Our kids once asked my father if he had electric lights when he was a boy. He said ‘no,’ that when he was a boy there were still dinosaurs roaming the Minnesota farmlands by his home. When I was a boy, he had told me this as well – which is why I spent a good part of one summer digging for dinosaur bones in our backyard. Upon reflection, it was a fantastic way to keep me occupied. My dad wanted to keep me inspired in my excavations, so when I wasn’t looking, he would occasionally toss a chicken or steak bone in the hole I was digging.
While my father didn’t live in the Jurassic era, and he did have electricity, he grew up in a time of national and cultural transition. The Jewish community was becoming the American Jewish community. My father caught the tail end of World War II and went to school on the GI bill. His parents spoke Yiddish in the home; he spoke English on the street and became an electrician.
While he was working, he would occasionally run across the old gas lines that, once upon a time, fueled the neighborhood street lamps and lanterns in old buildings. In another era, men would go down the streets at sunset and one by one light the gas streetlamps with a stubby pole and a ladder.
Once – back in the days of gas streetlamps, horse drawn wagons and cobblestone streets – there was a young boy who wouldn’t go to sleep. One night, he sat on the edge of his bed with his head behind the heavy curtains looking out the window at the gathering darkness. Exasperated, his mother finally asked, “What are you looking at?” The boy replied, “Those men. Look. They are punching holes in the darkness.” One lamp at a time, the men would go down the street, igniting the gas street lamps. And in this way, they would punch holes in the darkness.
I thought of this story recently when a JFS client gave me a drawing called “Lamplighter” as a thank you. And I have come to appreciate that this is what we are called to do. Each of us is a lamplighter for someone at some point in our lives. Each of us helps punch holes in someone else’s darkness. JFS builds the lamps, but our staff make sure they are lit for the people who turn to us.
A few weeks back I was speaking to Carol Mullin, the director of our Emergency Services department. Carol has a tremendous amount of wisdom, and I value her observations. She is a dedicated realist. For almost 30 years she has been a lamplighter, punching holes in our clients’ darkness.
She understands the strengths and limitations of the broader social service system of which we are a part. She knows what intergenerational poverty does to a family. And she knows when she can and cannot help. Sometimes the people who see her are young mothers living in the darkness of domestic violence. Sometimes they are seniors whose power and heat have been turned off in their apartment because, despite having saved for retirement, they can’t cover all the bills they face with rents and healthcare costs rising. And she knows the transformative power of flexible funding.
Recently she told me of a meeting she had with a very large man with a very gruff personality who was homeless. She wasn’t sure how the meeting was going to go. He had been living on the street or temporary shelters for over a year, but he finally had the dual golden tickets out of homelessness. He had a subsidized housing voucher and a low-income apartment lined up.
But this man had a very major problem when he sat down with her. He was about to lose the voucher and the apartment because he was short $185 on the deposit. And without that $185, he would remain living on the street.
When Carol told this very large man in her very small office that she could help him, something unexpected happened that surprised her. This very threatening looking man broke into tears and started sobbing. He told her he didn’t expect complete strangers to help him. He didn’t expect anyone to help him.
It is stressful and frightening being homeless, and a mere $185 dollars may as well have been $185,000. It doesn’t matter how big you are or how gruff you are, it is not safe living on the streets.
We have to make hard choices in terms of which lamps to light, where to place them. Do we help the Jewish client with a profound developmental disability whose parents died knowing their son would run out of money and would have no support system other than JFS?
How can we help the client battling substance abuse and an anxiety disorder? And also help the woman who is struggling to leave an abusive relationship? Our responsibility is limitless – but our resources are not. These decisions are difficult, and they are choices we make daily. How to stretch things just a bit further when we can’t rely on miracles to keep the light burning.
What we do know is that when we place those lamps, they have to lead our clients to health, well-being and stability. And we rely on the wisdom and expertise of our team at JFS and the best evidence we have to ensure we are making a difference and improving lives, and not just telling good stories. This is our commitment and our obligation, both to our clients and to you.
As Carol reflected, “Not all the people who come to us know what Jewish Family Service is. Or know the history of the Jewish people. Or that JFS has been serving our community for over 124 years.”
Or that we are using evidence-based practices to drive our decision-making. Or the fact that we have 1,100 people at a Luncheon who care and are making our work possible.
What these people know when they leave JFS is that they are not alone. They are not forgotten. And that the Jewish community cares and won’t abandon them, like has happened so many other times in their lives.
Each of us is a lamplighter at some point in our lives. And at other times each of us is in need of the light. As a community, we have always worked to punch holes in the darkness. And this is what we will continue to do. To fearlessly keep walking together into the night, punching holes in the darkness. One lamp at a time, one soul at a time. Until at last the dawn breaks.
These remarks were delivered at the 2016 Commmunity of Caring Luncheon on May 6. The feature image is “The Lamplighter.”
By Rabbi Will Berkovitz
Will is CEO of JFS. He and his wife Dr. Lelach Rave, live with their three children in North Seattle. Will is a long-distance runner, avid hiker and backpacker. He particularly enjoys volunteering in the Polack Food Bank and helping with refugee resettlement.
