On our last day in Limestone this year, as we followed our usual ritual of going around the room and sharing what we had learned that week, something holy occurred. Only nine of us came on this trip, the smallest group we have ever had on a work trip. Six of us had done the work before, three were new. That morning, three individuals from the community were also present: the pastor, the pastor’s husband, Malcolm, who coordinates the work, and Sharon, the Jewish social worker who volunteers to cook for us. Sharon and her husband Larry and their kids are the only Jews for miles around. These are our three anchors for the week, the people who connect us to the community of Limestone.

As each adult and teenager spoke, we repeated some of the same lessons we have learned before, because they bear repeating: be grateful for what you have, teamwork is a beautiful thing, nothing is perfect. Some mention skills we have learned, like the importance of wearing gloves when working with toxic chemicals. A newcomer to the trip added “Doing work can actually be fun.”

But now in our third year in the same town, we have learned new lessons. We can drive along the main roads and see three houses we have repaired, and feel proud of the difference we have made. We stop by and visit with the families, and with the owner of the hardware store, and we pick blueberries at the same farm. We have established a routine that helps make us feel part of Limestone, if only for one week every summer.

But something extraordinary happened that morning, after the nine of us shared what lessons we were bringing home. Malcolm, the husband of the pastor, began to talk. And he started to cry. We’ve known Malcolm for three years. He is as stalwart a Mainer as you get; he doesn’t share his feelings. On the work site he is always upbeat and helpful. He never criticizes or complains, even if he has to redo what we’ve done, or drive back to Caribou for more supplies. But what he had to share at that moment truly came from his heart, and he found it difficult to put it into words. And so the tears came first.

Malcolm told us the story of the man we had helped this summer. I’ll call him Connor. The trials he had suffered in his life, how he lost his wife in a fire many years ago but saved the child inside the house. Connor’s daughter has grown and moved away. He lives alone, now that his father passed away. He works a 12-hour shift three days a week at the McCain’s potato plant, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. But this year, Connor’s work hours have been cut back. The high cost of fuel eats up his meager paycheck. He had planned to have us put an addition on his house, with hopes of bringing his daughter and three grandchildren home to live with him this summer. But just as he arrived in Pennsylvania with a U-haul to bring them all back home to Maine, he found that a custody battle was changing the plan. Connor had to return with an empty U-haul and an empty heart.

As a result, our project was not as ambitious. But when we arrived at his home on Monday, we found a severely neglected property. The dogs had left a mess in the yard. Paint was peeling, porches were sloping, windows were leaking air and the roof was leaking water. We got right to work.

The first day, we were noisily using the weed-whacker on the lawn, hammering and sawing boards for the windows, All day, Connor stayed inside, asleep after his night shift at the potato factory. On Tuesday, he came out to watch, from a slight distance, in silence. Soon he offered a hand to hold a board. He brought out a cold pack for someone who had been hit on the head. Then he started helping on the roof. By afternoon, Connor had climbed up into the attic to handle the insulation we were blowing in. By the end of the week, he had spoken to a few of us about his life: his job at the potato plant, his daughter, his father, his dogs.

At the end of the week, Connor said to one of us, “I never imagined my house could be so beautiful.” 

Malcolm has been working with Connor for a long time to bring him into the church, to give him a spiritual foundation, and a community to embrace him, so that he could withstand these oppressive circumstances. Malcolm cried because, during the week that we worked on the house, he witnessed a rebirth of hope in Connor.

Malcolm cried because this man had found a way to look at the world again as a place where people cared for each other. What happened next was even more amazing. Pastor Ellen, who hadn’t spoken much to our group, talked about the importance of not judging people. She tried to explain that the people we have helped have been written off by the community. Connor was an outcast, because in this town his name would always be associated with poverty. No one expected him to amount to much. It took outsiders to show the community how to treat him. Because his house sits on a main thoroughfare, people are now going to approach him and tell him how great his house looks. 

And then our Jewish friend chimed in. She added how important it was for the community that we come up every summer. Because so many of them feel forgotten, abandoned. In the remotest part of northern Maine, where people wrap their homes in plastic to keep out the brutal winter wind, and where elderly people may have to move in with other families this winter because of the high cost of oil, it’s a miracle that anyone would come to their aid. And she added how important it was that as a Jewish group; we were teaching her kids about tikkun olam.

There are many other depressed towns. And many more poor people in need. There is much work to be done to repair homes and to rebuild lives. But the relationships that we are building are worth almost as much as the work we are doing. As one member of our group remarked, we don’t build homes, we build hope.

I wish that you could come up to Limestone and build with us, come and share in the remarkable event of finding hope in a can of paint. But if you can’t do that, I wish I could bring some of Limestone back here. Because that’s what we should be doing right here, for each other. The lessons we learned in Maine are just as important to creating the kind of congregation we all dream of. A place where people give without expecting a reward, and where people receive without shame.  A place where we spend time to get to know each other, and where humility and respect replace arrogance and self-centeredness. A place where what you do is more important than what you say.

Personally, I have so much to be grateful to this community for. Being a rabbi is more than a livelihood. This synagogue is a place of holy connections. The quilt that you created last year represents the many relationships I cherish. But perhaps not as obvious, it also represents the power of this community to come together. No one is more important than anyone else in this community. Not the rabbi, and with all due respect, not the president. We all play a significant role.

