A member of our congregation told me a story about something that happened as she was setting up the installation program for the incoming board of a non-profit organization on which she also serves. During the set-up, something spilled on the floor. This woman was busy in another part of the room at the time, but she saw what happened next. As board members and their families arrived for the event, some saw the spill on the floor. Each one said something like, "This is horrible! This is dangerous! Isn't someone going to come and do something about this?"

Well, our congregant did come over to the spill and wipe it up. But as she was doing so, she wondered, "Who the heck are these people to complain? What am I, the hired help? They are board members, just like me, and if something is wrong, then they are as much to be expected to be a part of the solution as I am. Each one of them should have sought a mop or a paper towel to clean it up."

Which brings me to the point: when we are members of an organization like ours, we are the ones who do what needs to be done. If something needs to be fixed, and we are the ones who see it, we are the ones who need to get the fixing done, or at least started. Obviously there are situations beyond our expertise. But in those cases, we should not just stand and complain, or worse, just pass by the problem waiting for the hired help to notice, but we should go about bringing the right help to bear on the issue. In short, it is our place, and we need to own it. If this is our home, our communal home, then we are all in charge, and we are all responsible. As Hillel said, "Where there is no mentsch, strive to be a mentsch"-Pirkey Avot 2:5. If you notice what needs to be done, and no one else does, you have been chosen to deal with it. So choose to be an angel, a worker of G0d's work on earth, and respond to your task.   

I could just dwell on those who stand around doing nothing when others are doing something, but lest I seem like a blind ingrate, let me say that one of the neat things about Etz Chayim is that, by and large, people do notice what needs to be done. After services people are always pitching in. I especially remember last Chanukah, when we had a huge turnout and the concomitant huge mess of sufganiot smashed into the linoleum, that many who had not signed up to do clean-up stuck around and emptied the garbage and swept the floor, to the great joy and enthusiasm of those who had already committed to be there. And new friends were made that night.   

So why am I giving this talk? Because, though there is a great deal of voluntarism in Etz Chayim, our increasing numbers have made our once-intimate community feel awash in a sea of strangers. Counting all the trial members, we are nearing 250 households, 800-plus souls. Imagine how anonymous we might feel were we to grow larger still.   

It is always harder to come somewhere where we don’t know people, and that is why we are using name tags, and why we use them at every service and event. For not having people we want to talk to at these events breeds anonymity, along with a sense that each of us is unimportant, invisible, and irrelevant. And that generates the feelings that other people ought to do the stuff that needs to get done, that there must be hired help somewhere, and that we are just in a big store, a big Jewish store, or some kind of big, anonymous, social agency.   

Many have even joined Etz Chayim under the illusion that we are a full-service social service agency. We aren't. Never had it, never will. As the propaganda materials we put out says, "We are a participatory congregation." And that does not just mean in ritual actions. It means that nothing gets done unless Etz members organize it and do it. Period. If there are those here who want a full-service agency staffed by professionals, please join one. But if that is what anyone here is expecting from Etz Chayim, let me politely say that I believe you are in the wrong place.   

Now, the scenario I presented at the beginning of this talk, of board members kvetching for "someone to do something" is, obviously, not unique to us. We all swim in the same societal waters.   

The problem stems from the way we go about living our lives as anonymous consumers, and not as members of a community. We expect to be waited on by the help, not to walk in and ask how we can do our part. And we walk in to Etz Chayim having just come from some store somewhere, where that was how we acted.   

An aside: when you are in a store and you see stuff that has fallen to the ground, do you pick it up? That is tikkun olam, repairing the world. If we leave it on the ground, why do we do that? Because it isn't ours? But wouldn't we wish our guests to do the same for us? And when we walk somewhere and see litter, do we pick it up, or as much of it as we can? Why would we not do this? Is this not also tikkun olam, repairing the world? And does this opportunity to repair the world not grow even stronger when we are in our own home?   

But I digress.   

The vision of those who put this congregation together, as well as what those who joined soon after continued to work for, is one of involvement and pitching in. The side benefits are that we get a sense of pride in ownership, as well as a great way to meet each other, by working alongside them.   

Do you know how many people it took to put these services on? Besides the board of directors, who determined the policy and the place, and the staff, who implemented their policy, and besides all those who are shlepping up to the stage to read and sing and chant. It took two chairpeople, Marcy Abramovitz and Kathy Kermit, who spent tons of time and energy, but especially insight and creativity, to pull this off. Yet they were only the chairpeople. The rest of the effort was hosted by these people:   

Jeff Abramowitz, Gary Ackerman, Margie Baker, Karen Bergen, Rob Shelton, David Findley, Mel Goldstein, Joanne Jagoda, Sandra Koppe-Passell, Marlene Maier, Judy Podolsky, Lisa Ratner, Laura Rosenzweig, Marion Rubenstein, Paula Rugg, Laura Steuer, Sue Weber, Linda Wittlin.   

