Vayakhel’’s first reading /aliyah, Exodus 35:1-20 (full Hebrew & English at that link) contains a call for volunteers: Moses convokes the people, reminds them to keep the Shabbat of complete rest, and then asks, from “whosoever is of willing heart”, the contribution of materials to make the mishkan and objects needed in it, and the contribution of skills and energies for the work of building it into a reality.
When health researchers ask Medscape article — no paywall but reg’n required ”Do Productive Activities Reduce Inflammation in Later Life? Multiple Roles, Frequency of Activities, and C-Reactive Protein [Test Results],” [and here] their investigation found that...
"...frequent volunteering in particular—may protect [against] inflammation associated with increased risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease..."
GOTV volunteers young to elderly for Kay Hagan for Senate waving “Vote Early” signs at their phonebank and canvassing HQ
Vayakhel’’s first reading /aliyah, Exodus 35:1-20 (full Hebrew & English at that link) contains a call for volunteers: Moses convokes the people, reminds them to keep the Shabbat of complete rest, and then asks, from “whosoever is of willing heart”, the contribution of materials to make the mishkan and objects needed in it, and the contribution of skills and energies for the work of building it into a reality.
(Hover for image info.)
Everyone knows of this famous couple’s volunteerism in building like that. <big><big>➡️</big></big>
HERE’S ANOTHER VOLUNTEER if best known for I Never Promised You A Rose Garden:
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Joanne Greenberg and her family moved to Colorado in 1963, where she’s been nonstop volunteerist in local and virtually global community while writing novels and short stories readd worldwide.
<big>2021 at Congregation Beth Evergeen, the synagogue she co-founded and where she writes an annual Rosh HaShana dvar.</big>
For example, being a storyteller and compassionate visitor to Jewish inmates at Cañon City’s 13 prisons /correctional facilities, and founder of deaf in prison dot com advocating for prison reform for the deaf and mentally ill (she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Gallaudet University – the world’s only college for the deaf). And also: Emergency medical service and rescue technician. Land reclamation campaigner. At local elementary schools a teacher of Latin and Greek roots and of sign language. And Hebrew and Torah for b’nei mitzva at Cong. Beth Evergreen. Alto in the Renaissance Singers choir of St. Laurence Episcopal Church. Volunteers In Psychotherapy lecturer on “Getting the Help You Need”. A speaker at schools, book groups, libraries, museums, organizations, universities on yet more topics of intense concern in which she keeps meticulously informed — including Jewish themes in art and writing.
Professionally, besides author of over 20 books and short story collections, an instructor of cultural anthropology and fiction writing at the Colorado School of Mines, where she credits a librarian for major research help on her first novel, The King’s Persons (1963) about the 1190 massacre of the Jewish population of York. It and her second novel were published under pen name Hannah Greenberg, for the privacy of her two sons, young at the time. But on learning of another author with that actual name, she cooperatively relinquished using it,
One of her earliest role models must have been Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the psychiatrist with absolute commitment to ‘talk’ therapy, portrayed as Dr Fried in that second novel, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The Fromm-Reichman biography by Gail Hornstein titled, “To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World”, contains in the Prologue:
From earliest childhood, Frieda had been imbued with a deep sense of responsibility. No event, however insignificant, occurred in isolation; every act had implications for the lives of other people. The worldview of her Orthodox upbringing was embodied in this story, told by the great sixteenth-century rabbi Isaac Luria:
During the process of creation, God's divine emanations were gathered together and stored in sacred vessels. But the vessels, unable to contain the light pouring into them, shattered, fragmenting the divine sparks, which fell to earth. The world became chaotic; nothing was in its proper realm. The task of human history and the responsibility of every Jew is to rescue the divine sparks and restore order to the world. This is the work known as tikkun. When it is fully accomplished, redemption will come to everyone.
Tikkun is a collective task; no one person can perform it on his own. A divine spark is attached to each prayer, each charitable act, each moment of goodness. If a person fulfills her duty and strictly follows the ethical path, that spark is restored to its source in the divine realm. To assist another is to do God's work. To redeem one person is to redeem the world...
Chicago volunteers snow-shovelers for walks for elders.
We don’t all have to be trained technicians or professionals or artists in order to share in redeeming the world. There are innumerable ways wherever we live, and getting in the swing of it generates a great uplifting, quietly addictive excitement and powerful sense of hope and certainty that may be beyond the imagination of anyone who hasn’t experienced it …unless they get the beginnings of a taste of it through volunteers they encounter, and get to wanting more!
VolunteerMatch dot com
Volunteers I’ve seen: ■ tutoring kids having difficulty in struggling schools, not only so the kids get a fair educational start in life but also that sense of the self-generated magical experience that volunteerism kindles and infect them with it! ■ remote parks and nearby roadways need pollutive litter cleaned up ■ progressive candidates need canvassers and phonebankers ■ community organizations and centers need leaders and instructors in all kinds of activity, mentors that adults and youngsters alike can trust in and want to emulate ■ pre-schools and kindergartens on a tight budget need someone to collect last year's calendars, and used picture-postcards, and other alpha-pictorial materials for collage projects that engage little kids in literacy and the wider world...
■ elders need Meals on Wheels and friendly visits, maybe a little help with this or that chore, maybe a ride to groceries, doctor, or polling place, or help applying for absentee ballots; and in senior residences they need visitors bringing pet therapy, music therapy, books — and we need and can profoundly benefit (in very real-world terms) from the wealth of information and wisdom they can impart to oral history recorders with their recollection of how-to strategies and tactics and sheer scutwork for coping and triumphing through hard times of the past
■ the disabled community of all ages need ombudsmen and an occasional helping hand for access to the benefits (like Supported Employment, in kosaks jguzman17’s & StevenPark’s diary) and to continue being contributive or finally getting a chance to
■ towns with lots of homes having backyard fruit trees, food banks and homeless shelters need people with ladders, containers and vehicles to pick the fruit and bring it in ■ restaurants need people coordinating and doing the work of bringing the remaining food of the day to homeless shelters and safe houses
Some volunteer parsley seedlings, just in time for Pesach
■ community art projects and music projects bring together a diversity of kids and young adults and everyone else, for the chance to experience expressing their own historical and cultural images and colors in public places of cities and towns, cooperating with one another to do it, an alternative to violence and conflict — these projects need people to advocate to local government, solicit artand music supplies and cost support from local businesses. And they need people experienced in large-scale projects, for their expertise and skill to coordinate and shepherd to fruition.
■ neighborhoods stressed by poverty, disability, dirty air, commercialism, alienation and superficiality need community gardens where their collective and personal hands in clean earth combat malnutrition, illness, pollution, and depression, by growing and harvesting fruit, vegetables, flowers, joy, hope, strength, courage, laughter, sharing, joy, and sometimes even solar power generation for their neighborhood ■
That’s barely the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Readers please comment about more of the joy-filled, committed, tikkun/volunteerism seen and been part of anytime in life, and witnessed friends, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, role models and complete strangers engaged in, to help in repairing and deeming the world, rescuing scattered sparks, join our own with theirs, and together let our light shine.
Add’l sources: Text of presentation for Distinguished Lecture series, Colorado School of Mines. ■ Library and museum lectures on Jewish themes in writing and the arts at Joanne Greenberg’s website ■ eNotes ■ Crazy Heroines Should Stay That Way, and Other News: WhyWe Don’t Like Stories in Which the Mentally Ill Heroine Recovers — The surprisingly stable afterlife of the author of 'I Never Promised You a Rose Garden' By Kelsey Osgood June 3, 2014 ■ et cetera
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