I was a freshman in college the first time I truly observed Veterans Day. Like the rest of the country, I’d been under the patriotic spell that characterized the two months following the attacks of September 11th. That Veterans Day, with a few friends in tow, I drove across the Key Bridge from Washington, D.C., into Virginia where a number of veterans had gathered at the Iwo Jima Memorial.

My friends and I walked around the grounds, listening to the old soldiers exchange stories about the war, share memories of their proud homecomings, and give tributes for friends that hadn’t made it back with them. The experience was exceptionally humbling. On the drive back to campus, my friends and I overcame the quiet to confess our lament at having not engaged in some form of national service; the day had highlighted a naturally felt shortcoming in our “love for country” stock. We never spoke about it again.

Veterans Day is one of those holidays that afford Americans a rare look inward, especially at the issue of national service. It is also a holiday that is entirely overlooked. Among the four of us in the car that day, I had done the closest thing to national service, albeit abroad. I had spent the previous year before college in Israel where I volunteered for four months in a small town with an emerging economy and took a semester of college classes.

That year I experienced life in Israel, a country where most of the people my age were starting their compulsory national service. While service, for many of them, meant the military (the majority of which is non-combat service) or some volunteerism, I could not help but be struck by how enmeshed this rite of passage was in Israeli society. Eight years later, I cannot help but continue to be struck by how badly this commitment to country is needed in the United States today.

The Twitter phenomenon has imbued an entire American generation with a self-obsession that rivals the most farcical apologues of classical mythology. More potent than statistics is the sentiment that so little was asked of my generation that the definition of service in America (as once famously prescribed) actually became shopping.

Despite this, American volunteerism is currently at one of its highest levels in decades. But across the country, there are still at-risk students who need mentors and after school tutors, our swelling elderly population needs care, and our first responders need back up. The number of illiterate Americans is fast approaching the number of the uninsured. The obesity rate for children in this country has tripled since 1980. America is suffering from an energy crisis of another sort: a dearth of spirit. It’s time to ask for more of the next generation.

In Israel, national service is compulsory after high school. Despite a growing percentage of Israeli teens that now shirk that duty, for decades, national service has been a standard part of the adolescent experience there. One upshot is that when Israelis go to college, they are generally two or three years older than American students. In exchange for service, the government pays for college, allowing Israeli students to approach their higher education without the looming specter of spectacular debt.

What is certainly more important (and less quantifiable) is the effect that national service has on its participants. Those few years of service offer invaluable perspective for young Israelis leaving home. They witness firsthand the problems in their country. Many become invested in finding solutions. In my experience, if you ask an Israeli for an opinion about an issue in his or her country, you will likely be on the receiving end of a vigorous, well-informed, and impassioned response (often given in his or her second or third language).

Or as one Israeli put it: “There is a real feeling here that you serve and therefore have a stake in what goes on.” It would not be an irrational leap of logic to assume that service has something to do with the fact that voter turnout in Israel (a non-compulsory exercise) is generally 15-20% percent higher than in the United States.

The Israeli model is not perfect and certainly not perfect for us. But it is an idea that pays dividends in ways we desperately need. And while we continue to be a country that bristles at mandates, obligatory national service is an idea we should approach more thoughtfully, starting today, as we pay tribute to those who have served.

I recently returned from a whirlwind, thirty-two hour tour of LA, during which I spoke with students and faculty of Hebrew Union College and of the American Jewish University, with alumni of the Progressive Jewish Alliance’s Jeremiah Fellows program, and with a number of other community members.  Using my book as a starting point, we ventured into wide-ranging conversations about Judaism, social justice, power, the role of rabbis and other community leaders in justice work, and the most effective means of social change.

The question that arose most frequently concerned the most effective means of making change. Many of us have experience primarily with one mode of action: we may volunteer in a local service project, give money to tzedakah, write letters about policy issues, participate in an organizing effort, or speak publicly about issues close to our heart.

Even those of us who may take part in multiple means of social change often find ourselves debating the relative merits of various modes of change: people devoted to organizing and advocacy look down at those doing service for focusing only on the immediate need, without trying to solve the problem in the long run; people who do service dismiss organizing as too slow to address current issues; those who do hands-on work find check-writing too passive; those who focus on tzedakah point out that most organizations need money more than volunteers. And on and on.

There is, of course, no answer to this endless debate. Without organizing, the most passionate speeches will do little good; without these passionate speeches, few will feel moved to action. Without policy change, we will never end hunger, homelessness, or exploitatio; without direct service, people will go hungry and without shelter until policies change.

I decided to name my book There Shall be No Needy because I wanted a name that was aspirational. I wanted to push us, as a community, to think broadly about our responsibility to create a world without poverty or other forms of suffering. But those who recognize the biblical reference will remember that, in the book of Deuteronomy, God makes this promise--that there will be no needy in the land, and almost immediately follows up with a warning to give tzedakah when asked, as the poor will never disappear. 

I read this apparent contradiction as a challenge to maintain our focus both on the long-term goal, and on the short-term alleviation of suffering. If we put all of our efforts toward policy change, people will starve while we negotiate politics. If we put all of our efforts toward meeting immediate needs, we will never achieve a more just world. 

A friend of mine, also a rabbi, tells the story of taking a group of high school students to volunteer at a homeless shelter. At the end of the evening, one of the students turned to him and said, "this was such a fantastic experience! Every kid should get to volunteer at a homeless shelter." 

