Jordan Aiken and Rachie Lewis have had very different experiences with Judiasm. Living together has given them the opportunity to learn from each other, and to learn more about themselves.

The following is excerpted from Lisa Koenig’s interview with Jordan Aiken, who works at the New Orleans Women’s Shelter, and Rachie Lewis, working at the Orleans Public Defenders office.

Avodah Corps members live together over the course of their year of service. What were your first reactions about living with such a religiously diverse group of people?

JA: I was excited about it, but definitely intimidated. I figured that I would be the outsider Jew because I didn’t have a lot of background knowledge. But my housemates, and New Orleans’ larger Jewish community have been super supportive.

RL: Before I got here, I felt like I would have to compromise some Jewish observances to live in this house and play around with standards I’d set over my life. But my mindset has really shifted over the year. I had always let halacha (Jewish law) play the trump card in every situation, but I began to realize that other values and mindsets can also be valid. I’ve gotten so much more out of this experience than I would have if I was on top of every Jewish detail.

I still keep Shabbat pretty strictly, and sometimes spend Shabbat in Metairie (a nearby suburb), where there are conservative and Orthodox shuls. The Avodah house has a pretty diverse range of observances, but Shabbat is on everyone’s radar screen. I like how Jordan talks about a “Shabbat state of mind” – being attuned to it, even if you’re not following the exact laws.

You two have started studying Jewish texts together. How did that come about?

JA: I was interested in exploring what it could mean to have a more permanent Jewish identity, and decided I really wanted a bat mitzvah. I realized this could be the perfect year for it, and asked Rachie if she’d be my teacher.

We started with the Hebrew alphabet and reading through the Torah. At times I felt really frustrated and angry about what we were learning – both because it was unfamiliar, and because I felt there was so much pressure about how I am supposed to react to particular stories. But it’s been fun to work through them with Rachie because she brings an incredible amount of background knowledge, and I bring fresh eyes to the texts. We’ve developed this great, hybridized method of learning the material.

RL: I try to convey to Jordan that I get as much out of the experience as she does. I’ve gone through so much Jewish education that didn’t encourage students to make their own judgments about what they learned. It was this simplistic approach to something that isn’t at all simplistic. Seeing Jordan react to certain stories has helped me realize how deep and sometimes problematic some of the content is. It forces me to step back and think again about the ideas that had been presented to me.

Want to learn more? Read the complete interview here.

As a housing specialist at UNITY New Orleans, Becca Waxman works directly with homeless clients to help them find permanent housing. Photo by Mario Tama, Getty Images, http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/homeless_box.htm

Struggling with this single issue has driven my desire to maintain an active role in the nonprofit sector, a group of institutions reminding the masses that there are people sleeping on those mended streets, living in and furnishing the 65,000 abandoned buildings and overrunning our children’s playgrounds.  My Avodah placement last year, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, asks the public to consider the lives of the disenfranchised: people of color, women, those raising a family and living with a disability.  Then they ask, “Why are people poor?”  I wonder, because of the deteriorating streets, the abandoned homes or the failing schools?  Because society identifies them as an underprivileged minority?  They pose this uncomfortable question and it makes us ponder whether people want to be poor, and to what degree it is their choice.  Our streets and schools are undoubtedly in need of repair, but how does a city where every single citizen at one point in time was displaced from their home ignore its most vulnerable and growing demographic: those who spend their nights in places no human deserves to sleep? These are questions I deal with on a daily basis in my current position with UNITY of Greater New Orleans.

Two years ago I didn’t think about these questions.  I had not yet developed a vocabulary centered around affordable housing, youth organizers, protected citizens, and public defenders.  Two years ago I unknowingly built relationships with others based on similar religious and class backgrounds.  Up until then it was simple.  I made friends by spending time with people who I enjoyed and who enjoyed similar activities.  Today I know the effectiveness of the nonprofit sector, and I am able to spend my days and nights with this most vulnerable population because last year, what stemmed from this evolving analysis of oppression was a group of strong friends.

