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voices Spring 2010 • Aviv, 5770 www.kolotchayeinu.org

Co-creation: A Jewish Metaphysic of Wealth By Seth Borgos

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eading 19th century history offers unexpected pleasures. One remarkable feature of that bygone age was a passionate public debate over the origins of wealth. From the agrarians to the socialists, from the robber barons to the acolytes of Henry George, every thoughtful person seemed to have ideas about how wealth was created and who had a legitimate claim to it. Nowadays the very word ‘wealth’ has acquired a musty, Victorian aroma, and open debate about it has become taboo. But the issue has not disappeared, it has simply gone underground. There is an implicit story of wealth – so deeply embedded it is barely discernible – that sets the boundaries of public discourse today. It goes something like this: 1. Wealth is the product of individual effort and belongs, in a fundamental sense, to the person who generates it. This per-

in this issue Co-Creation...............................1 From The Rabbi.........................2 Takhlis.......................................3 Good With Money......................4 Coming Back to Money.............4 Ethics of Business....................6 Shabbat Shekkalim...................8 Community of Givers..............10 Meaning of Tzedakah..............11 Donations................................12

sonal claim has certain limits – wealth acquired through violence, theft, or deception is illegitimate. But absent gross violations of moral norms, the drive to create value and maximize profit is an ethically neutral process, subject to natural rather than spiritual laws.

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2. Once wealth is earned, ethics kicks in. We are encouraged, on a purely voluntary basis, to share some of our personal wealth in line with our private values – this is “charity.” We also grant government the power to tax private wealth on behalf of the common good – but because taxation is coercive rather than voluntary, it must be justified by a strong moral claim. 3. Conservatives say that meddling with the natural laws of the market impedes economic efficiency and growth, so taxes should be kept low. Liberals say that the cold logic of the market must be leavened by equity and compassion, and the winners need to share their earnings with those less fortunate. The conflict between these two positions defines the contours of our politics. That, crudely stated, is the contemporary story of wealth. With minor variations it is accepted across the social and political

spectrum. Regrettably, it is both false and pernicious. It is pernicious because identifying the current distribution of wealth with a natural order puts the cause of justice at a permanent structural disadvantage. Yes, one can argue that the natural order is unfair and we have a moral obligation to provide for those who suffer from it. Many of us have spent years doing just that. But within that frame, the burden of proof rests on those who presume to redistribute wealth from its rightful creators to such “non-producers” as mothers, artists, government workers, the disabled, and the unemployed. In that battle the forces of the status quo will always have the upper hand. The story also rests on a false premise. In truth, wealth is created by whole societies and communities, not lone individuals. Personal effort plays a role, of course, but it is impossible to isolate the individual contribution from the social contribution; the two are inextricably linked. Activities often viewed as ancillary to economic production –scholarship, art, science, public service, social work, caregiving – are integral to wealth creation. Societies that invest broadly in child welfare, education, health care, environmental protection and other “collective” goods are not just fairer, but ultimately more prosperous. The conflict between economic growth and social equity, the alleged bone of contention between conservatives and liberals, is more myth than reality. Problematic as it is, the governing story of wealth is not easily supplanted. It clearly continued on page 10

FROM THE RABBI Dear Friends,

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t was 1987. I had recently returned from a year of study in Israel and began commuting to rabbinic school in New York via the Broadway-Lafayette F train station. Some of you will remember that in 1987 President Reagan’s cuts had taken hold and the BroadwayLafayette station was a de facto homeless shelter, where people slept, lived, and asked for food or money. I began to think it was impossible to study the basic texts of Jewish ethical behavior without doing something about people in such desperate need three blocks away so I worked with fellow students, faculty and administration at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion to start a soup kitchen. It opened its doors in the fall of 1988 and has operated steadily since then, a fact which I find affirming and appalling in equal measure. I will say that one of my proudest moments came when my Talmud professor, teaching us about a tamhui, the soup kitchen that was ever present in the shtetls and towns of Jewish Eastern Europe, stopped his lecture to say, “And now we have one here at HUC.” Communal assistance to those in need was an obligation in the 19th century and still is, in the 21st. That experience led me to become an active member of Interfaith Voices Against Hunger, taking part in monthly protests at City Hall against reductions in food stamps and the shutting of food programs which could not keep their doors open. We learned about Native American corn ceremonies, we engaged in Buddhist walking meditation, we listened to the shofar blast, we gathered in a Christian circle of prayer, and more. We enjoyed each other and those rituals, but in fact they did very little good for the people who still lived in desperate straits in subway stations and homeless shelters and piled up 10 in an apartment meant for 3. When I was ordained, I went to work for MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. There, presented the opportunity to give grants to organizations across the country that work to end hunger and feed the hungry, I learned a lot about the relative value

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Photo courtesy of Ellen Lippmann

of feeding someone a meal and advocating for change in the circumstances that create hunger. Enter the recession of 2008-09. Some of you heard me tell this story during Rosh HaShanah services this year: I was meeting a Kolot member at a café

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And finally the man spoke the truth: “I don’t have any money.”

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in a neighborhood near here earlier this year, something I often do as a rabbi without a real office. As I approached the café, I saw a man walking into the street and yelling at a small boy, presumably his son, to come on but the boy was near tears and hung back. The man kept walking and kept yelling. I suspected child abuse – the man was so harsh and the child so small and fearful. As I got closer, I could hear that the boy was saying he did not want to come, because he wanted something in the store behind him. Over and over he cried, “I want, I want.” Over and over, the man yelled, “Get over here! Get here right now!” One more time the boy cried, “I want…” And finally the man spoke the truth: “I don’t have any money.” I thought my heart would break. I

