Living and Working “Among”
Last week, we had the great privilege of meeting with Abram Himelstein. Abram is our landlord and, more significantly, a founder of the Neighborhood Story Project. He spoke about working with community members to write books about their neighborhoods. My housemates and I were inspired, energized, insanely jealous. (Many of us strive to be like Abram – hyper-articulate, totally selfless, and downright cool.) After he left, we talked about his presentation – the powerful ideas, the perfectly crafted sentences. One idea, one sentence, really spoke to me – the concept of working to enrich rather than to “save” lives.
For the past three weeks, my housemates and I have struggled with our new positions in the community. We are not native New Orleanians or even native Southerners. We are not experts on housing, mental health, the criminal justice system. For many of us, this is new territory – our first serious exposure to social injustice. Who are we to presume that we can bring about change, can make real differences?
This question was brought into focus after an article about AVODAH made the front page of the Times-Picayune and elicited some surprising (or, for the more world-weary among us, expected) online responses. (Real gems include “Madoff isn’t an aberration. It’s a culture” and “Go back and tell your father and uncles to stop running that hedge fund.”) Some comments were easy to dismiss, but others touched on real concerns and generated a conversation about all the complexities of engaging in social justice work. This conversation led to some hard questions. What if we do more harm than good? What if people don’t want our help?
For me, Abram’s important distinction between enriching and saving lives is both an answer to critics of AVODAH and a guiding principle for my work this year. The people Abram works with – high school students, members of the Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club – don’t think that they need to be saved. They have rich, full lives. Abram can bring more joy into these lives by listening to and helping to document and celebrate stories. But he is not here as a savior. We AVODAHnikim are not here as saviors. We are here to enrich our neighbors’ lives; we are here to enrich our own lives by learning from our neighbors. My placement, Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, promotes the idea of “power among, not power over.” My housemates and I are here to live and work among New Orleanians.
Our lives are already richer from living and working “among.” We have learned so much about warmth and celebration from the people we meet unexpectedly – the strangers that call us baby and sweetheart with genuine affection, the man that taught us to move with pizzazz at our first second line. We have learned so much about support and acceptance from the people we meet through AVODAH – the rabbis that welcome us into their congregations, the families that welcome us into their homes. I have learned so much about community from the middle school students I meet through Rethink. I look forward to a rich, challenging year, a year focused on not on “saving” but on sharing, learning and celebrating.
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rachel l said:
you are so wise, mallory! we are so lucky to have you at Rethink