An Observer

Dear Family and Friends: 

I may have told you that after migrating south to Bloomington (a whole 50 miles from Indy), Juca and I began putting in some time at the Shalom homeless center.  It was organized by a local Methodist church ten years ago.  When we heard how magnificent their outlook on working with homeless was, we jumped right in.  Their founding principles include treating all with respect and dignity, providing essentials (food, washing facilities, mail boxes, social services, etc), and various educational opportunities to anyone in the community.  This respectful attitude is evident in every aspect of the center.  I see it in how they prepare food, how it is served, and in the ways the staff and volunteers speak to the “guests.”  That’s what we call those who show up for a meal or any other of the services offered.  No hidden agendas, no religion, just helping people. 

So on Mondays and Wednesdays Juca goes in from 9:00 to11:00 to help prepare lunch and I follow from noon to 2:00 cleaning up from lunch.  It’s a twenty minute walk from our house.  Juca and I pass each other on the sidewalk as we from and to, like those two sheepdogs in the cartoons, one punching out, and the other punching in.  

Even though the temperature today is in the ninety's, I had a spring in my step on the way to the center, spoke briefly to Juca as our paths crossed and went in to do my simple job, I’m the dishwasher.  The kitchen is laid out a little like our old one was at camp before the “G” snuck its way in front of the “U,” the “C” and the “I.” In the old Chadar Ochel, now the Beit Am, the dish area was behind a window through which all passed their plates and silverware.  The kitchen boys (pre Avodah and, sorry, but there never were any kitchen girls) took the plates and sprayed them off, put them in racks and fed them to the dishwasher (fondly referred to as the “Hobart”).  I now stand behind that window and spray and rack and feed the machine.  In a way I feel like Jimmy Stewart must have in “Rear Window.”  (Note:  if you are too young to know “Rear Window”, it’s a Hitchcock movie that is worth renting)  I observe the guests as they go through the cafeteria line and get their lunch, and I watch the interactions at the tables.  It is very interesting to me to see how convivial the dining room is.  The guests, some dressed nicely, some not, most clean, some not, eat and talk, read the newspaper, are polite and courteous to those serving the meal and the workers in the kitchen.  This is their community.  I observe them from my lookout spot on the kitchen side of the window.  I walk home feeling good about the experience.

Not so today.  Today I saw an older woman, one who comes in every day for lunch, with her backpack and cane.  Today I watched as she ate.  But today I also saw her cry after the meal.  She just sat there with her hand over her eyes and bawled.  A few regulars went up to her to console her but she brushed them away with a flip of her hand.  She cried as if the weight of the world was on her, like a person grieving for what had been lost in life.  She sat, face covered, in that agony for about thirty minutes.  Then she got up and got a napkin to wipe her face, picked up her back pack, put on sunglasses, took her cane and quietly (and slowly) left the center.  That is what I observed today, and like Jimmy Stewart in his wheelchair, I was unable to act upon what I saw.  The image is vivid.  

For some reason this made me think of the upcoming High Holidays.  Perhaps a plan is forming in my mind to really be thankful for all that I have in my life, especially Juca and the kids and friends and all of it.  Maybe a plan is forming in my heart to really think about inabilities and limitations and weaknesses.  I’m retired.  I have more time to think these days.

It was still ninety plus degrees on my walk home from the Shalom Center, but there wasn’t any spring in my step.  It wasn’t because of the weather.

But tomorrow I am going to do a workshop with the Indiana University Hillel board.  I’ll be working with college students again.  I believe the spring will be back.

Love to all, 

Ron/Dad

Unchartered Waters

Dear Friends and Family:

Several years ago our son Michael turned left on I-80 and headed west to San Francisco.  While waiting the few months it took the California State Bar to let him know that he passed the exam, he decided to volunteer on Kibbutz Keturah in the Negev.  When he returned he told me that to his chagrin, when he was assigned to work “Mitbach,” kitchen duty, the crew chief asked if anyone knew how to operate the dishwashing machine.  Michael observed that it was a Hobart, something close to the hearts of any who have worked in Avodah at camp, or been an Avodah Unit Head, or run camp as Resident Director on weekends in the winter; all jobs Michael and his brother Jeremy held over the years.  When Michael confessed that he could indeed operate all of the kitchen machines in the kibbutz, he became the crew chief.  The “honor” of the appointment did not please Michael at all.

Now that Juca and I have moved to Bloomington, we are confronted with all things new in our lives.  We live in a new house (new for us) in a new town, with a new lifestyle (meaning we are retired and, for the most part, unemployed).  Adjusting to these new surroundings, not working, learning streets, new cable TV service, etc. has not been easy.  So, we have been looking at ways to get involved and even use some of our newfound free time to do some good.