thought perhaps the man’s heart had broken at that moment of having to yell his shame as everyone around stopped to stare. Later I wept. Every week this fall I have spoken to or counseled or met with a Kolot member who has lost a job or seen a job diminish due to the recession. The shame middle class, formerly comfortable people feel in this circumstance parallels that felt by that man shouting at his son in the middle of the street. Recently I have realized that I was seeing more people sleeping on streets and in subway stations than I had in a long time. One word for a poor person, “ani,” is related to the word for oppress or humiliate. It also sounds very much like the word “ani,” me. Each poor person is an individual, feeling the oppression or shame of poverty in his or her own way. ‘Ani’ is also very like the Hebrew word for answer, “anah.” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, in her book, There Shall Be No Needy, reminds us that “the psalms regularly describe the ‘ani’ as suffering not only from financial need but also from illness, oppression, loneliness, and depression. This ‘ani’ calls out for divine help, on the assumption that God intervenes to redeem those who are suffering.” So what now, God? We need some strength for heshbon ha-nefesh, taking stock of our souls. Our task is not only rebuke of others, but also of ourselves. What is each of us doing that keeps the ‘ani’ needy? What in our choices in homes, meals, clothing, and more keeps the poor ‘ani’ – humiliatingly poor? What small measures can I take to help the man on the Brooklyn street who cannot buy his child a sweet or a toy or the Kolot member who needs help paying the rent or food? And what can I do – rak ani – just me -– to keep those new to poverty from feeling the humiliation that is so often the lot of the poor? How do we allow the society – country, state, city, neighborhood - in which we live to come to such a moment? I have been working on these questions for more than twenty years. I have wept and raged, written letters and written sermons, made calls and made stew. And yet here we are again, as forces well beyond most of our control wreak continued on page 10

Good with Money By Amanda Aaron

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lthough it feels crass to admit it, I’ve always loved money. I love organizing it, counting it, saving it, planning around it, listening to podcasts about it. I liked the tactile feel of coins as a kid, and enjoyed making tall piles of each kind, rolling them up and trading them for dollar bills. When I worked the cash register at a Hallmark store in the mall as a teenager, I prided myself on my speed making change and on my mental calculations of the tax and the change without the help of the register. I always took care to store the bills face up, with all of the heads pointing in the same direction. I have also always been lucky with money. I have always managed to earn enough money to cover more than just basic needs, and in a huge stroke of luck, I bought a Park slope apartment in 1999 instead of waiting a few years longer. Who knew that would be the

equivalent of winning the housing lottery? Although I majored in history and English in college, and the even more abstract Cinema Studies in grad school, it feels somehow inevitable that in my career, I have ended up working with money. For the past 11 years I have worked as a Real Estate Appraiser, and the focus of my job is assigning a dollar value to real estate. But often I wonder, what does this love of money say about me as a person? And what does our culture’s obsession with money mean for our quality of life and our obligations to one another as a community? In my job, I clearly see the dangers of abstract thinking about money, especially when dealing with large numbers. How can an office building I appraised a year ago at $60 million dollars be worth $30 million today? What is the meaning of value when it so easily changes? For me, arriving at these colossal numbers is purely mechanical: I re-

Coming Back to Money By Jenny Aisenberg

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y parents told me they were getting divorced the summer after my Bat Mitzvah, sending our fairly comfortable middle-class existence into a tailspin that would have ended with bankruptcy if not for my grandparents’ intervention. My dad had quit his job due to clinical depression, and my mom, who is severely bipolar, hadn’t worked in almost 5 years. Our house and my college fund were gone. So the mayhem was equal parts emotional turmoil and financial crisis. Before the dust had even settled, my mom whisked me off to my grandparents’ house in Maine, where she could fall apart without worry. My mother’s parents stepped in and dutifully took over as our providers, paying my mom what was essentially an “allowance,” taking over the payment of that part of my school tuition that wasn’t covered by a scholarship, and giving my mom

a credit card that would be billed directly to them – for medical expenses and emergencies only, they said. So there we were, walking down the street in Maine, trying to carry on with the business of normal life while our heads were still ringing with shock. For me, the most important piece was taken care of – I could keep going to the school I’d attended since kindergarten. I was more than willing to scrimp on everything else. As we walked down the street toward the public beach, we passed a knickknack shop with an enormous, fourfoot-tall statue of liberty displayed in the window. “Ooh,” my mother squealed, “we have to go inside!” I humored her, knowing that resistance was futile. Statues of liberty were her latest craze; she already had at least a dozen figurine-sized ones at home. After conferring with the salesman, she ran back to me, beaming – “It’s only $80! Can you believe it?”

search market data, punch some numbers into my calculator or excel spreadsheet, produce a $60 million or a $30 million dollar value. The change in value is only a different number on a page to me. I’m sure this loss in value means more to the owner who lost all of its equity investment in the property and to the bank that gave the owner a $40 million or $50 million loan, but is difficult to imagine the troubles of a large property owner or a multinational financial institution. These numbers are so large they become just numbers in my mind. Although the fee for my work is pennies compared to the dollar value of the property, the reduction of my fee by half between last year’s appraisal and this year’s packs much more of a meaningful impact for me. But one of the lessons I learn from Judaism at Kolot is to try to put myself in the shoes of others, to try to translate my own experience into empathy for the experience of others. It may be difficult to feel sorry for the Madoff victims who lost millions that most of us never had, but surely their pain is as real as ours. Since the economic collapse, the desire to rage and blame has been so

“Mom,” I said slowly, stunned. “You just said this morning that we only have $80 to live on for the next 2 weeks, and how we have to be really careful, and not eat out or anything.” My mom had never been practical, but I couldn’t believe she was suggesting that we should invest in a four-foot statue of liberty in lieu of food. “Oh, sweetheart,” she chuckled, shaking her head at me. “It’s not money – it’s the MasterCard!” Those words – it’s not money, it’s the MasterCard, have haunted me my entire adult life, as I’ve attempted to make my way in the world as a woman on my own. That my mom couldn’t be trusted with even the most basic financial planning was reinforced constantly throughout my adolescence, when she’d come home with bizarre items (like a real, freeze-dried alligator head) that she’d spent our grocery money on, perfectly happy to rely on Grandma’s “emergencies only” MasterCard for all the necessities our “living allowance” should have covered. I gave up trying to change Mom’s ways, even though my grandmother blamed me for my mother’s spending habits. My grandparents VOICES 3

great in our culture. But as someone whose work is a cog in the wheel of the capitalist machine, I also see clearly how individual decisions, which can be rational or reasonable, can lead to disastrous outcomes in a dysfunctional system. How can we fix things for the future when we are fixated on blame instead of true understanding? The money involved in large real estate transactions seems like an entirely different entity than the actual money I spend and save day-today. And my own, personal relationship to money, involving a Quicken budget with a variety of spending categories, a 401(k) plan, multiple bank and investment accounts and insurance policies, is surely unrecognizable to those who get by on little. Through Kolot’s social justice work on behalf of domestic workers, we are reminded of our ethical imperative to treat those who work for us fairly and equitably. But sometimes the scaling down of money in our society, from the trillions of our federal budget and deficit, to the dollars and pennies that are meaningful to domestic workers in our homes, is a challenging mental task. During the recent financial crisis, I found