We were new, to each other and to the city.  We allowed ourselves to experience anger, often as a result of our privilege and the effects our whiteness has on society.  We studied and celebrated the teachings and victories that quickly led us to create a kehillah kedoshah, a holy community.  In a time and place where individualism and self fulfillment prevails over communal strength and vision, we took this despair and flipped it into a mission that drove our community.  Rabbi Dov Gartenberg teaches that “a community becomes holy when it is engaged in the mitzvah of supporting each individual who is part of it during times of need and times of joy.”  Anyone who walked into our home on Jefferson Avenue recognized this spirit of intentionality, and when I realized that a day would soon come when I would no longer share meals with my holy community, I decided that I wasn’t willing to remain engaged in Avodah solely as an alum.

One evening we collectively crafted a plan to continue our involvement as “second year” corps members.  Personally, I needed to make sure that I could sustain my membership in my community as a housing and human rights activist while strengthening my identity as a progressive Jew.  This drove me to join what would develop into a year-long conversation analyzing the Avodah experience.

Becca Waxman (right) takes time to reflect on her decision to spend a second year working for social justice in New Orleans.

We saw where we could improve the program, and spelled out exactly how we would fit into the equation of creating a more powerful year for the second group of corps members to come through New Orleans.  Today we are finding ways to formally and casually engage in conversations on gender, spirituality, race and activism by leading programs with the new corps members.  Jews4neworleans.org has become a forum regularly updated by corps members reflecting and further examining their roles in their jobs and the Jewish community, while weaving themselves into the culture and history of the city’s private and public sectors.  We meet and work together on a regular basis because of a true kinship we learned as we came into our own during our Avodah year.  If you can imagine it, we envision an even brighter future for Avodah, and we are eagerly executing our ideas and watching Avodah grow to new heights.  We are not the corps members; rather, we are the supports and visionaries.

As an alum and as a “second year” corps member, I am expanding our holy community of nine into a kehilah kedoshah of more minds and more belief systems conquering the big questions like “Why are people homeless?”  I don’t run on empty and I won’t burn out as I struggle with this fight to end homelessness because of this community that allows me to strengthen my identity and understand where my strength comes from.

For more on OPD, check out this article from The Gambit.

Current Corps Members festooned in Mardi Gras beads.

The party started a little early this year when the New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl in 43 years. Unique hints of this city’s beauty emerged in the pure joy every New Orleanian experienced and shared with each other. Rather than burn cars and initiate riots, everyone high-fived anyone in sight, honked their horns in elation and second-lined down the streets. And soon after watching one of the best games of football I have ever seen, on a plane with twenty exuberant natives who came together to cheer on the Saints while suppressing a deep frustration with their lack of foresight (who books a flight during the Super Bowl when your team is undefeated? Thankfully Jet Blue is tech savvy and we were able to watch the game), it was clear that the party was only getting started.

"While the wastefulness of this season is grossly apparent in the countless resources exhausted on crap...this season is not simply about consumption."

As my housemates, some other friends and I stood in the cold for hours at the Saints parade two days later, we were warmed by the presence of 800,000 others (which is pretty impressive since New Orleans proper has around 300,000 residents) who lined the streets of the whole city to celebrate with one another and express a deep gratitude. For hours, ecstatic Saints riding on floats from upcoming Mardi Gras parades shared their joy and accomplishment with all of us, throwing beads at onlookers and dancing to the musics of local brass bands. During the few week long Mardi Gras celebration, the Saints players and the Super Bowl trophy became staples and the scale of their victory started to sink in. While I have become skeptical of how sports impact our culture in recent years, I think that these athletes understood the magnitude of their collective victory and could admit the humility of their role in bringing joy to a city that both desperately needs it and knows exactly how to cultivate it. This win did not signify the successful rebuilding of New Orleans as some have ignorantly suggested, but it did give a forgotten population something to feel proud of and a chance to show the rest of the country how to throw a good party.

And the partying certainly continued. The next two weeks were filled with countless parades that showcased beautiful floats and costumes, fun music, hilarious, offensive satire, and the most ridiculous amount of plastic beads you will ever see. The city transformed to accommodate the celebration. Homes were beautifully adorned with green, purple and gold decorations, every business sign bestowed festive wishes upon passer-bys, for days the streets that served as routes were lined with fold-up chairs and decorated ladders that saved trusting natives’ excellent spots for the festivities, the trees began to shimmer with necklaces that never made it down to the masses and the majority of organizations and offices shut down so everyone could enjoy the party (and because it was simply impossible to get anywhere). All of New Orleans became committed to elevating this two week period into something beautiful, I would even venture to say, something sacred.

