In a past life I was a matchmaker. Now, I fulfill that impulse in my work life by bringing people and their organizations together. This summer’s month-long work trip was full of those synergies. In LA we co-hosted a Packing Event. Rob Scheer of Comfort Cases provided travel bags as well as items to fill them. The Book Foundation provided new books. Temple Israel of Hollywood donated a huge space. The She Ready Foundation provided financial support and volunteers. A 2N Cohort mom photographed the event. And about 75 people—from cohort families to people we had never met—packed the cases which were then brought to kids in the foster system who otherwise move from place to place with their things in trash bags. Like waste.
Which brings me to a more personal angle on an effort that brings so many different people together. I am a rabbi and I orient myself in a world of Jewish theology, customs, metaphors and history. Yet I have for years struggled with the word “holy”.
It is through my work bringing kids and families together in healthy and sustainable ways that I have come to a deep sense of what holiness is.
Holiness is the opposite of waste.
And every day I see people and organizations work to minimize waste—wasted childhoods, wasted opportunities to be loved and be a family, wasted potential and wasted hope.
And I am so blessed to be part of it.
Susan Silverman, CEO