have never stopped supporting my mom financially, and it doesn’t seem to trouble her at all that she’s living off what ought to be their retirement cushion. They are 84 and 82 now, and every month they still pay all her bills (but not rent – 3 years ago, they bought her a house). It has never been made clear to me exactly how much money they have, or when, if ever, they’ll be tapped out. What was made clear to me from that summer when my parents divorced was that my mom and I didn’t have much; just enough, really, to get by. I had my own money from babysitting and after-school jobs, and always earned enough to cover my teenage expenses (what I referred to as “the 3 C’s” – coffee, cigarettes and concerts). I’ve always done my best to be frugal, avoiding unnecessary luxuries rather than focusing my energies on trying to make more money. My grandparents pressured me heavily to choose a career path that would assure financial security early on, and we fought for many years over our differing opinions of what would be in my best interest. I understood – and I still do – their fears that I might turn out just like my mom, a 4 . V O I C E S

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Oh, sweetheart,” she chuckled, shaking her head at me. “It’s not money – it’s the MasterCard!”

c sponge that they can’t afford to subsidize indefinitely. But I also knew it wasn’t as black and white as they were making it: either get an MBA and live a long and comfortable life or, in my grandma’s words, “die in the gutter.” So I did something that no one in my family has ever done: I ignored my grandparents’ advice (and their bribe money), and struck out on my own, in search of a life based on something more meaningful than making heaps of cash. I took the scenic route through my 20’s, trying on different kinds of lives in the hopes of finding one that felt right. I never had much in the way of financial stability; there were times, as when I was living in Santa Cruz and working in the Farmer’s Market, that I wouldn’t have been able to eat if not for the fact that I was getting all my groceries on the barter system. But I did get by. And I did it on my own. I’ve lived in big, dirty coop houses with no heat, studio apartments, off-the-grid communes with full solar power and composting toilets, and even in tents. I was never homeless, but I knew that if I ever was that my family would take me in, and that’s all the security

that my income was greatly reduced, but fortunately I was still employed. Cutting back on spending forced me to reconsider the value of things I spent money on. Every $100 or $200 expense that can be easily eliminated is meaningful. The first impulse of many of my friends in similar circumstances was to cut back domestic workers. Cutting housekeeping seems like a no-brainer thing to do, eliminating a luxury that seems hard to afford any longer, and which many of us feel guilt about having in the first place. But what would that reduction mean to our employees? Surely the $100 or $200 per month means more to our immigrant housekeeper who travels two hours each way from New Jersey for the income than it does to my family. My daughter is in 2nd Grade and is learning all about numbers and about money. She loves numbers and I can see already that she will be “good” with money. The question is, how can I teach her to be good with money. I’m not sure I always set the best example, but I do know that our involvement in Judaism and community at Kolot will help us in this struggle.

I’ve ever needed. I wanted to live more than I wanted to plan. At the same time, I knew it would be nice to have more money – take exotic vacations, have cable TV, savings that could eventually finance the having of babies. And now it seems like I may finally be able to do both. Since I started my first post-grad school job last August, I suddenly have a lot of things I’ve never had before. A private office, health insurance, life insurance, paid vacation days and sick days (none of which I need to use for the Jewish holidays, as those are automatic paid holidays). Suddenly, I don’t have to worry about how I’ll make the rent from month to month; I don’t have to stress about whether or not I can afford to stay home if I’m sick. I don’t have to cheat my way into museums with my old student ID, or agonize (as much) over the choice between healthy food and cheap food when I’m out with my friends. And the flipside: I have to start paying dues, literally and figuratively. I have to start figuring out what I can now afford to continued on page 10

Ethics of Business – An Oxymoron? By Emma Missouri

One who wishes to acquire wisdom should study the way that money works, for there is no greater area of Torah study than this. It is like an ever-flowing stream…

– Rabbi Yishmael.

Ethical business? A Torah of money? Aren’t these oxymorons? According to the rabbis these ideas are not contradictions in terms. It is ironic that stereotypes of Jews and money, Jews and wealth and Jews in business have fueled anti-semitism. The behavior of people like Bernard Madoff is totally opposite of what our sages teach about creating wealth. In all our texts rabbis and sages deal extensively with money, business and work. Our ancestors are shown as active participants in the market place. Whether it is Abraham buying a tomb for Sarah or Joseph creating a development plan for Egypt, the torah is filled with tales of commerce, the exchange of money for work, work for brides, generous gifts, trades, greed and swindles. Our texts point explicitly to the fact that Judaism concerns itself with every aspect of daily life.

As the Torah is given as a covenant, so was work given as a covenant. – Rabbi Nathan. In his book, Jews, Money and Social Responsibility, Lawrence Bush elaborates on Reb Nathan’s idea: “Within Jewish thought, the wresting of our livelihood through labor sanctifies the connection between the human being (Adam) and the earth (Adamah). Work is one of the means by which Jews participate in the recreation of the world, as a partner with the Divine.” The rabbis magnify our purpose on earth through their interpretation of Genesis 2:15: G-d took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to guard it. They say we must work to survive and we are here to protect G-d’s work. Survival means to support and nourish ourselves physically. Survival also means to act upon our responsibilities as laid down in Torah. The Torah of work might be state as the sanctification of creation and the amelioration of the human condition. In the Pirke Avot the sages reflect, “Where there is no flour, there is no Torah. Where there is not Torah, there is no flour.” The first part of the statement is clear enough. When we do not have adequate livelihood we cannot be involved in anything but physical survival.

