Local volunteers do their part to repair the world
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran
Posted on the bulletin board in Carol Stein’s office at Barton Elementary School is a note on white paper: “Volunteers: ‘To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you might just be the world.’”
And to Stein, learning coordinator, along with school principal Norm Mishelow, that’s not an empty slogan; it reflects their deep appreciation of the cadre of some 50 volunteer tutors who work at the school regularly.
One of those tutors, Sue Freeman, has discovered the great power of those words. Freeman, past president of Jewish Family Services, volunteers some five hours a week at the school as a literacy tutor through the Milwaukee Jewish Coalition for Literacy, a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations.
“I really do feel it’s important,” said Freeman, who has tutored for many years, previously with Head Start and at another local elementary school. “It does make a difference [for the kids] to have that one more person who really cares about [them],” she said.
“My husband, Mike, has gotten involved too and they really love him. This one little girl that he worked with last year wrote him a thank you note at the end of the year. ‘Dear Mr. Freeman, You are my best friend. You are like a father to me.’”
Mishelow reiterated the importance of volunteers at the school. “Most of our students’ parents are undereducated and our volunteers serve to counteract that.”
Moreover, Stein added, “We feel that a lot of the [school’s] success … has been due in a large degree to the tutoring and mentoring and the concern the tutors have put into their students.”
In September, the school was named as the state’s sole winner of a Blue Ribbon school award from the U.S. Education Department. Only 219 schools nationwide were recognized as Blue Ribbon schools this year.
Freeman got involved with the Coalition for Literacy about four years ago after hearing Leonard Fein speak in Milwaukee about his National Jewish Coalition for Literacy, a project mobilizing the American Jewish community to provide 100,000 volunteer tutors for the Read America program.
Freeman’s excitement for her work is palpable in her fast-paced conversation. She delivers strings of stories about the children she tutors: the second-grader she helped learn to use a dictionary; the boy who couldn’t concentrate because his father was in prison last year and the reward system she used to keep his attention; the children who anxiously await their time with her; and the way students at the school consider private tutoring a privilege.
“I walk into the school and think I should have been a teacher. I just enjoy this so much and it’s very easy and very natural,” she said.
Freeman, though retired from her work selling real estate, is busy with a variety of activities, including travel and a range of volunteering, primarily with the Barton school but also with Congregation Sinai; her family foundation, which provides rehabbed computers for Milwaukee Public Schools classrooms; the Milwaukee Jewish Federation; MJCCR; and a long list of other agencies and organizations.
But, of all the things she does, Freeman said, she gets the most satisfaction from tutoring. “I get a lot of satisfaction watching these kids and the progress they’re making during the school year.”
A complete Jew
Happy is the man whose deeds are greater than his learning.
Midrash: Eliyahu Rabbah, 17
Just as Freeman is wrapping up her tutoring on Fridays, a group of young men on the other side of town is preparing to travel from an east side yeshiva to the Jewish Home and Care Center to reach out and connect with the elderly.
A group of some 10 high school and post-high school students from the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study comes to the Jewish Home each week to visit with residents and accompany them to the weekly musical program “Shabbat Shira,” which welcomes Shabbat with music, symbols of the season or holiday and a Torah commentary.
“When the boys started coming [to Shabbat Shira about 12 years ago], it exponentially became a fabulous program,” said Deborah Comella, adult day care coordinator and community relations coordinator at the JHCC.
“This was transformed from an ordinary nursing home program to an extraordinary, outstanding intergenerational program by the addition of the ‘yeshiva bochers,’” she wrote in an application for a Jewish programming award.
“With their songs, dancing and contagious joy, the room becomes filled with ruach [spirit], and the smiles on the faces of the residents attending are testament of how important this program is to them.”
But it’s not just important for the students, said Reuven Garrett, 18. “I think for both sides it’s very good.”
“I started going my freshman year and I really liked it. I felt a connection with the residents so I continued going since then,” he told The Chronicle in a recent interview.
“I never really saw a Holocaust survivor before I came to WITS. I heard speeches before but never talked with one and I had that opportunity at the Jewish Home. That was very powerful.”
Garrett, from Pittsburgh, said that he enjoys “talking with the residents about their past and how they see our future.”
Before the Shabbat program, the students walk from room to room, talking with residents. “There are a few people who will always talk with us and we have good conversations with them, and other people we just go and they smile at us and we smile at them. If they’re feeling tired that day, we wish them a ‘Good Shabbes.’
“The people always comment that they look forward to Fridays, to our coming,” he said.
Even during school vacations, holidays and summer school, a group of students will come. “Last year, someone sent a postcard to the Jewish Home, reminding the residents that we’re still here; we’re just out for the summer,” explained Garrett.
As is the case at many local Jewish day and supplemental schools, volunteering is part of the culture of WITS, explained dean Rabbi Yehuda Cheplowitz, though it is optional and students can choose from several voluntary activities.
“It’s our way of educating them to the Jewish idea of hesed, of reaching out. It’s our way of creating well-rounded students. We want the students to understand that a complete Jew is one that’s not only dedicated to his Torah studies but also to helping others,” he said.
Cheplowitz sees the transformative effect of volunteer work on his students. “It creates a tremendous impact on the boys…. Many times they create specific relationships with the residents and they are meaningful relationships for the boys.”
For Garrett, volunteering will not end when he leaves WITS. “It becomes part of your routine and you miss it if you’re away for a few weeks,” he said. “I think hesed [acts of loving-kindness] will always be part of my life. It’s always a goal to do as much hesed as you can and share with as many people as you possibly can.