I am in awe of so many of you, the way you show up at a shiva house, bringing food to a family when a parent is ill, driving kids to school when someone is recovering from surgery, decorating a child’s bedroom when the family has been displaced by fire. I am moved to hear that you invite each other into your homes for Shabbat or holidays, or when you give each other rides to and from the synagogue. This is holy work, godly work—not because we expect it from one another, but precisely because we don’t. It is what God expects of us – or in different language—it is what makes this world a godly place.

But I think we can do better. And in these difficult economic times, we have to do better. Because the synagogue needs to be a safe haven, a refuge from the ordinary. Sometimes in our eagerness to be a good synagogue, we hurt each other. Let’s face it, we all have times when we complain, we point fingers, we express disappointment or anger. Of course, we only have the best interests of our community at heart, don’t we? How often do we justify angry words by saying we want to do better? How often do we justify criticism by saying we’re only trying to help?

Synagogues are not about perfection—not our own and not our community’s. It’s not hard to find fault, and it’s even easier to find Jews who think they know the answer. We are unrequited fixers. But in trying to fix, we often do damage.

If we would only pause a moment before we open our mouths. The most important lesson I heard that summer morning was not to judge people. We may think we know what’s going on in someone’s head, but it’s actually not likely. In Hebrew we would use the phrase to judge people lechaf zechut, to give people the benefit of the doubt.

The following story is told in the text Avot de Rabi Natan. Aaron the High Priest, the older brother of Moses, was known as a rodef shalom, a peacemaker. Everyone he met, he would greet with “shalom.” Even when he met a person who others considered wicked, Aaron gave him the same warm greeting, “shalom.” The next day, the wicked man would be about to commit a crime and would think to himself, if I do this, how can I show my face to Aaron, who wished peace on me? And he would stop his bad behavior.

Aaron believed in people, and in the possibility for teshuvah at any moment. When you give people the benefit of the doubt, you offer them an opening to surprise you.

I became a rabbi because synagogues are the most accessible place for Jews to form community. I chose Reconstructionist Judaism, because we put community at the center. As Mordecai Kaplan has said,

 “It is only a true and close community that develops associations, traditions and memories that go to make up its soul. To mingle one’s personality with that soul becomes a natural longing. In such a community one experiences that mystic divine grace which, like radiant sunshine, illumines our lives when joyous and, like balm, heals them when wounded or stricken. Then all questions about saying this or that become trivial, for the real purpose is attained in having each one feel with the Psalmist: ‘One thing I ask of God that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of God all the days of my life, to behold the graciousness of God.’”  (Kaplan)

I believe that in this new stage of our congregation’s development (as David described earlier) an important goal for us is to strengthen our ties to this community. So often we run from one event to another, we catch each other in the hall and talk about business, or sit next to a stranger without exchanging our names. We may develop notions about people without really understanding what they are about. We are strangers even as we are friends.

I have learned a great deal this past year from you. One particular privilege of being a rabbi is accompanying families through the process of bar and bat mitzvah.

One family taught me this phrase: “People come in packages.” It’s a profound teaching that expresses the complexity of individuals. Like the Hebrew saying “al tistakel bekankan ela bemasheyesh bo” which loosely translated means, don’t judge a book by its cover. People deserve more attention. To build a community requires that we get to know the whole package.

It is time for us to go deeper, to spend more time together, to really know one another. My goal for the coming year is to listen more and talk less. Georgia O’Keefe, who was known for her enlarged and stylized flower studies, once said, “Nobody sees a flower really – it – is so small – we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” I’d like to see us take more time after a service to learn about each other. I’d like to see us spend dedicated time together, whether building together in February in New Orleans, or perhaps on a congregational retreat, sharing our personal stories. I’d like to see us all develop more patience and devote time to unpacking the packages.

We are in the beginning of what will probably be tough times in our country. It is a time of uncertainty and fear. Uncertainty for our economic future, and fears of losing a job, or a house, or not having oil for the winter. This is a time to be counter-intuitive. Just when we think we can’t afford temple dues, or we have no time for the synagogue because we’re working so hard--this is the time to turn to Hillel B’nai Torah. At times like these we need each other the most. We need this community of people we can lean on, who won’t judge us or try to fix us.

David has spoken about the experience of building the handicap ramp for the back door. He also brought a commentary from the Baal Shem Tov about climbing the circular staircase. Let me share another Hasidic commentary from the Gerer Rebbe about climbing that connects the two. Reading a verse from Exodus (20:23) “You should not ascend the altar by steps,” he offers this parable: Two blind people wanted to go up on a roof. One took a ladder and the other took a plank and leaned it to make a ramp. Both went up, but the difference is, the one who climbed the ladder, as he climbed each rung, he knew how high he had already climbed and how much higher he had to go. The one who used the ramp, as long as he was climbing up to the roof, he had no idea where he was or how high he up he had gone.  So when the Torah states, do not climb up to the altar by steps (or by rungs), it teaches that when rising in holiness we needn’t be concerned with judging our progress.

To reach the place of sacrifice, we must sacrifice some of our autonomy. To reach meaning, we can’t be comparing our progress with anyone else’s.

If you have to criticize, stop and consider: how important is this problem? Am I trying to fix the problem, or blame someone for the problem, or making myself more important because I have a solution? How am I expressing my concern? Am I standing on a ladder, looking at my rung and everyone else’s? Or am I on a ramp, trying to pull everyone up so that we all get to the top?

These are times to set aside judgment and let love and compassion rule. Why?

We are all spiritually blind and on a religious journey together. And we need each other to get there.

When people speak of Hillel B’nai Torah, may it should be said of our holy community—“when last seen, they were still climbing.”

Rabbi Barbara Penzner