7 Principles of Eco-Kashrut Kavod HaOlam­– Honor the Earth: This law comes from Genesis 2:15. It is our work to guard (protect) all of G-d’s creation. Pikuach Nefesh – Save Life: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curses, therefore choose life, so you and your children may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19 Bal Tashcheet – Do Not Be Wasteful: In Deuteronomy 20: 19-20, G-d enjoins us that during a war we should not cut down the trees of an enemy – thus depriving them of their livelihood. Tza’ar Baalie Hayim – Be Kind to Living Things: Using Parsha Ki Tetze, Deuteronomy 22: 4-10, the rabbis broadened the law to respect animals, into a principle which encompasses all life on earth. Lo Tonu – Do Not Oppress Others Economically: Leviticus: 19: 13 reads “ You shall not oppress your in or steal from him.” Tzedakah – Act of Justice: The rabbis expand the law to include sharing the Wealth. Shmirat Shabbat: Keep the Shabbath

People can produce goods, create wealth and do business without Torah. It happens every minute. But as we do business, it is through Torah that we can understand our dependence on others as well as our responsibility to our community and the world. Our teachers point out that “the longest (spiritual) path is from the heart to the pocket.” The rabbis taught when two individuals establish a business exchange in good conscience and work to optimize the gain for both parties, this is a sacred moment recognized in Gan Eden. People everywhere have been fooled into believing that the value of money lies in the money itself rather than in this ethical exchange. So money becomes for some a golden calf, when in reality money is a means to fair exchange and the optimizing of gain for all involved. In the beginning of our history land, crops, livestock and slaves were measure of wealth. G-d promised our ancestors land. Over the centuries money replaced land as the primary measure of wealth. Money started out as an actual valued metal with weight – a shekel was a measure of weight as was the English pound or the Spanish peso. Now money has become an agreed-upon value of exchange of goods and work. We all operate with faith that a dollar is worth something. Every day, except Shabbat, we act on that faith. Is money “the root of all evil?” as my mother used to quip? Are money’s products greed and competition? Is it a tool of oppression? The Kabbalist believed that money is the product of people’s desire for justice and tikkun olam (healing the earth). These sages created a concept of real money. Real money is fair exchange among people, which optimized the gains for all involved directly and indirectly. Real money actualizes the exchange. Rabbi Nilton Bonder concludes that for the rabbis, the use of money “represents the interdependence of people, a desire for civilization, organization, peaceful coexistence and ecology.” Remember that we are taught that work is part of our covenant with G-d. One Hebrew word for work is parnassa. It can be translated as livelihood. Parnassa brings us into the marketplace. Here we earn real

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money, make exchanges for goods or services and communicate through commerce. Rabbi Arthur Waskow brings the marketplace into perspective: “The rabbis insisted that the marketplace as well as the workplace operate within a basic commitment to justice, loving-kindness, fairness and community.” Halakhah (law) demand actions,which fulfill the principles outlined by Rabbis Bonder and Waskow. One such example of the law of ona’ah – wronging or oppressing. The law comes from Leviticus 25:14: If you sell anything to your neighbor, or buy from your neighbor’s hand, you shall not wrong (oppress, overreach) each other. To strengthen this law, the rabbis add, “You shall not wrong each other, but you shall fear your G-d: I YHWH

The typical chief executive in the US earns on average $10.4 million in total compensation. am your G-d” Leviticus 25:17. From these passages the rabbis of the Talmud derived the law of oppressive prices. For them there is no such thing as just “doing business.” Commerce is not a separate amoral reality. Over charging – price gouging – is equated with humiliating another person through speech or action. My experience in the organic, fair-trade coffee business gave me the opportunity to participant in another economic model. A fair-trade network facilitates the purchase of organic coffee from the farmers, and then distribution and sale of green coffee to importers. The farmers who participate in the network are guaranteed fair market value for their product. If the commodities market price goes up after the contracts are signed, the farmers receive a percentage of the increase. If the price goes down the still receive the agreed-upon price. This network operated on the law of “not wronging another person” and on the rabbinical idea that commerce should be a fair exchange among 6 . V O I C E S

people, which optimize gain for all the parties involved. Rabbi Zalman Schachter coined the term eco-kashrut. The concept of eco comes from ecology – understanding the interdependence of life on earth. Kashrut come from our dietary laws which define what is permissible to consume and what is treyfe or not permissible to consume. Therefore, eco-kashrut translates into a concept of what is morally and ethically imperative. A great example of this occurred in Massachusetts in the 1960’s. The rabbis declared iceberg lettuce treyfe. They declared that iceberg lettuce was not permissible to consume because of the working conditions of the farmer workers who planted, picked and packed it. The principles of eco-kashrut (see box) come directly from the Torah and create an excellent framework for creating an ethical business. Let’s focus on the principles surrounding the creation of wealth and Tzedakah as they relate to the accumulation of wealth. It is considered a mitzvah to create abundance for people and the earth. However, we are also admonished to create abundance without creating scarcity for someone else. The rabbis believe that it is “better to not have abundance if it brings about scarcity anywhere else.” This idea of ecological abundance could be derived from the principles of Bal Tashcheet and Lo Tonu. In the coffee business, we see the largest coffee companies clear cutting rain forest to plant coffee bush. They use toxic chemicals to control the “weeds” and pests. They pay their workers very low wages. These workers live in extreme poverty. So these big coffee companies are making a lot of money for themselves and their shareholders. But they create scarcity by destroying the environment and oppressing their workers. Organic farmers grow their coffee bush amongst banana, avocado and nut trees. They do not use chemical herbicides or pesticides. Many organic coffee farms are worker cooperatives. Many organic farmers belong progressive trade networks. The organic coffee business represents creating abundance while minimizing scarcity. The eco-kashrut principles add up the “ non-predatory use of resources.” Dean Cycon, owner of Dean’s Beans Organic, Fair Trade Coffee, likes to say, “I’m in the organic coffee roasting business to make a living not a killing.” As we generate abundance or wealth we must generate healing – repair.

More than Thirty Million Americans are currently unemployed. It is part of our work covenant to do tikkun olam, repairing the world. And the business partner of tikkun olam is esher olam – wealth of the world. The rabbis are emphatic that our livelihood not just be about the accumulation of wealth. So we come to tzedakah. Rabbi Bonder states, “Wealth without giving impoverishes the market.” We understand that tzedakah is not merely giving. The root of tzedakah is justice. Rabbi Bonder calls it the “act of justicing.” How we use our personal gives and talents is the true measure of our livelihood. According to Maimonides, the highest form of tzedakah is providing someone with the means to make a living. Thus tzedakah represents the real meaning of wealth. It demands of us involvement, creativity and all our wisdom. It is our opportunity to express our gratitude for life, consciousness, opportunity and prosperity. The “acts of justicing” express our understanding that all we have is really G-d’s. In Leviticus, G-d utters, “The land is Mine and you are but wayfarers on it, visitors with Me.” Just as we can never really own the land, so what we have accumulated is really the sum total of all the wealth of this earth and its people – G-d’s wealth. If you would like to know more about ethical business principles and practices check these books out. Kabala of Money by Rabbi Nilton Bonder Jews, Money and Social Responsibility by Lawrence Bush and Jerry Dekro Down-to-Earth Judaism by Rabbi Arthur Waskow She Who Dwells Within by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb The Challenge of Wealth by Meir Tamari

Shabbat Shekalim By Cindy Greenberg

This D’var Torah was delivered in February to kick off our Spring Up! From Galut To Geluah campaign.

