Los Angeles is Close to You
When we were looking to start our synagogue we didn’t look all around. It was always about Downtown. We didn’t want to settle into any of the established Jewish neighborhoods. We believed that there were Jews downtown, but no community for them to be a part of. We were right. There were Jews downtown. But, we had no idea how challenging or rewarding the task of creating community among them would be.
Downtown doesn’t belong to any race or ethnicity, any religion or class. It doesn’t even belong to the people who live there. It belongs to every Angeleno. It’s the home of our civic institutions, from City Hall, and the Ahmanson on the hill above and Goth-Cumbia nights at the Regent on Main. Downtown is wonderful when it becomes the site of celebrations, but horrible when it becomes the dumping ground for the problems that the rest of LA doesn’t want to have to see.
Der Nister is located on a very busy block of Spring Street. We are close to Skid Row and not far from the Financial District. We do what we can. We visit the sick, we give the tzedakah that we can, and we make a place where poor Jews feel welcome at the table with those who are better off. I take calls from Jews seeking shelter and I usually can’t offer any more than the address of a rough and tumble Christian mission, the kind of place no-one should have to be satisfied with. It pains us that we can’t do more.
Our challenge and our consolation comes Pirke Avot: You are not obligated to finish the work, neither are you free to desist from it.
We have been talking about connection and listening. Within our narrow communities we feel strong connections, but that is not enough. We need to learn to listen to each other with Ahavat Chinam, to love each other without the expectation that our differences will be resolved. [I repeated this pointedly.] And then, let’s say we can become a community that is no longer divided against itself. What work could we do to make our unity a worthy cause? I would propose that we dedicate ourselves to the general improvement of the city that we live in for all its inhabitants, to make a place of Justice and Mercy, free from want and degradation. The work that is done right here in this building is one model of what we could do if we chose to make that our purpose. “Neither is it beyond the sea. No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to build it.”
Keyn Yehi Ratzon