Amidst all of the happiness and unity entwined with Mardi Gras, it is not difficult to simultaneously find glaring problems. For one, it produces an immense amount of garbage (after committing ourselves to the acquisition of as many shiny necklaces and plush animals as we could get our hands on, my housemates and I now have many bags of useless junk, which two weeks ago we may have deemed a chest of valuable treasures). Yet, while the wastefulness of this season is grossly apparent in the countless resources exhausted on crap and in the twinkling, littered streets that take hours, sometimes days, to clean after each parade,  this season is not simply about consumption. Yes, all of the aforementioned concerns are significant and problematic, but there is also something to be learned from the parade participants who spend thousands of dollars each year to buy their throws (technical term for all the Mardi Gras give-a-ways) only to give it all away and offer parade-goers small moments of fulfillment.

Mardi Gras reveals the many extremes of this city. It demonstrates the unity, the beauty and the joy, yet simultaneously the waste, inefficiency and inequality. While everyone is celebrating, every office seems to shut down which yields little productivity over a two week span; while the parades are attended by all kinds of people, they simultaneously reinforce inequalities as most of the krewe members (the groups that make the floats and ride in the parades) and participants are white while many black homeless people are paid to hold torches to bring light and heat to those present; while all attendees leaves with bags of throws, jail inmates, decked out in orange jumpsuits are called upon to clean up the streets for all to uncomfortably witness.

There is a great deal of both beauty and ugliness in this time, a juxtaposition lost in the widespread one-dimensional depiction of Mardi Gras. Yes, this is a time in which normative behavior, functionality and responsibility are suppressed, but it is done with careful intent and significant meaning. It is a time that challenges the status quo of New Orleans that so often seems depressing and stagnant. And since the ugliness sometimes seems too permanent to break, the very presence of beauty makes Mardis Gras so worthwhile. The glaring flaws of this time, of this city should not be discounted; but maybe the bits of light that emerge are the only way to stomach the darkness. Afterall this city makes it quite clear that utopia is just not feasible. Yet, my first Mardi Gras experience has taught me that this holiday is not supposed to offer a pure utopia. Rather, it is a season that acknowledges the tensions it produces and deems it possible to exist within them, deems it acceptable to extract joy amidst the many problems that plague New Orleans. Ultimately, for me, Mardi Gras highlights the importance of isolated moments like this, when we can bury the darkness in the back of our minds, immerse ourselves in beauty and party together until dawn.

"Minutes after the last float rumbles by, a line of men in orange sweatshirts or fluorescent yellow vests advances, armed with shovels and heavy-duty bags."

Turning onto St. Charles Avenue, a different bloom catches my eye; vibrant multicolored beads droop from the branches of the boulevard’s live oaks. One week after Mardi Gras, this alien bloom is all that remains of the city-wide celebration and round-the-clock revelry.

During the two weeks of parades that lead up to Mardi Gras, an estimated $1 million worth of beads are bought and thrown. New Orleans natives will tell you that it’s bad luck to pick up beads that land on the ground. In the wake of each parade, then, as the crowds drift away with their booty around their necks, the streets are piled high with discarded beads and beer cans. This is what remains of the “greatest free party on earth”, in the words of Sgt. Lesley Hill-Peters.[1]

Hill-Peters is spokesperson for the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office. According to her, “someone picking up after you” is all part of the fun; revelers are required to do nothing but have a good time. So who cleans up the city’s messes? Local prisoners, released into the sunshine for a few hours to make thousands of pounds of garbage disappear. Minutes after the last float rumbles by, a line of men in orange sweatshirts or fluorescent yellow vests advances, armed with shovels and heavy-duty bags.

The inmates who clean up the city’s excesses consider it a fair trade. Many, like Steve Angelle, an inmate of Terrebone parish since September 2009, welcome the opportunity to work outside in the sunshine. On Ash Wednesday, Angelle woke at 3 am to eat breakfast, then began an eight-hour shift of shoveling with 44 other inmates. He considers himself fortunate, an opinion echoed by Sgt. Rodney Martin of the local Sheriff’s Office. Martin noted that some inmates “get lucky and find a dollar bill or larger on the ground”. Says Angelle: “It’s a privilege being out here instead of locked up between four walls.”