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habbat Shekalim is literally the shabbat of shekels. This special moment of the year – which is about the taxes that are levied to support the community – takes place on the Shabbat prior to Rosh Chodesh for the month of Adar or on Rosh Chodesh Adar itself, which is about a month before Passover. It is a reminder that the due date for these taxes is approaching on the 1st of Nisan. This timing is also interestingly aligned with our American experience of tax season which approaches in April; that moment in the year when our financial obligations as citizens are most present, and when I know many of us wrestle both with the personal financial implications involved and with the moral and ethical questions of how our tax dollars are spent – which wars are they fueling, what after-school and anti-poverty programs are not getting their fair share. How our dollars and our values are or are not aligned. That’s what I’ll talk about today. In a special haftarah for this Shabbat, King Yehoash commanded that all these funds of our ancestors were brought to the Temple to be used for its repairs and renovations. As Michele Alperin from My Jewish Learning explains, this included “both the required contributions and the free-will offerings.” So you can see how this Shabbat was a natural fit when the rabbi and I met recently to think about when and how we could begin talking more about fundraising and Kolot, what is needed to support and sustain our community all year long. It was bashert! The name for this shabbat comes directly from the maftir reading in Exodus 30:11. Here are those words of Torah:

“11 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 12 When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled.13 This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight – twenty gerahs to the shekel – a half-shekel as an offering to the Lord. 14 Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty

years up, shall give the Lord’s offering: 15 the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving the Lord’s offering as expiation for your persons. 16 You shall take the expiation money from the Israelites and assign it to the service of the Tent of Meeting; it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before the Lord, as expiation for your persons.” A few things in particular jumped out at me from this parsha.  First, that there is a census, a count, a taking stock of how many are in our tribe. It seems wise in any community to do that at least once a year. And it had a lot of resonance for me here at Kolot where our community continues to grow – by about 20-30 members each year – and in this American census year, reflecting on the implications of being counted or overlooked. Keeping track of all our people and our needs, opening up space for our dreams and questions is no small task. Without a count, how could we do that? And the act of counting seems to me also about affirming one’s connection to the community. About, in essence, opting in. Saying as Abraham said “hineini” – “Here I am.” Hillel’s words also come to my mind here: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” That there is power in affirming one’s connection to our tribe – whether it was all those years ago or if it is just this week as you say, yes, I want to be a member of this community and join Kolot. But then came that strange word “ransom,” and to make it worse, a ransom that one has to pay directly to G-d so “that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled.” Huh? Sounds like paying to offset the original sin to me nd that seemed strange. Why do we have to pay a ransom to G-d because we part of a community that, as our stories say, G-d chose? Clearly the stakes are high because if we don’t, a plague is coming our way – and a month before Pesach, that plague stuff is serious business! To my mind, a G-d who has a covenantial relationship with us doesn’t ask us to pay a ransom – a sort of bribe as if we’d been abducted.  When I try to think about the modern significance of that for us here at Kolot, a community we have chosen for ourselves, I don’t want to view the financial support I give as a “ransom.” But I do share the notion of obligation that is embedded in all this: that it is not optional. That being in the community, being part of this Kolot tribe once I’ve chosen it, means I can’t “opt out”

of community obligations. I have to support and sustain it. I get it that one can indeed “opt out” of being Jewish or being in community: here at Kolot we share an expansive view about what it means to be Jewish and the many ways Jews connect, identify, engage with, select and yes sometimes reject what Jewish means to them or pieces of our traditions and histories that feel incongruous with our experience. But for us here, right here, in this minute, we all opted in – to this Shabbat, to being here, and for many of us, to being part of this community all year long.  As I wrestled with this troubling ransom piece, our rabbi shared this note from the humash Eitz Hayim with me:

Ransom, in Hebrew kofer, refers to a monetary payment made to offset an incurred physical penalty.   Apparently, it was taken for granted that a census jeopardizes the lives of those counted; therefore, each individual must redeem his life through payment of a half-shekel. (See 2 Samuel 24 where a plague follows a census undertaken by David)

I found that really interesting. The act of counting jeopardizes those who are counted. Is that because they are then identified with the community and so, then, visible to the community’s enemies? Or because if you are counted, then the obligations of the community become your obligations and some of those obligations might be risky?  What would that mean here at Kolot? Do we have any enemies? And what risks do we take as a community? Are there risks we should be taking?  The rabbi shared with me her read on this: 

This section is the beginning of the portion Ki Tissa, in which the people make and begin to worship the Golden Calf, before G-d and Moses discover that, Moses comes down and smashes it, makes them drink it, kills a lot of them.  Then G-d and Moses have a beautiful make-up session which is read on Pesakh and Sukkot; she often thinks it is read as a reminder that we Jews have to think about re-upping twice a year, with this passage that is in many ways a renewal of the covenant.   So, a long way of saying that it sometimes seems the ransom – the expiation – is to be paid forward, for the sin of the Golden Calf.  