Yesterday we met Pat over at the Shalom Community Center.  This is not a Jewish outfit; it was established by a Methodist church to help the homeless.  The Shalom Center’s philosophy is to welcome all and comfort those who have no place to be during the daytime hours (most live in shelters open only at night), hence the name “Shalom,” for “Welcome and Peace.”  We took a two hour orientation and signed up to work a few hours each week in their kitchen.  At the end of our time with Pat yesterday, she took us down to the kitchen to show us where to report next Monday for our shifts.  I was immediately drawn to the three-compartment pot sink.  Even Juca commentated on how many hours I spent over the years bent over the pot sink at camp on days and nights when the Avodah unit was cavorting in town or traveling to King’s Island for a day off.  The sink was definitely a reminiscence of those sweaty but very happy times.

Then I turned to my right and there she was, standing proudly in all of her glory, my long lost buddy, the Hobart.  I actually had a close relationship with three Hobarts during my time at camp.  The first was in the old kitchen in the area of the Beit Am that became the dark room thanks to Rabbi Bruce Lustig’s ingenuity, after we built the new Chadar Ochel.  Later that space became storage (paper goods, I believe).  When we built the new kitchen in 1977, I installed a new Hobart.  Then, as the camp grew we replaced that Hobart with a new-fangled track-driven, larger capacity machine.  Earl, our long-time custodian took the old Hobart and made it into a BBQ, down at his farm.  He’d lower the drop-down doors to smoke meat.  Very tasty.

So here I am in unchartered waters and suddenly I run into an old friend, soon to be my partner again in transforming dirty dishes into clean ones.  I have to admit that seeing that Hobart was a comfort.  I was, like, excited to, like, see it (I use the word “like” a bit to remind me of the language patterns of my Machonikim in the past.  I once forbade anyone from using the word as it was interjected so frequently in their speech…several were not able to express themselves without, like, using it.   But I digress).

Now here is my plan.  On Monday, my first day “on the job,” I am going to play dumb (not much acting needed for that role) and let the kitchen manager teach me how to run that Hobart.  That’s the lesson I learned from Michael and his kibbutz experience.  I’m aspiring to be the dishwasher.  I’ll leave the crew chief-ing to someone who really knows the territory.

Thanks for the heads up, Michael.

Ron

In Europe with NFTY

Dear Friends and Family:

Last month Juca and I met seventy-three NFTYites at JFK and took off for an exciting and emotional journey to Prague and Poland. We were a bit worried at first, being responsible for all of those high school students, but they were an amazing and wonderful group of kids. We gathered at our stop-off, Frankfurt, for a two hour layover and regrouped for the Prague flight without a hitch. What followed was phenomenal. 

First of all, landing in Prague and meeting our NFTY staff was a treat. What a talented and dedicated group of young professionals. Under their gentle yet firm tutelage the group immediately began to form and bond. In all, 100 NFTYites constituted the three groups traveling together through Europe. In our first two days we visited Prague’s Jewish quarter and its ancient synagogues, the Old Town Square, the castle and cathedral. Most remarkable to me was the great forethought and planning that went into making this such a meaningful experience for the participants. Before we entered the Pinkus Synagogue, where names of Holocaust victims are written on and completely cover all the walls, the kids were given pen and paper to find one name particular to each of them (perhaps a family name, or a name of a family they recognize) and to write that name down. The reason was to carry that family name with them to Jerusalem as an honor and memorial. The impact of such a simple act was great and I listened intently as they talked about it later. 

The next day we bussed to Krakow where we walked through the old Jewish quarter and its synagogues. On the bus we watched the movie “Schindler’s List.” Then we actually walked through the Ghetto depicted in the movie, visited Schindler’s factory and lastly visited the memorial at the Ploshow Concentration Camp. Our group leader/teacher was magnificent as he took the NFTYites step by step through understanding the Nazification of Europe and the dehumanizing of our people. The group took everything seriously and appropriately. At the end of the day we all joined hands and prayed the Kaddish for those who had perished there, at that concentration camp. To say that the kids “got it,” would be an understatement. 

That evening, in preparation for the next day’s visit to Auschwitz, our group sat in a circle and discussed expectations for what we all knew would be an emotional experience. Our leader, Chanan, once again masterfully facilitated the discussion. The NFTYites’ remarks were impressive.  This was a group of sensitive, thinking, and bright teenagers. We were all impressed with the amount of respect the group had shown for where they were and what they were seeing. They were attentive and insightful. They were certainly ready for what would be a difficult day to come.  