Mardi Gras parades offer some insight into the appetites and accountability of the City That Care Forgot. Here we determine if something is trash or treasure based on whether it lands in our hands or at our feet. We step on and over whatever we deem worthless. And we’re invited to leave our messes for someone else to take care of.

In my work with Resurrection After Exoneration, I deal with discards: men, not beads. I work with men who were kidnapped from their homes, interrogated by the police, and detained in jail or on bond until trial, when they were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison or death. I deal with innocent men who spent decades dreaming of how they would live life if they were ever freed. I deal with these men once they’re released into free-fall; exonerees, by virtue of their finally-proven innocence, are ineligible for the paltry reentry services covering the 15,000 Louisiana citizens released yearly from state and local prisons.

Exonerees are our justice system’s most obvious failures; their existence reminds us both of human fallibility and human frailty. We are made uncomfortable by exonerees because they are the detritus of our social systems. No one reaches out to catch them when they’re released. They drop to the ground unnoticed. And we sweep them out of sight, embarrassed, and expect that despite their deeply seared traumas, exonerees should be able to become ‘normal’ again.

I work with one exoneree – an innocent man who spent nine years on death row – whose first instinct, whenever he goes out into the public sphere, is to take his young daughters with him. He does this because he believes that one day he’ll be arrested again for another crime he didn’t commit. And when that time comes, he wants his daughters there as alibis. How can we expect normalcy from someone who’s been so personally and so profoundly damaged?

These words I’ve just written – they’re a lesson I’ve learned and taught to others over the past 18 months. And yet sometimes I forget. I want exonerees to be normal, to take responsibility for their actions and make thoughtful, practical life decisions. I want them to take full advantage of their unlikely freedom, and not be hampered by memories of rape, and grief, and watching their friends walk to their deaths. I want to blame their failures on a state that treats some of its citizens like garbage; and yet sometimes, in my frustration, I simply blame these discarded men.

Hubert H. Humphrey said in 1947 that “The moral test of government is how it treats those…who are in the shadows of life”. Whether the purpose of incarceration is rehabilitation, segregation, or punishment, it casts a shadow that remains long after a prisoner’s release. At Mardi Gras, we let some of these shadowed beings like Angelle out to clean up after us; we expose them to the sunlight for a few hours. They are the custodians of our amnesia and our excess. And the garbage, as always, gets swept away.

Corps Members Mallory Falk and Amanda Gross

Although the city of New Orleans has been super busy with the Super Bowl, elections, Mardi Gras, work, visitors, and a variety of other fun events, I have been given the additional opportunity of planning for a group of 16 Northeastern Hillel students to come down for an alternative Spring Break trip February 28th-March 7th. I will be co-leading this trip with another Elon University graduate who works for Northeastern Hillel. He had contacted me a while ago to ask if I would be interested in leading with him because the group wanted to be a part of the rebuilding process and he knew that I worked for Rebuilding Together New Orleans (an organization that rebuilds the houses of low-income homeowners who are either elderly, disabled, single guardians of minor children, or first responders).

I eagerly accepted the offer because it was a combination of so many of the things I love. I was particularly excited to have been offered an opportunity to work with Hillel students interested in service, as someone who specifically has moved down to New Orleans to do community service work in a Jewish context. I jumped at the chance to be able to combine the passion I have for my job with the chance to find ways for individuals to get the most out of a volunteer experience. Additionally, I thought it would be a really great chance to flip my usual role as a participant in alternative spring break trips/service oriented programs and use the knowledge I had acquired during those experiences to create a program for these students.