I like that notion of “paying it forward,” as it were. But I also hope that at Kolot being count-

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ed doesn’t feel quite so treacherous. Our notion of “redeeming our life” through payments to the community is more in the frame of our commitment to Gemilut Hasadim or l’dor v’dor; that by supporting our community and what it provides to us and all who are in it, we are engaged in an act of loving kindness and one which will support our continued life together from generation to generation. But coming back to those plagues... as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about and yes worrying over what Kolot wants, needs and dreams for and what our financial resources will allow, I am right there with the plagues. As I shared with you all before Chanukah, Kolot is running a planned $30K deficit in our budget this year. What if we hadn’t had reserve funds – built through many years of people’s generosity to our community – to help us do that? We would have had some much tougher decisions to make this year. And I bet some of them would have felt like plagues. Imagine if we’d had to scale back anything you love here at Kolot? Or chose among our staff who we could keep and who we must let go? And then in the parsha, there is the standard of measure of what everyone pays to support the community: “a half shekel by the sanctuary weight.”  That struck me in two ways. First, and a bit sarcastically, I wondered how our ancestors could have determined how much the sanctuary weighed so that they could then fix a half a shekel in relationship to it. I have this image of them lifting up the Temple or the Tent of Meeting and standing there like Hercules or Athena, the Temple in one hand and the Tent in the other, “ah, yes, this year the Tent’s little heavier than last, must be all those branches and boughs from Sukkot we left laying around, but boy, the Temple seems a little lighter than last year, maybe we went overboard with the fasting during Yom Kippur?” But I know that’s not what’s being conveyed.  Instead, the Torah teaches us that each is paying the same: a half shekel and that we’re using a standard measure that everyone recognizes: the scale in the sanctuary. This spoke to me a lot about our life together at Kolot. In thinking about our dues, we set a 1% structure so that everyone is paying the same percent, but with recognition of the differences in economic capacities and realities among us. So some of those 1 percents will be more shekels than others.  One thing we’ve been learning in analyzing our membership dues is that this system we put in place is maybe not perfect and is not necessarily doing for Kolot what we need it to do, meaning that the total amount of money we are bringing in from membership dues is not enough of our overall financial pie. We will be looking at

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that more closely for the year ahead. but this disparity in our overall kolot pie is also where our fundraising comes in: helping us meet the gap between what our fees and dues cover and what we actually need to spend for the year. At Kolot, that gap is pretty significant – this year just over $100K – and that’s one reason why we’ve spent so much energy strategizing about creative ways to fill it. Creative things like the “last night for Kolot” Chanukah campaign and year-end outreach we recently conducted that helped us raise over $32,000. We hosted a “Seder Rebound on the third night of Pesach and, in May, there will be the special, “Practicing, Concert with our own

C

Being in the community… means I can’t “opt out” of community obligations.

c Jewish musicians. But this nitty gritty of weights and measures in a parsha about taxes during a series of parshot (Mishpatim) about laws and regulations, also reminded me of the wisdom our ancestors had in talking about the intricacies of what it takes to live a Jewish life and be part of our Jewish community: “Set them as a sign upon your house.” “Do not oppress the stranger.” “If you lend money, especially to the poor, do not take interest.” “Bring no harm the widow or orphan.” Being clear about things is important. Setting the rules of engagement and obligation. Especially if you want to build something – community, trust, relationships, holiness – together. That’s part of what I’m trying to do today right here and now. Talking about money and our community. That we can’t have our beloved Kolot in the way we love it without the funds to support it. “Im ain kemakh, ain Torah” – without bread there can be no Torah. And our ancestors knew that, which is why they created a tax to keep the community they loved – and which we have inherited – alive and thriving.

But the piece of this parsha that speaks most deeply to me is this last one: “the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less.” Everyone is obligated and everyone is obligated equally. I’m not sure if these words of Torah mean that, in fact, our ancestors didn’t recognize that economic burdens are felt differently by people of different means. This mandate is not written, for instance, as “each according to each” or “each according to the means they have.” But I hear that sentiment echoed in these words that all members of the community are needed to sustain it and that the obligation itself is the same, and holy. That those with great means are not more obligated and those with less means are not less obligated.  At Kolot, we share this value: “all hands are needed,” we say in our mission statement and that belief and value is deeply embedded in all that we do. As we head into the second half of 5770 together, today kicking off Spring Up: From Galut (Exile) To Geulah (Redemption), a special spring campaign of events and activities tied to our Jewish calendar, beginning today with Shabbat Shekalim and ending in May with Shavuos, that equality of obligation and necessity that we all pitch in holds true. Kolot needs all of us and both the obligated taxes we contribute -- our membership dues and the fees we pay for Kolot programs like adult and children’s education -- and the “voluntary” gifts we make, both of our time and creativity in the ways we people the many projects at Kolot from our siddur selection committee, to our Eitz Kehillah social justice work, to Gemilut Hasadim and our care of community members in need, to the financial gifts we share when we honor a friend who is becoming b’nei mitzvah, or we buy a ticket to Off the Bimah or the Dinners event, or we bring a friend to the author series or Purim celebration. Without all of us contributing--the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less--Kolot cannot keep our little engines running and keep our mishkan and holy, beloved community intact and growing.  This Shabbat Shekalim is the first of several special shabbatot in this season from just before Purim to Pesakh. Why do they start with this one--Shabbat Shekalim--and why is Kolot starting, drawing attention and marking it? Maybe because without affirming that we are in community together--doing that count and opting in--and then offering our support (in this case, financial payments), we can’t yet do anything else. That we need that tally and those taxes and gifts and sense of obligation and community to lay the foundation for us so that we can then observe our rituals together, mark the season, learn and celebrate together. I know that’s true for us at Kolot-in this complicated economy but also the rest of the time. All hands are needed, all year long. n

A Community of Givers By Phyllis Arnold

I will speak to you about the hau…The hau is not the wind that blows – not at all. Let us suppose that you possess a certain article (taonga) and that you give me this article. You give it me without setting a price on it. We strike no bargain about it. Now, I give this article to a third person who, after a certain lapse of time, decides to give me something as payment in return (utu). He makes a present to me of something (taonga). Now, this taonga that he gives me is the spirit (hau) of the taonga that I had received from you and that I had given to him. The taonga that I received for these taonga (which came from you) must be returned to you. It would not be fair (tika) on my part to keep these taonga for myself, whether they were desirable (rawe) or undesirable (kino). I must give them to you because they are a hau of the taonga that you gave me. If I kept this other taonga for myself, serious harm might befall me, even death. This is the nature of the hau, the hau of personal property, the hau of the taonga, the hau of the forest. Kati ena (But enough on this subject). –Tamati Ranaipiri, Maori informant

quoted in The Gift, by Marcel Mauss Long ago and far away, giving even one gift was a mutual act. The spirit of the gift accompanied it and dwelled with the recipient until returned to the gift-giver by a reciprocal act of giving. One can apply a variety of analytic frameworks to the phenomenon, from functional (the reciprocity generated by giving creates social cohesion necessary to sustain the group) to symbolic (the reciprocity both mirrors and prescribes a set of moral standards that shapes the everyday life of participants – “it would not be fair (tika) on my part to keep these taonga for myself ”). Any way you look at it, “gifting” in traditional cultures was a whole different thing than it is in American culture today. When we talk about giving at Kolot, we’re talking about a lot more than asking for a flow of cash from your pocket to ours, a lot more than asking that you pay a fee for a service, whether it’s sending your child to the Children’s Learning Program or attending Shabbat services each week. Our “ask” at