When we become so focused on either meeting the immediate needs of a homeless person, or on our own feeling of self-fulfillment through teh volunteer experience, we have lost sight of the promise that "there shall be no needy" and of the obligation to work toward this ideal. On the other hand, when we turn down our noses at service as providing only a band-aid solution, we ignore the second part of the biblical text, which reminds us to care for each and every person who asks for help.

What's the best way to create social change? An impossible question to answer--we might have to start by doing everything.

Project Chicken Soup: More than just soup. December first was World AIDS Day, and the entire month of December is HIV/AIDS Awareness Month. That being the case, I thought it might be nice to aim our tzedekah accordingly. Enter Project Chicken Soup, an organization serving the greater Los Angeles area with a simple yet wonderful goal. Project Chicken Soup, a part of Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services, gets healthy kosher meals to people living with HIV/AIDS in LA County, and recently received The Congressional Hunger Center's 2007 Victory Against Hunger Award for their hard work. And, they, like most organizations, need support. 

You can PayPal them to donate, rock the lapel pin, order the cookbook, or, far better, you can read the volunteer page, show up on any of these dates and help them cook and deliver meals. Also, if you know someone looking for a B'nai Mitzvah project, Project Chicken Soup can help you with that, too.

Chances are you won’t have heard of last week’s flood in Rockford, IL. I was dispatched on Friday with other members of an emergency team I volunteer on to assist with the Red Cross's disaster relief effort. As always, poorer areas were hit hardest, and even though the scale of the event was nowhere close to, say, Hurricane Katrina, things were particularly hard for the folks whose homes were hit again for the second time in less than a year.

 

Since Jewcers are all about doing good and helping out, I thought I’d mention you can get some honest-to-goodness social status not just by giving money but also by giving time. Help is badly needed. Red Cross is just one suggestion, and just so that you know, yes I joined and left the Red Cross previously in Europe; but thankfully the American Red Cross is much better. Anyway, as Tamar suggests, go do something good.

I have always been a shul-goer. On Shabbat I get completely thrown off if I don’t make it to services. It’s an integral part of my weekly routine, and it frustrates me to have it disrupted. That said, I am not a fan of synagogues, Temples or shuls.

For one thing, too often they’re huge and anonymous, the rabbi is far away from me and boring, and the cantor is ridiculously showy. Also, though I have no proof to back this up, I get the impression that the population at most synagogues is aging. I rarely see young singles or couples, especially not at those massive 1000 family congregations. What I do see a lot of is really bad decorating, uncomfortable chairs, and those awful silk kippot.

So why are synagogues so tacky and uninviting? And what’s the alternative?
Does Stained Glass Put You To Sleep?: There *are* alternatives!
I think a lot of synagogues and Temples grew out of themselves, and are still adjusting to such mammoth proportions. People are also using synagogues less and less, generally only stopping in for life cycle events, and whatnot. Many synagogues, especially in suburban well-to-do areas, seem to have become just another venue to keep up with the Jones’. While the insides are fancy, they’re too massive and overly air conditioned to give any a sense of a warm and welcoming community.

There are a few alternatives, I think. First of all, I’m a huge fan of the indie minyan, a la Hadar, the DC Minyan, Chicago’s Egal Minyan, and the Library Minyan. Those are non-synagogue services that will give you your spirituality fix without a choir, or 400 people milling around the bat mitzvah girl at Kiddush.

But if services aren’t your thing, consider making a weekly volunteer commitment on Monday morning. You can search for volunteer opportunities near you at Volunteermatch.org. Serving at a soup kitchen, helping out at a homeless shelter, or sitting with patients at a hospital are great ways of connecting with your spirituality without having to submit to the awkwardness of a Kiddush luncheon where you don’t know anyone. If you already have volunteering as part of your schedule, Saturday morning might be a good time to work out, take a run, or do some yoga. Or maybe you hate synagogues but are interested in Jewish learning. I highly recommend you get yourself a chevruta (a study partner) and discuss what you’re interested in learning. You may want to poke around on MyJewishLearning where they have lots of good trigger articles and will point you towards all kinds of good books and other helpful resources. Or if you’re more of a Jewish culture person, tune in to Nextbook’s amazing podcast, and start buying (or borrowing from the library) the books they recommend. Sarah Ivry, the voice of the podcast, is awesome and has never directed me to a book I didn’t love.

The point is, hating shul doesn’t mean you can’t do something Jewish on Shabbat, and it certainly doesn’t make you a bad Jew. But thankfully synagogues aren’t the only places to go to get a spiritual pick me up

The Spot: This bouncer is all about Jewish LearningSince Tamar (who is a smart cookie) appears to have learned a lot at (the apparently amazing) Limmud Conference this year, I thought I'd take this chance to tell everyone that LimmudNY 2008 is gearing up, with a launch party for people who might like to get involved and volunteer for next year! It's a chance to hang out with really smart interesting people, help out, and learn some stuff.

Of course, attending the party will require you be in NY, which many of us (including ME!) are not, but for those of you who are…be there!

Please join us for our Volunteer Launch and 2007 Post-Party, as we kick-off the Limmud NY 2008 volunteer planning process! This is a chance to drop by, speak to last year's volunteers, and learn how you can be involved in the volunteer community that will shape the 2008 conference.

Monday, February 12, 2007
7:00-9:00pm
Barrow Street Ale House
15 Barrow Street
(bet. W. 4th St. & 7th Ave S.)

NY, NY
Take the 1 to Christopher Street or the A,B,C,D,E,F, or V to West 4th Street.
New York, NY 10014
(212) 691-6127

Cash bar including Monday's special: $3 Pints of Sam Adams & Sam's Seasonal