I hadn’t realized until I began the speaking with the student leader for the group regarding the planning just how much I truly enjoyed this type of work. As the days get closer and closer to when they get here and I realize all the last minute things that need to be done, I get more excited for all that we are going to be able to do. This surprising amount of enthusiasm I’ve felt has had a profound effect on me for two reasons. The first dealt with the realization that maybe this could be something I look into for future employment or just as something to keep in mind in case the opportunity arises again. The second was that it reminded me why I chose to do Avodah in the first place. I knew that I wanted to do service for a year after graduating from college and had looked at a number of different service organizations before deciding on Avodah. Ultimately, I chose what I felt would be the best organization for giving me context for the service work I was doing. I did not want my work to just be a job. I wanted it to be an experience; a job plus an understanding and insight into how that job fits into the context of everything else occurring in the city. I wanted a support system outside of my job that I could find in the community of other volunteers I would be living with.

Avodah has been exactly what I had wanted in this regard. I love seeing how the work I am doing is interconnected with the work of my housemates. However, this was never something I thought about on a daily basis. Sure, I have been incredibly grateful for being a part of Avodah for many reasons, but planning for Northeastern has given my an entirely new appreciation for what a wonderful expereince Avodah has been for me. I have re-discovered how important it is to have that additional context for service work though my time spent making decisions on the speakers/activities/events that would give the Northeastern students the best supplement to their service.

I feel incredibly grateful that I have had the ability to do more than go through the motions of my daily tasks in the office and am thrilled that to have the chance to give these students a similar experience where they can connect with their work on a more meaningful level. Or at least attempt to provide programs that will allow them to do this.

I know that I have a tendency to go off on tangents, but my ultimate point is this: in planning for the trip for the Northeastern students, I have unexpectedly found myself in appreciation of the experience I am currently enjoying in New Orleans and have realized how much I like trying to find a way to incorporate that into a new experience for others to enjoy.

Learn more about the School-to-Prison-Pipeline by playing a game created by the ACLU: http://www.aclu.org/school-prison-pipeline-game

While routinely going down my list of clients, I happened to call a client with the initials R.J.  He didn’t have a review hearing for another four months, but I figured I would check in anyway. I reached his father who informed me that not only was R.J. not currently in school but that the 15 year old had not been enrolled since May of last year. He explained that R.J.’s mother had moved to Texas and had possession of many of R.J.’s documents such as social security card and birth certificate. His father had been fiercely trying to get R.J. enrolled in a school but it seemed that doors were continually being shut in his face.  This was infuriating for many reasons, but one of the most important was that R.J. could be sent to jail for not being in school. The juvenile courts in New Orleans view academic issues as being non-compliant with probation. A catchy phrase for the repercussions of this practice is the “school to prison pipeline”. Kids are pushed out of schools for minor disciplinary infractions, or, as in R.J.’s situation, they are kept out of public schools illegally. These juveniles, living without the structure of school, disproportionately end up the criminal justice system with a recidivism rate that will make your head spin. In New Orleans, juveniles have been sent to jail for repeatedly not passing classes or not attending. So the thought of R.J. going before the judge without even being enrolled in any school was a scary one.

I told him I would do all that I could to help get his son into school, which of course I thought was very little. I was not his mother and if they wouldn’t listen to his father, why would they listen to me? The following day, I went to the Welcome School, the building where administrators hold expulsion hearings and enroll students who are not currently enrolled. After meeting with a social worker for about 30 minutes and presenting her with R.J.’s academic records from his previous school, she brought me in to meet the person who decides where to enroll the students who aren’t currently enrolled in a school.  He told me that there was space at an 8th grade academy and that he would sign a letter stating that they had to enroll R.J. as soon as possible. The following day after that, I drove myself, R.J. and R.J.’s father to this 8th grade academy. They addressed me with all of their questions and 45 minutes later, for the first time since May 15th of the previous year, R.J. was an enrolled student.

While pleasantly surprised at this result and the euphoric feeling I had (one I do not get often working within the juvenile justice system), I could not shake a different feeling that was hanging on me.  Why hadn’t my initial trepidation proved true? Why was I able to help R.J. when his own father could not? This was certainly not the first time being utterly blindsided by my own privilege but it was startling nonetheless.

So where does that collision of my reality and my own privilege leave me? I love my job and the work that I do but I am also deeply troubled by this system that I am attempting to work within.  The conclusions I have reached are somewhat mixed. Yes, it was  because I was white and yes, it was  because I was dressed in my business casual attire that I was able to get R.J. into school and his father could not. But he is in school now…so that is enough?