The Meaning of Tzedekah by Susan Kranberg

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eneva, New York, circa 1954. When I was four, my family moved to this upstate town of 17,000. There were about 30 Jewish families in a twenty-mile radius. The shul, Temple Beth-el, was a house on Main Street with a view of Seneca Lake from the back windows. Hebrew school was upstairs in the “bedrooms.” We got a big crowd for the High Holidays, but otherwise there were a small group of machers who supported the congregation with some arm-twisting from my father Joe. He served as President forever and I remember him calling up a handful of regulars and asking them to donate a few thousand dollars each to keep the place running. He was always complaining that people didn’t give as much as they could afford. There was one big donor who was the mainstay – Eddy Guggenheimer. Eddy Guggenheimer’s name did not appear anywhere on the building and he rarely came to services but he

helped the congregation to stay alive. So I grew up understanding the obligation to support a congregation. This extended further to supporting Israel Bonds, United Jewish Appeal and a host of other Jewish organizations. I recall vividly the blue and white pushke my mother kept in the kitchen, the contents of which went to a yeshiva. We were constantly receiving appeals from yeshivas – I don’t know how they found our family in Geneva, New York but they did. So fast forward thirty years to the 1990’s when I found myself, after a long absence, in a synagogue on Yom Kippur and in tears. I mentioned this experience to my father and he suggested I become a member. “If you go to synagogue,” he said, “you must support it”. To my surprise, I did, following in his footsteps and becoming increasingly involved. I served on the Board of Directors, my name went up on the donor wall, I received honors at the High Holidays…I was a macher. Throughout my life I believed that one’s

Kolot is about the “hau,” the spirit that accompanies the gift and that reflects so much more than the thing given. Not that we don’t want and need the thing given. We do. But in asking that you dig as deep as you can to help close our deficit or that you consider (and hopefully affirm) the relative priority of Kolot in your overall scheme of giving, we ask that you create a relationship with Kolot, a bond, that transcends the money. The relationship created y that gift is rooted in the obligation it engenders in Kolot to give its spirit back to you, to shape that spirit into a community of reciprocal giving and support. We create our Kolot community with every act we take, whether it’s eating together, learning together, or praying together. That community is there to help cushion the impacts of tragedy or illness, to help rejoice in the milestones that we celebrate, to pray for those forgotten, and to lend our voices in support of those in the world around us whose needs are too often neglected by the dominant culture. And to just hang out and talk. So let us all consider the reciprocal obligations created by giving. Please join us in creating a community of givers – of life, of sustenance, of joy and, of hope. n contribution made to a shul was measured in dollars. Service was important but service did not pay the rent. But since I joined Kolot three years ago and also seen my financial situation radically altered in the past year, my thinking has changed. How did this happen? Over breakfast at Dizzy’s several months ago, Rabbi Lippmann asked how I was doing. I mentioned that I did not know how I was going to pay my rent and she said, “Kolot can help. How much do you need?” I was stunned and moved to tears. Without my asking, help was offered. What had I done to deserve this? Deserve according to the dictionary means “to be worthy of: merit; synonym earn.” Merit, in this case, came because I was part of a caring community and this was not something I had to earn. Instead of feeling humiliated, I felt gratitude. And now I know what paying dues and supporting a community really means – it goes for much more than rent and salaries; it goes towards people. Receiving tzedakah is a gift just as giving it is. So now, I will give in the different ways I can to the community and hope others continue to do so that we can all prosper. n VOICES 9

co-creation continued from page 1

serves the interests of society’s winners, who wield disproportionate power over the currency of ideas. And it is rooted in a worldview central to western culture, a worldview that assumes a radical separation between the individual and society, the creator and the created, the profane and the sacred. For that reason, a narrowly political or ethical argument has little power against it. Only an alternative worldview, a different metaphysic of wealth, can provide an effective challenge to it. Judaism, taken seriously, offers just such an alternative. In the Torah and subsequent texts, wealth is co-created by individuals, the community, and God, and ownership is shared in the same fashion. Individual possession of wealth is intrinsically contingent. Hence the Jubilee year, when all debts – not just “unfair” ones – are erased. Hence the rabbinic concept of tzedakah, often translated as “charity” but fundamentally different because, while you may choose who and how to give, the obligation to share is not voluntary but binding. Another way to say this is that in Juda-

ism, wealth creation is not distinct from the spiritual realm but integral to it. This view is embodied in the famous biblical injunction to leave the fallen grain in the fields. This passage, it seems to me, has been consistently misread through the lens of our contemporary story of wealth, with the point being that you should give away a bit of what you’ve earned to charity. But the injunction does not say: maximize your yield, and then donate a small portion to feed the poor. It says: even though you have tilled the field yourself, you shall not harvest all of it. You didn’t create it alone, and it doesn’t belong to you alone. In today’s world that is a deeply radical notion. To be clear, traditional Judaism does not deny the legitimacy of personal wealth – it is not “collectivist.” It recognizes tension, but not contradiction, between private ownership and social ownership of wealth, and this is precisely what makes it speak powerfully to us today. In the ancient Jewish idea of co-creation there is the germ of a new story of wealth in which justice is not an add-on, an afterthought, but embedded in its very core. n

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give to the causes I support; how much to pay for my Kolot dues, how much I ought to be saving every month, which retirement plan I should choose – what does the word “annuity” mean? I’m not all that freaked out about it, honestly. Maybe I should be, but I just can’t bring myself to feel anxious about the fact that I am more cushioned and secure than I have ever been before. But I wonder whether I’m really earning all this comfort and usefulness. My roommate works much longer hours than I do, and makes significantly less. I know it’s not really as simple as that, but I can’t stop myself from suddenly wanting the world to be fair, in a way I didn’t really before. Is that strange? Now that I’ve moved closer to the haves than the have-nots, I feel more urgently the need for global pay equity. It seems like it should be the other way around. I never realized how comfortable I’d gotten on the margins – I knew I didn’t owe the world anything because I didn’t have anything. I still wanted to contribute, but I didn’t feel indebted to do so.

