Thoughts from our New Co-President

by Eileen Singleton, CJC Co-President

About a year ago, when I signed up to work on the blog for June 2020, I thought the timing would be good since I would have just become the co-president, and I could write about my thoughts on that. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the ways our world seems to be falling apart and what we – congregants, Marylanders, Americans, humans – can do and are doing. So in this month’s blog, I’d like to start where Pearl left off last month. Pearl wrote about the beginnings of CJC, and she ended her post with an anecdote about how the “soul of CJC” was on display at a baby shower for our (then) new Rabbi Siegel and his family. All these years later, the soul of CJC is still a key attribute that attracts me and so many of us to this congregation.

We don’t just identify issues and pray they get fixed, we take action, as the hands of Gd. Over the last few years, we’ve taken action on immigration, marriage equality, gender equality, homelessness, domestic violence, and the environment. For many years, we’ve had congregants supporting Shepherd’s Table, Grassroots, Rebuilding Together, and National Alliance for Mental Illness. We have a Tzedakah Fund that can be used by any Howard County resident to fill a one time financial gap. And there are so many of you that provide support to those in our own CJC community, for example through our Caring Committee and Chevra Kedisha. We show right on our web page “who we are and what we value” and we show in our everyday lives all of the ways we are working to repair the world/do tikkun olam. Rabbi Starr recently convened a group of congregants interested in how we can more actively stand up for racial justice.

These days more than ever, I find comfort in being part of a community that doesn’t ignore problems or just identify that they exist, we work to improve the lives of others in many innovative ways that show this soul in ACTION in our local community and in the wider global community. Thanks to all of you who have done and continue to do the repairing work that our world so clearly needs.