Of course it isn’t, but for now it simply has to be. This experience has made me realize that grand, sweeping changes are not going to happen in front of my eyes and the successes I do have, however few and far between, need to be celebrated. So, here’s to R.J. And now, onto the next.

Further Reading on the School-to-Prison-Pipeline:

-The Advancement Project has a groundbreaking new study out called Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline.

-The Southern Poverty Law Center works in Louisiana to stop the School to Prison Pipeline by enforcing Special Education Law.

-ACLU Talking Points on the School-to-Prison-Pipeline

-JJPL: The Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana

The frigid temperatures that gripped the New Orleans area for five nights last week dipped to a deadly level. But apparently only two of the hundreds of homeless people who sleep on city streets and in abandoned buildings in Orleans and Jefferson parishes were lost to the cold.

Those deaths — one man who perished in a fire in an abandoned building in Bridge City and another who was outside in New Orleans’ Central Business District — are tragic. It is a blessing, though, that there weren’t more fatalities with temperatures in the low 20s night after night. That is due to heroic efforts by caseworkers and volunteers with UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a consortium of 63 organizations working to end homelessness, and the New Orleans Police Department’s homeless outreach unit.

They coaxed dozens of people to go to shelters, which were allowed to expand capacity during the freeze. They also made continuous checks on those who refused to move indoors, taking them extra blankets and supplies during the night.

The generosity of metro area residents was vital to the life-saving effort. More than 40 volunteers helped serve meals and visit with people staying at the emergency public shelter operated by the Red Cross in New Orleans. Donations poured in to UNITY as the severity of the weather became known: blankets, socks, sleeping bags, winter clothing, money for gas for UNITY caseworkers.

But the success of the outreach during last week’s freeze isn’t the end of the issue.
UNITY’s member groups are working to provide thousands of homeless people with housing and a more stable life so that they aren’t at risk of dying in a freeze. As the organization moves toward that goal, it needs our continued help.

Small things like a gift card from a fast food restaurant and individual-size bottles of water allow UNITY’s Outreach Team to help homeless people who cannot or won’t go to a shelter. Sleeping bags also are helpful for people who are waiting for permanent housing. Currently UNITY gets five new housing vouchers a week for disabled homeless people, but there are 900 people who have completed applications for a voucher. At that rate, some people will be without a home for many months or will die before a voucher is available.

There ought to be some way to increase those numbers and at least get disabled people into housing more quickly, and federal and local housing officials should make sure that happens.

Meanwhile, UNITY’s Outreach Team needs basics like flashlights and batteries for their nighttime checks on homeless people. The organization need bus tokens for homeless clients to get to work and to medical appointments. And it needs cash donations to pay for a place for medically fragile disabled people to stay until they have housing.

Then there are the items that help make a house a home for those lucky enough to get their own place to live: Sheets, towels, dishware, used furnishings. “They have nothing, and they need everything,” UNITY staffer Sue Weishar said. And, of course, there is always a need for volunteers to do everything from sorting donations to helping clients move into apartments to assisting with the agency’s annual homeless count Jan. 26. The count is required by the U.S. Deparment of Housing and Urban Development and drives the amount of resources for fighting homelessness that flow into our community.

A post-Katrina explosion of homelessness has left an estimated 6,000 people, many of whom suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, camping in more than 65,000 abandoned buildings in New Orleans.

Homelessness is a problem that can make people feel helpless to do anything meaningful. But, as many people discovered when the temperatures plummeted, there are some very simple ways to make a difference.

“New Orleans is a small town disguised as a city. It has its own culture, its own rituals and its own flavor. People sincerely ask you how you are doing, and will capitalize on any excuse to have a party. As a result of its size, warmth and collective curiosity, our Avodah group often gets attention, sometimes with expressions of gratitude, and other times with criticism, asserting our white privilege.

In my job at the public defender’s office, I work as a case manager, matching clients with the resources they need to facilitate a successful re-entry into society after their legal difficulties. I often have firsthand experiences of feeling like an outsider. Working with a predominantly black population — frequently doing so in spaces that create an uncomfortable power dynamic, such as jail and court — has made me very attuned to the limitations of what I can offer people who will not initially trust me. And why should they?”