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Now, having more than the bare minimum I need to survive, I feel obligated to give back in a much more urgent, immediate way. It’s a strange sort of feeling; not the desire to give tzedakah, which feels normal, but the realization that I have tzedakah to give. And I understand more deeply now the rules of tzedakah that were taught to us in Hebrew school; how giving money directly to someone who needs it, from your hand to theirs, creates a chasm of power between you, and how easily that’s abused. You’d think I would’ve learned that from a lifetime of struggling with my grandparents, and their implicit assumption that they could buy the right to make all my decisions for me. I don’t ever want to use money that way; and I also realize how much easier it is to say that I won’t when the question is purely academic – when I didn’t actually have any money. I just hope that, someday, if I’m lucky enough to have grandchildren and the financial resources to support them, I’ll be able to honor whatever choices they make for themselves…even if it’s business school. n

rabbi continued from page 2

havoc they may not intend and do not repair. Hunger is the tip of the iceberg of poverty, the symptom that makes us all know there is serious illness at hand. When our trusty editor asked me to write about money, hunger is what came to mind and keyboard. The statistics are grim beyond belief. Children across the country and the world are hungry every day. So are old people. So are many able-bodied adults who want to work. So are some Kolot members who may feel too ashamed to ask for help. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger remind us that in New York City, 1.3 million New Yorkers (one in six) live in food insecure households. 417,000 of them are children. My prayer is that they get help, that the shame diminishes in the face of true community, that the economy picks up, that jobs return, that Kolot’s dues return to normal levels, that we get through this bad time as we got through the one of the late 1980’s, but without the greed and unbridled risk and use of people as pawns that marked the recovery of the 1990’s. My prayer is for more regulation, more compassion, more interest in people than in mortgage rates, more jobs and fewer soup kitchens. In 1987, I looked around at people in need and began a soup kitchen. 22 years later I look around and ask, “Who is making all those people hungry?” The answer is multi-faceted, making it hard to know how to help. I am back to thinking one hot meal can make some difference. It just doesn’t solve anything. n In tarnished hope, Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

I am endlessly grateful to Connect to Care, a program of UJA-Federation of New York, which provides help (social work, legal, financial) to Jews hurt in this recession. Do you need this help? Find it here: http://www. ujafedny.org/connect-to-care/

KOLOT CHAYEINU/VOICES OF OUR LIVES INVITES YOU TO

SPRING UP! FROM GALUT TO GEULAH FUN, COMMUNITY, FUNDRAISING FROM SHABBAT SHEKALIM TO SHAVUOS

SATURDAY MAY 15—PRACTICING: A CONCERT AND CONVERSATION WITH CREATIVE JEWISH IMPROVISERS With renowned musicians Marc Ribot, Jessica Lurie, Marty Ehrlich, Roy Nathanson and friends. Jazz, Jews, spirituality, musicology, Brooklyn—all under one roof. At Kolot. 8-10pm. Further details TBA. To sponsor the evening or to reserve your ticket, email [email protected]. SATURDAY JUNE 5—SPRING UP! FOR SUPPER Kolot’s annual community dinners event. Join friends from Kolot and beyond for terrific dining, conversation and connection all over Brooklyn! Further details TBA. Interested in hosting? Want to reserve your seat at the table? Email [email protected]. Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives is at 1012 Eighth Avenue at 10th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn. Visit us at www.kolotchayeinu.org or contact [email protected] or 718-390-7493 for more info, rsvps/tickets, updates or to get involved with any of these SPRING UP! events.

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If There is No Bread Im ain kemakh, ain Torah, we learn in Pirke Avot, the Sayings of our Fathers. If there is no bread, there is no Torah, no learning. This crucial teaching echoes down the centuries to my computer as I contemplate Kolot’s ambitious fundraising plan for this spring. It echoes because it is so true: we literally could have no Torah – no Torah scroll, no Torah commentaries, no Torah study, and no Torah reading – if we had no bread, meaning no sustenance, which in our time means money. And so while some separate the spiritual from the financial, I cannot understand how such separation is possible or why it is desirable. If I cannot separate my family’s budget from our ability to be together in joy and work and recreation, how can I separate my community’s budget from our ability to pray,

learn, laugh, cry, act, and build together? But Pirke Avot gives us a second part of this important teaching, mirroring the first: Im ain Torah, ain kemakh. If there is no Torah, there is no bread. If there is no learning – no community celebrations, no holiday services, no learning for children or adults, no action for justice – then why would anyone give to support a hollow shell of a congregation? For just this reason, our spring campaign connects to the ways we want to celebrate or learn or enjoy anyway: You who came to enjoy Purim already gave more then we imagined you might! We came together again for a first at Kolot: a Pesakh nonseder party on the third night of the holiday. We will celebrate Shavuot together as well, standing again at Sinai as we

take on the Torah that leads to our sustenance, physical, emotional, spiritual. We want to have fun too, so we’re having an amazing jazz concert (May 15) spearheaded by noted musician and Kolot member Marc Ribot. And we like to get together just so, so we are hosting our many dinners on one night again, in June. We may go to the movies together, too, or to the theater. And all the while we are raising the funds that Kolot – meaning all of us – need to strengthen the foundation of our mishkan, our traveling tabernacle. Terumah is the Torah term for contributing to build the mishkan. It comes from a Hebrew root that means to lift or elevate. When each of us gives for our tabernacle, it becomes a true mishkan, a place God can dwell among us. – Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

Kolot Chayeinu Staff Rabbi Ellen Lippmann Founding Rabbi Lisa B. Segal Chazzan/Music Director Ora Wise Director of Education Diane Kirschner Administrative Director Molly G. Kane Student Rabbi Miriam Attia Shabbat & Facilities Coordinator Efrat Baler-Moses Administrator Carlos Albino Nunez Custodian Board of Trustees Cindy Greenberg President Adrienne Fisher Treasurer Seth Borgos Secretary Phyllis Arnold Vice President Margie Fine At-Large Member of Executive Committee: Sally Charnow Cathy Einhorn Ellen Garvey Melanie Holcomb Lisa Jakobsberg Josh Rubin Shira Sameroff Eric Sloan Laura Srebnik Bob Usdin Teachers Johanna Bronk Daniele Kohn Shanie Israel Hannah Mermelstein Leah Sasha Schwartz Tehila Wise Voices Staff Trisha Arlin Editor Sarah Sills Layout & Production

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