by Laura Weisskopf Bleill
This past weekend marked our synagogue’s monthly religious service tailored for young children and their families.
A highlight of our social calendar, each month we spend a Friday night Shabbat (Sabbath) together with our friends and their families. We eat pizza together, enjoy a spirited musical service, and bask in the glow of shared community.
One of my main concerns about raising our family here was the size — or lack there of — of the local Jewish community.
It was a 180-degree difference from where I grew up, where you couldn’t fall down without running into another Jewish person, organization or charity.
But the relationships we have built with other families have exceeded any thing I could have imagined. We have already arranged our children’s prom dates. (Don’t worry, no contracts were signed; at least we stopped there.) The synagogue has knitted us together, but we don’t leave our connection at the door.
My mom happened to be in town for the service, as she has been for many before. She often gushes to me about how wonderful the experience is, and how it’s so much better than the equivalent program at the wildly enormous congregation she belongs to up in the suburbs.
And I look at her cross-eyed. I’m finally starting to get it, though. Where I grew up, it was easy to take for granted our shared heritage, our shared history, our shared comedy and tragedy. Here, that’s not really an option.
If anything, this whole exercise has taught me to focus on what I have, and not spend so much time belaboring what I don’t. And that extends to all aspects of my life, not just this one.
Laura Weisskopf Bleill, a co-founder of chambanamoms.com, will still bemoan the lack of a decent bagel here until the situation is remedied. She writes “Being a Jew in C-U,” a column about being a Jewish suburban girl in a cornfield, on Thursdays. You can reach her at laura@chambanamoms.com.
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