You can read the entire article here.

I met Ruth at a funeral home in Metairie.  It was raining and cold when I slid out of the cab, slammed the door shut behind me, and ran with bent head toward the back entrance of the funeral home.  I punched in the code and pushed my way in through the unassuming white door.  A woman named Sandy from the local Conservative synagogue was there to greet me and show me the way to Ruth, the deceased woman with whom I would be spending the night–I on the couch, she in a plain wooden coffin.

I’d responded to the email I’d received about a request from “the local Chevra Kadisha–or burial society…for people to sit with the body of a recently deceased community member.”   The Chevra Kadisha is a group of Jews who see to it that the deceased in their community are properly attended to between death and burial.  They are responsible for the ritual cleansing and dressing of the body before burial, and also for providing “shomrim” to watch over the body.  The work of the Chevra Kadisha is considered a “chesed shel emet,” or a “good deed of truth.”  It is a unique good deed because the deceased has no way of returning the favor.  Somebody who takes part in a Chevra Kadisha cannot have ulterior motives to the work that she or he does, because there is no possible way of getting anything in return.  I was looking forward to having some part in all of this, and also for experiencing what it would be like to spend the night alone in a room with a deceased woman. I called Sandy to let her know that I would be willing to be a “shomer” (literally “guard,” but in this case, somebody who sits with the body–or, as one of my housemates put it, “bodysitter”).

When I arrived, Sandy showed me around, pointing out the telephones, the coffee pot, the couch where I would be spending the night.  There was a book of psalms on the table (it’s customary to read to the body from the Book of Psalms), a coffin in the middle of the room.  “Call me if you need anything,” said Sandy.  “Call if you get scared.”  And she was gone.

I sat down on the couch.  I picked up the Book of Psalms.  I looked at Ruth, lying–laying?–in her coffin, covered by a blue cloth velvety-looking blanket with a Hebrew phrase on it, the meaning of which I failed to make out.

After a few moments, it occurs to me that I’m not scared, and I am slightly surprised by this realization.  I like Ruth.  I don’t know anything about her, other than that her name is Ruth and she’s dead and she’s in a coffin under this blue blanket.  Sandy told me that she would send me Ruth’s obituary in the mail, so that I’ll know who I sat with, but for the time being, she could be anybody.

With.  Sat with, and not for.  That’s how I’m feeling about all this.  It feels like the two of us are keeping each other company–it feels mutual.  I don’t feel like I’m doing anybody a favor, or watching over anybody.  I feel like I’m hanging out with an old friend.

This place is so big and empty, I’m glad I’m sitting with Ruth.  When I left the room that Ruth and I are sharing (it’s almost like we’re roommates), I felt lonely, the tiniest bit frightened.  I missed her presence, I guess.  Her presence is still and calming.  I wonder what her life was like, how she was in life.  It hardly matters now, and somehow, that’s soothing.  It’s soothing to think that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I do or whether I fail or succeed or how tired I make myself, in the end up I will end up like Ruth, beneath a blue blanket, in the presence of a girl and a book of psalms.

I’m grateful that Ruth is here with me.

I open the Book of Psalms.  On the inside of it is a label that reads, “This books is made available by Shir Chadash Synagogue for those who serve as Shomrim (sitters) for the deceased prior to burial.”  I think this is interesting.  The book is for me. Not Ruth.  If I read from this book, as is customary, am I doing it for me? Or for Ruth?  It doesn’t say that the book is here for me to read to Ruth.  It only says that it is here for me.

Indeed, I think it’s striking how much Jewish rituals around death and dying are put in place for the mourners and those of us who remain here on earth, rather than for the deceased.  Sitting shiva, saying kadish, and even being a shomer–all of these rituals are, in one way or another, a way for the living to cope with and reflect upon death and dying.

A few days after my “bodysitting” experience, I received Ruth’s obituary in the mail.  I found out that she was the mother of four, the grandmother of twelve, and even the great-grandmother of nine!  She was influential in shaping early childhood education in New Orleans.  She was a dancer, a successful spelling bee participant, and an art docent.  She was a social worker, a sculptor, a teacher, a friend.

And we kept each other company through one rainy night in December.