Here’s what I wrote at the conclusion of the Auschwitz experience: 

"It was overcast this morning in Auschwitz, and windy. The wind caused a few tears in the eyes of our group of 100 high school students and twenty staff...or maybe it was stopping at the cattle car dedicated to the memory of the 400,000 Rumanian Jews murdered in this place. Maybe it was our visit to the gas chambers and crematorium, or the room filled with lost Jewish families’ shoes, or the eyeglasses, or the valises. The rain came down when we entered the unbearable barracks that housed our relatives for the short time they spent at slave labor before meeting their deaths. It certainly was a grey and cloudy day today at Auschwitz. 

I was privileged to lead a short T’fillah toward the end of our Auschwitz experience with six NFTYites.  In the large open space where we prayed there were two other visiting groups, one Israeli and one, another group of Jews.  The Israelis carried Israeli flags and the other group played recorded Hebrew music.  They were off to our right and left.  Before we said our second Kaddish of the trip, this one as a memorial, as testimony, and to honor those murdered there, I noted that we stood among our People, Israeli flags to the left of us, Hebrew music to the right. 

Afterward, we gathered at what was the synagogue in the town of Oswiecem (the Germans called it Auschwitz). We were quiet with thoughts of all that we had seen that day. But in a few minutes someone started singing “Am Yisrael Chai” the Jewish People Lives. A few joined in, then more, then all of us. More than our voices rang out with song. We sang with our hearts; and as I left the synagogue I was not surprised to see the sun peeking out from behind the clouds."

The next day we walked through the Warsaw ghetto and then boarded a plane for Israel.  Juca and I spent the day with the group in Tel Aviv and left the group after their first Israel experience, sitting in a park in Jaffa overlooking the beaches and skyline of Tel Aviv.  I told the group that we had made our own Aliyah; from the depths of the destruction to the living beauty of our JEWISH homeland.  I thanked them for allowing us to be a part of the experience, asked them to stand and bow their heads for the priestly benediction as they were about to trek off into the Negev for three days of camping. 

What an experience for those kids…what an experience for Juca and myself!  

Shabbat Shalom from Bloomington,

Ron/Dad

Thoughts from Mike Ditka

Tribute to Ron from Mike Ditka from URJ GUCI on Vimeo.

About Brubeck

                                                                                                December 29, 2009

Dear G.U.C.I. Alumni:


I’ve been thinking lately about the year 1960.  It was a big year for me.  I entered high school that year, I saw Pete Seeger for the first time that year, I put on a football helmet for the first time.  It was in 1960 that I would hear the jazz album that would direct my musical interest for the next fifty years. 

A couple of years earlier my parents moved us from the north side of Chicago back to the family reservation on the west side of town.  But, I still got on the El often to return to Rogers Park to see my best friend Gene and spend time in the old neighborhood.  It was on one of those trips that Gene told me that his uncle had left him the keys to his apartment and that he wanted to go spend the weekend there.  It was a different world then and my parents had no problem letting me go with Gene.  So, two fourteen year olds go off to spend a weekend alone in an apartment on Waveland Avenue in Chi town.  Perfectly normal, right?  Well it was kind of normal.

My buddy Gene was a budding jazz fan and brought a few albums for us to hear on his uncle’s record player.  That’s when I heard it.  I’ve been listening to it ever since.  Gene showed me an album cover with some weird abstract art on it and said, “Wait ‘til you hear this.”  The album was “Time Out” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  I never heard anything like it.  It was thirty-four minutes of energy, improvisation, changing tempos, swinging and not swinging and then swinging again, jazz.   I’d soon learn that Paul Desmond was the alto sax player in the quartet whose unique sound would uplift and haunt you at the same time; and that Joe Morello was the drummer who could actually play a melody (in any time frame) on the drums.  We must have listened to that album twenty-five times that weekend.  I had the two best known numbers, Blue Rondo ala Turk, and (of course) Take Five, imbedded in my psyche by the time I caught the train home. 

Later I bought the album.  I wore it out, literally.  I bought it again, then once more before it finally came out on CD.  Last month “Time Out” was re-mastered and re-issued along with a DVD of the Brubeck Quartet to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its first release.  It’s magnificent!  It’s the music that led me to investigate and fall in love with jazz.  It started with “Time out” and expanded chronologically in both directions from traditional jazz to swing to be bop to modern; from Armstrong to Goodman to Basie, to Davis, Pepper, Getz, Rich, et al.  It started with that abstract art album cover and my buddy, Gene saying, “Wait ‘til you hear this.” 

Brubeck is being honored tonight on the Kennedy Center Awards program.  I owe him a deep debt of gratitude; and to my buddy, Gene.

