Let's make a committee...

I read this joke. A bunch of Hadassah women were in a bus crash and ended up, accidentally, in Hell. The gatekeeper up in Heaven called down there and said "Hey, you got some Hadassah ladies by mistake!" But the Devil replied "Don't take them! They've only been here two days and already they formed a committee and raised the money for air conditioning!"

And yes, I do recognize that we Jews do not actually believe in Hell, but the joke still makes a good point!

Jewish people really DO get how to work together; whatever has made the culture that productive is good, good good.

For a year, I was president of a Hadassah chapter here in Bloomington. During that year, our family went to Israel for three weeks and I took a bus, with my daughter Amalia, up to the Ein Karem campus of Hadassah Hospital. It's pretty impressive to see Jews and Arabs sharing the same hospital room, pretty impressive to see the kind of care and the kind of research that are happening there -- supported by money raised by Hadassah.

The feeling I get when visiting the websites for federation and uja is that they are very comprehensive; they include religious content but the main emphasis is on Jews working together to make the world a better place -- making committees to get stuff done. A huge emphasis on tzedakah -- again, working togehter, realizing that one has an obligation to help.

I've never lived in a town where I had a Jewish community center, but I wish I had.