“Without it, I feel like I’m missing something. Hopefully, wherever I go, I’ll always be involved in some sort of hesed.”
‘It’s my job’
Happy is he who performs a good deed: for he may tip the scales for himself and the world.
Talmud: Kiddushin, 40:2
On Thursdays, a little after noon, the cadre of volunteers starts arriving at the Jewish Community Pantry, schlepping bags of food they’ve bought or gathered.
One recent Thursday, Lorraine Klein opened her trunk to reveal boxes of food laid in like bricks, filling all available space. Each crumb is important when you’re dealing with hungry people.
Klein and her husband, Morrie Klein, filled their overflowing car with crackers and cookies from Second Harvest Food Bank of Wisconsin and huge plastic bags of bread and pastries donated by Le Parve (kosher bakery) that the couple picks up five times a week and then stores in their home freezer.
“My husband wonders why we don’t have room for food in our house,” Klein joked.
She has been coming to the pantry to help distribute food on Thursdays for 15 years, but in the last four has increased her hours to about ten per week.
“I have the time right now. My grandchildren are beyond the time when they need me to baby-sit. I guess my husband and I are committed to giving back to the Jewish community.”
“It’s kind of nice to see that … we fulfill something for the community,” she said.
The doors to the pantry open at 1 p.m., but by noon, there’s already a line beginning outside the building on Center St. on Milwaukee’s west side. Recipients help the volunteers unload the trunks and help unload trucks that arrive with donated or bought food. They then carry the boxes, one by one, down a narrow staircase and into the basement pantry. (The building’s elevator broke more than a year ago and the pantry is looking for a new space.)
In the meantime, a cadre of some 12 volunteers (of a list of about 25) arranges the food and prepares it for distribution. Each volunteer has a role: some interview recipients, some gather food and fill bags, some carry boxes and some file paperwork.
The back room is abuzz with piles of food on tables in the center of and around the room — cans, boxes, bread, frozen chicken, cheese and even a special shelf of food that appeals to people from the Former Soviet Union.
Rita Markowitz supervises the back room and has been working in the pantry since “its conception” more than 20 years ago. She arrives almost every week. “It’s my job,” she said.
“I do it because there’s a need for it, number one. Second, it keeps me occupied. And I feel I’ve got to give back to the community. It’s satisfying but at times it’s frustrating.”
Inez Gilbert, a longtime pantry volunteer, agreed. “You do it because it serves your own purposes too.”
Gilbert has been volunteering for about 30 years. “When the kids got older, I started to volunteer and that’s what I really like to do,” she said.
“As tired as I may be, I always look forward to it, although it’s kind of hard work — filling the orders and walking and schlepping, — but it’s very satisfying and the people, you know that the people really need the food.”
“We’re just lucky we can give our time and do a little something, and the people seem to be very appreciative,” she said.
Though in the past she has volunteered at several community organizations, Gilbert now limits her activity to her time at the food pantry and one afternoon per week at the Sojourner House, a shelter for battered women. There, she works in the office, answers phones and admits people to the facility if they are qualified to enter.
“I was never much of a committee person. I think most people do what they enjoy doing and these are two things I enjoy doing, whereas if I was going to a meeting, I don’t think I would enjoy it,” she said.
“I lead a very lovely life and I’m very blessed. If I can give something back, it makes me feel very good.”
Worthy of bar mitzvah
The beginning and the end (of Torah) is the performance of loving-kindness.
Talmud: Sotah, 14a
Once a month, members of Congregation Shalom bake a chicken for strangers. Through the synagogue’s social action committee, a group travels to St. Ben’s church, chicken in hand, and serves meals to the hungry. Moreover, they sponsor the entire meal.
That is just one of the synagogue’s many social action activities, said committee chair David Wolfson. “Our mission is to link interested congregants with worthwhile organizations, both Jewish and in the general community.”
And to create active adults, we must educate our children, Wolfson said. To that end, he teaches a seventh-grade class on tikkun olam, repairing the world, at the synagogue’s religious school during or in preparation for the bar/bat mitzvah year.
“This is an amazing group of young people, remarkable 12- and 13-year-olds. They’re so committed to doing mitzvah projects.”
On a recent Sunday, the class ran a tzedakah fair at the synagogue. It included a bake sale, face painting, caricatures, games, tribute cards and posters with explanations about the three charities chosen as recipients of funds raised at the fair.
The class collectively chose the three recipients: The Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee, an organization that works to prevent and alleviate hunger; Keshet of Wisconsin, a program of Jewish Family Services that provides learning resources and classroom support for Jewish children with special needs; and Givat Haviva, an Israeli education, research and document center founded in 1949 that, among its activities, runs a Jewish-Arab center for coexistence and peace.
David Eder, 12, researched Givat Haviva and made a poster about the organization. “I thought their idea to take Palestinians and Israelis and have them live and study together was a daring move, but it seems to work.”
“I think [giving tzedakah and performing mitzvahs] is a nice thing to do. A lot of us are becoming a bar or bat mitzvah and it’s something you have to do to be worthy to become a bar mitzvah,” said Eder.
But volunteering is not a new idea to Eder. “Over the summer, I volunteered to help kids at a Shorewood Recreation Department soccer camp … and at ‘Kid’s Club’ for kids between K5 and third grade.
“I enjoyed it. I like working with little kids and helping out in the community. I think all people should really help out.”
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