Ron

26 Year-Old Time Capsule

I know I’m going to sound like your parents (and even my parents) but, where the heck does the time go?  Every year when the leaves begin to fall and footballs fly, I wonder what happened to the months.  Camp starts and ends in a flash (I always maintained that at camp there are only two days of the week, Shabbat and not-Shabbat; and that throughout the summer the days drag and the weeks fly by).  But really, this time around I blinked in June, and it was now. 

What a year we had here at camp.  We built a beautiful new performing arts center, had a marvelous programmatic summer, once again saw a Klotz in Camp K’ton (Zoe carries on Jeremy, Michael and Melissa’s K’ton tradition), and we avoided the flu (Avodah ‘09’s cheer was, “We beat the swine in 2009”).  Anaf Project in the new building was magnificent as were Chugim presentations, two Dan Nichols and E18ghteen concerts, all-camp Shiurim and final friendship circles.

 

During Kallah Aleph Rabbi Jim Bennett and I dug up a time capsule we (Jim and I) had buried twenty-six years ago, on the occasion of the camp’s twenty-fifth anniversary, when Jim was Program Director.  We were going to dig it up last year on our 50th, but I forgot about it (what a maroon...to quote Bugs Bunny).  Getting it out of the ground at the back of the Beit T’fillah was a real chore.  It took four of us and the tractor to get it out.  We had buried an old safe and every cabin contributed to the capsule.  You wouldn’t believe the things we found.  First there was an Avodah shirt signed by all of our Avodah ’83 campers and the unit heads, Dawn Cincinnatus Bernstein and Lee Freedman.  It was quite moving to point out to the camp when we presented our “artifacts” that Dawn’s son Kyle was “in the house,” currently a counselor and song leader. So were Jim’s kids; Abby a counselor, Ethan an Avodahnik, and Michelle a camper.  There were so many other living connections to that summer so long ago.  Jim and I told the story of burying the capsule and displayed the contents at an all-camp Shiur.  We immediately began collecting items for a new time capsule that we buried at the end of Kallah Bet.  Talk about experiential education at its finest.

The new leadership of our Joint camp Authority (Sandy Adland, Chair and David Barrett, co-Chair) and I are starting to put together an alumni committee to plan an alumni-family Shabbat at camp next August.  You’ll hear more about this as it
becomes more concrete.  It’ll be great to celebrate another Shabbat together G.U.C.I. style with our kids and grandchildren.  

You know what?  It’ll be here before you know it.

Ron

Reading Avodah Applications

                                                                               December 29, 2009

Dear G.U.C.I. Alumni:


It has been a long time since I’ve written a “Staff Letter.”  You old timers may remember when I used to do so.  Here I sit in my usual place in Zionsville on a clear and sunny, snow covered and freezing day, alone in the office watching the year melt away.  It’s quiet here.  That’s unusual for G.U.C.I. It’s nice.

Camp seems far away when December hits town.  There is nothing campy here at all; no kids, no sweat, no campfires to build or pools to chlorinate, no Shiurim to plan or guitars to tune.  But just when we seem to have hit the G.U.C.I. winter solstice a light appeared to brighten these shortest of days.  It’s Avodah.  Don’t get me wrong, there are no Avodahnikim around sweeping, plunging, telling people to get off of their porch.  No.  There are no Avodahnikim at all.  That’s the point.  By next week I have to pick who will be in this amazingly adolescent camp family next summer.  In a week or so I have to let the kids know who’s coming to Avodah 2010.

So, I have been reading Avodah applications and essays all day.  That’s the light.  That’s what is making camp seem close even on a day when I can see through the trees all the way to the boys’ area from my office, without even one leaf to inhibit the view.  I’ve just read the reasons why fifty entering eleventh graders want to spend nine weeks next summer at camp.  Those essays blow me away.  These kids are talking about community, responsibility, giving back to the place that has been their second home, Jewish identity and education, friendship, Tikkun Olam, and more.  It is a knockout to hear what kids think and feel about the place that we have been building all these years.  Many also mention plunging toilets and serving food… in the same sentence (makes one stop and think, eh?).  And although these kids don’t really know what they are getting into, I can already sense their spirit, their humor, and certainly their love for camp. 

I often think about camp’s momentum.  It is true that we start the ball rolling, but as it rolls it carries us along.  I’ve had the good fortune to be swept up in the momentum today by future Avodahnikim and their deep passion for all the good things G.U.C.I. can be.  It’s not about, “If you build it they will come,” rather it’s, If you build it they will  bring it to life and illuminate it with their spirit.  This has been a good day for me.  I’m beginning to see the light.

Ron