Plus assorted ushers, greeters, oneg preparers, including, Stacey Adelson, Emily Allen, David Bergen, Rhea Feldman, Sheila Flodberg, Carol Hallyn, Dorothy Hodges, Gordon Lewin, David Lewin, Sheri Morrison, Leah Orr, Amy Pearl, Hillary Rowen, Sharon Richmond, Cheryl Seehorn, Magen Solomon, Dorothy Stern, Cathy Taylor, Elizabeth Weal,   

Now let me say that this is an incomplete list, and there are a few more names that will be included in a forthcoming issue of our congregational bulletin. And it does not count all of you who, already, have seen things to do and just joined right in to do with them on your own. I have seen that going on all over the place, in only one night so far. Let it continue and increase!   

We need a pithy and resonant set of words to express these concepts, and I believe we can find such a vocabulary in the examples of our ancestors, Avraham and Sarah. The words we usually use of to describe those who run organizations are activists, leaders, organizers, and helpers, or worker bees. The words that I would like to suggest we use are host and guest. These words embrace goals that all of us can achieve, to some degree, no matter how copious or meager our free time is. Additionally, they resonate longer and more deeply in our tradition. Let me show you.

The Torah portions we read last night and this morning that speak of the birth and offering of Isaac occur, in the cycle of weekly Sabbath portions, at the end of one long Torah portion called vaYera, Genesis chapters 18-22. At the beginning of that portion Avraham and Sarah demonstrate an inordinate amount of hospitality, which, the Talmud exhorts us, is an example we, their descendants should follow. Here is the account of what they did:

18:1. HaShem appeared to him (Avraham) in the plains of Mamre as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. 2. He raised his eyes and saw three men standing nearby him. So he ran to meet them from the tent door, bowed low, 3. and said, "Sirs, if now I have found favor in your sight, don't travel on, I ask you, from your servant; 4. Let a little water, I beseech you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; 5. I will fetch a bit of bread, and you comfort your hearts; after that you may travel on; seeing that you are come to your servant."    And they said, "Do as you have said."

6. So Avraham hurried to the tent to Sarah, and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes." 7. Then Avraham ran to the herd, and fetched a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man; who then hurried to prepare it. 8. Finally, Avraham took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate."

Now, I do not want to deal here at length with the kosher problem of why Avraham served his guests milk and meat together. Suffice it to say that according to moderns like us, we see kashrut as a set of customs that came later, as a people, under Moses' leadership and thereafter, but not during this pioneering, patriarchal/matriarchal time. Traditional commentators, however, who do believe that Avraham and Sarah kept kosher, see the solution as this: when the text says: " Finally, Avraham took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them," it is obvious that Avraham first set before them a dairy snack, then cleared the dishes and offered them a meat meal. It is only the Torah's terse text that makes it appear to be an issue!    So, to return to the main thought, this was an example of great hospitality, especially in light of the fact that Avraham was a man of few words and many deeds, as we say. For though all he offered the travelers was "a bit of bread and some water to wash with," what he brought them was a many course feast.

Now, the hospitality of Avraham becomes even more amazing when you combine these actions with the chapter that comes before this one, of which I will only cite to you the last two verses:

17: 26. In the same day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son. 27. And all the men of his house, born in the house, and bought with money from the stranger, were circumcised with him.

The juxtaposition of these verses, preceding the one that says that Avraham "sat in the tent door in the heat of the day," made our ancestor rabbis think that Avraham was recovering from his circumcision, but that he still got up and ran around to do all this. Ouch.

Well, whether you believe Avraham was smarting from his covenantal surgery or not, still, the Torah uses words like hurried and ran and quickly to show that hospitality is not a virtue of the lazy or the uninitiated. It is something that must be practiced, something to be done before the gracious guest has had time to refuse the offer so as not to trouble the host. Put positively in the context of our tradition, Shimon Ben Azzai in the Mishnah, Pirkey Avot, 4:2: said, "Run towards a mitzvah, and run away from a sin." Hospitality is a mitzvah, a commandment to our people, and to do it well we need to run to do it, to do it quickly, lest we sin by appearing to give well-meaning guests the message that we really want is for them to decline our offer.

Which brings me to the next issue: how to be a gracious guest.