Jews With Hammers
A WEEK AGO, I SPENT A DAY IN THE HOT SUN lifting countless 80-pound bags of Sakrete, mixing them with water and pouring out the mix to make a sidewalk. I also hung a new door to a bedroom (which needs to be adjusted, though), and poured concrete footings for a back deck.
If this had been at my own house, first of all, I probably wouldn't have done it. At my own house, I lack the ambition and confidence to take on such complex tasks -- or so they seemed to me before some professional contractors guided me and others through the necessary steps.
But, along with 25 or 30 other volunteers -- most of whom, like me, had never done anything close to building a sidewalk or a back deck or, as others were, hanging new kitchen cabinets -- I somehow plunged right in at a small shotgun-style house in Southeast Washington, D.C., as part of an annual program called Sukkot in April.
Sukkot in April is the brainchild of, well, my wife, Audrey Lyon, who runs Yachad, the Jewish housing and community development group based in D.C. About a dozen or so years ago, she approached what was then called Christmas in April (now Rebuilding Together), which organized churches, businesses, and other groups to spend a day in April renovating homes of people who had serious needs for repairs but little or no money to get them done. Because of Christmas in April's name and the fact that most of their work took place on Saturdays, there were few, if any, synagogues and other Jewish groups taking part. So Yachad organized these Jewish groups under the banner of Sukkot (a Jewish harvest festival in the fall) in April, and they scheduled all the work to done on Sundays, which wouldn't interfere with the biblical instruction not to work on the sabbath. Consistently, there are a couple of dozen or more synagogues and Jewish groups -- and a few of hundred individual volunteers -- participating every year.
My own synagogue, Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, is one of the more active ones in the Sukkot in April program. In fact, many years we get almost too many volunteers -- a good problem -- and, because of that we usually take on some of the more challenging houses.
This year's was no exception. I'm not entirely sure of the circumstances of the family that owns the house, but they probably fit the typical profile. Often times we see an elderly woman there, with health problems and a fixed income (probably just Social Security). She may have owned and lived in the home for a couple of decades or more. It may even be paid off or close to paid off. But she doesn't have the ready cash to keep up with maintenance.
You'll see situations where the roof has needed to be replaced for years, and, in that time, water damage has destroyed walls, allowed mold to flourish and so forth. Or some have barely or not-functioning basic amenities, such as toilets and showers, stoves or refrigerators. Paint (some of it still lead-based) might be pealing all over. Floorboards could be eroded, enabling one to see through to the floor below. If conditions aren't altogether unsafe or unhealthy, they are surely not comfortable.
Sukkot in April (and other home repair programs Yachad runs) offers a rescue. It bundles the energy and resources (sweat equity and a modest cash outlay for materials) from Jews who are looking for a way to help someone in need. Not that Jews have the monopoly on that impulse to help; there are plenty of other denominational groups and others who are doing what they can.
But what's interesting (I was going to say 'remarkable,' but that's overstating it) is that with Sukkot in April we're engaging in something more than checkbook charity. We're getting our hands dirty in was that most of us -- well, me at least -- would rarely do in our own homes. Mostly that's because (in my case) of a lack of confidence to try to do something (like build a new concrete sidewalk) that might make matters worse. In my case, too, there's a dose of laziness at play.
So take my partners on the sidewalk project, all of whom, like me, spend most their days far from work like this: David Kupfer, a clinical
psychologist, and I, a p.r. guy with a desk job, hoisted the 80-pound
bags into the mixer (in fairness, I have to admit that David probably
hoisted more than I did) and poured the concrete; David Dolinsky, who runs a video production company, and Blair Levin, a leading telecom industry analyst, both spent several hours on their hands and knees leveling out and finishing the fresh concrete surface.The result: a solid and attractive sidewalk to replace a long strip of weathered plywood. Mark Gunther,a journalist, helped me pour footings for the deck. Ralph Nitkin, a cellular neurobiologist at the National Institutes of Health who seemed to really know what he was doing, worked with me to drill and hang the bedroom door.
I kept joking that all this should come easily to Jews; after all, it was Jews who built the pyramids. Of course, some smart guy there told me that there's some archaeological evidence to suggest that's largely not true. Okay, whatever. But it is true that most American Jews of my generation are rather like me; not so experienced or skilled with the building trades or with fixing cars and such.
For most of us though, we are only a generation or two away from Jews who knew which end of a hammer was up. My grandfather, for example, was a blacksmith growing up in Lithuania, and made a career in the U.S. wrecking cars and reselling their parts. My uncles were, likewise, pretty handy with building and fixing things. I kick myself that I did not spend more time learning this sort of thing as a kid.
The closest many of us Jewish guys come to building is perhaps during the actual Sukkot holiday in the fall, when we are instructed by the Torah to build a sukkah, a temporary booth in which we are also instructed to eat and sleep. Along with many of my peers, I built my first sukkah (and seem to have to rebuild or repair it every year) only about a dozen years ago or so, and many of us take great pride in this fairly simply accomplishment, knowing how unusual it is for us to build things.
There are plenty of other Jews of our generation around us, though, who do know how to make and repair things. Yachad has, in fact, recruited a fair number of Jewish building contractors to help out on various projects throughout the year. And then there are the two guys who basically kept all the rest of us from screwing up last week: Alan Kanner, who runs a construction company called Added Dimensions, drives a pick-up truck, owns a bunch of cool tools and has jokingly referred to himself as "a Jewish carpenter" (he is, naturally, trained as a lawyer); and Louis Tenenbaum, who modifies homes for people with disabilities and also has a pick-up and cool tools. These guys worked harder than the rest of us, of course, as they answered frequently calls for help from the rest of us who needed guidance on the most basic of tasks.
The point of this exercise, of course, is to help someone who needs the help. The house, when I left it last week (they are doing a second phase today), had been transformed in many ways and will hopefully transform the lives of its residents in important ways, too.
But along the way, some of us who are doing the transforming are transformed ourselves: learning a new skill and building our confidence to do what previously seemed undoable. In addition to using our hands, we do something else that we need to do more of: bridge an all-too-wide gap between ourselves and others with whom we rarely interact, even as they live but a short distance away.
Jeff







