a teepee, and a couple in a school bus. We planted a garden, ate together and shared child care. Because there was no defined Jewish community, we created one. It was not hard to find other Jewish folks. We brought with us the recipes of our grandparents. We knew Yiddish songs. We built a sukkah with forest materials and wildflowers. Those who knew how, said our prayers in Hebrew. Always, we joyously shared our Jewishness with our non-Jewish friends.
Jewish community is not my only community, but it’s the one in my DNA.
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Written by: Sima Oster
9 Elul 5782
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When I interviewed for this position, I was asked to prepare a lesson for our Hebrew School students. After much consideration, I decided to teach a lesson about community, and used the aspen tree as my prime example.
As many of you know, aspen trees have a unique root system. Above ground, aspen grow as individual trees, but below ground they're enlivened by one interconnected set of roots. Aspen are the most expansive growth of trees to share a common root system. This means they are each individual trees, so one living organism, and a connected group, so also a living community—at the same time!
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Written by: Fran Harris
8 Elul 5782
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