When David Wien’s wife, Fran, died of cancer in 2020, he found it hard to cope. But after 18 months, he says, “All of a sudden, I got this, maybe message from HaShem, I don’t know, but I got this thought in my head that said, ‘Take the focus off your grief and put it on your fellow man.’”
Wien called his rabbi, Avi Alpert of Congregation Bet Shalom, and offered to teach a class on chesed, often translated as “loving-kindness” or “compassion.” His curriculum? “Whatever HaShem hits me with.”
With the rabbi’s blessing, Wien began a weekly class that is still going strong.
“It immediately changed my whole frame of mind,” Wien says.
The class generated several projects, including Bet Shalom’s Garfein Chesed Support Group, a cadre of 18 volunteers who help fellow congregants in three ways: making telephone calls, emails, and texts to people who may be lonely or facing difficulty; doing errands such as picking up a prescription for someone just discharged from the hospital; and coordinating Meal Trains to cook and deliver meals or gift cards to people going through difficult times.
The support group was named in honor of Mark “Moshe” Garfein, a friend of Wien’s and pillar of the congregation, who died in 2022 at the age of 92.
Many local congregations have chesed committees. Most also have social action committees. Broadly speaking, chesed committees focus inward to meet needs within the congregation and social action committees focus outward to meet needs in the wider community.
Some chesed committees, like Bet Shalom’s, may straddle that line. An ongoing Garfein Chesed Support Group project is a monthly virtual “tea and chat” with residents at Handmaker.
At the request of Rabbi Sara Metz, Jane Poliakoff began organizing chesed activities for Congregation Anshei Israel, assuming the role from a friend, Ron Grant, who was spending more of his time out of Tucson, visiting family.
CAI members facing difficulties usually reach out to the rabbi, who alerts Poliakoff, who contacts the family or individual to see if they need assistance. It’s been a good year, with few requests for help, although Poliakoff, who does not keep kosher, did call on kosher friends to cook a Shabbat dinner for one family.
The main thing, Poliakoff says, is communication: “Making sure people know there’s help, that they don’t have to be alone, figuring it out.”
At Chabad Oro Valley, rebbetzin Mushkie Zimmerman and a few congregants formed a Chesed Circle about a year ago.
Lynn Anglin was the first facilitator, inspired by her friend David Wien of Congregation Bet Shalom. Anglin was also the first recipient after she suffered a severe bout of sciatica that required surgery. People brought her meals every day until she was back on her feet.
“It was very difficult to receive so much from so many. I’m a giver,” Anglin says.
Months later, fully recovered, she held a luncheon for all those who’d helped her.
Sandy Schiffman, a volunteer who also helps to maintain Chabad Oro Valley’s website and database, is the current Chesed Circle facilitator. Meals, visits, and phone calls are the most frequent activities, but transportation requests have been few. “It’s something we can grow into as we make more connections,” Schiffman says.
At Congregation M’kor Hayim, the Refuah Sh’leima (Complete Healing) Circle started soon after the congregation was formed, “providing meals, companionship, and above all a personal outreach with compassion and understanding so that no one in our congregation need feel alone in their time of need,” per its mission statement.
“There was someone whom we helped, and who then was no longer a member and said, ‘Put me on the list. I want to help,’” says Nancy Lefkowitz, who has chaired the circle for five years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, circle members made regular check-in calls to every congregant.
The Beth Shalom Temple Center of Green Valley caring committee reaches out to members in need with phone calls and get well, sympathy, and thinking of you cards. The committee also keeps the synagogue’s Mi Sheberach list for those in need of healing prayers.
Rabbi Stephanie Aaron leads a chesed committee at Congregation Chaverim, where members bring food or fulfill other requests for families facing illness or in mourning.
Members of Congregation Beit Simcha’s chesed group call the people on the monthly Mi Sheberach lists, says Rabbi Sam Cohon, and several members visit those who are housebound.
Social Action Groups: Spreading the Love in the Wider Community
Along with its chesed group, Bet Shalom has a dynamic social action group, chaired by Anne Lowe. Many of its activities, such as clothing and hygiene kit drives, are done in partnership with Hope City Church. Other pursuits include support for refugee families and helping with Hadassah’s Adopt-a-Roadway biannual cleanups.
Social action has been a core value at M’kor Hayim. Committee Chair Judith Reisman organizes monthly activities that in 2024 included volunteering at Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Interfaith Network’s Poz Cafe, packing toiletry bags for homeless men, buying gift cards for Jewish Family & Children’s Service’s Matzah & More program, packing baggies with wet wipes for legal migrants crossing the border at Nogales, sorting buttons into bags for Treasures 4 Teachers Tucson, and packing food for the Thanksgiving break for students at Homer Davis Elementary School (in collaboration with Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona). The committee also sponsors emergency collections, such as gathering two carloads of blankets and clothing for families displaced by an apartment fire across from Homer Davis.
While its caring committee is a work in progress, Kol Ami Synagogue boasts a dual social action/social justice committee, with separate chairs for social action (Hedy Feuer and Randi Levin) and social justice (Elaine Jones). The social action committee focuses on direct, hands-on work such as American Red Cross blood drives and making sandwiches for the Primavera Men’s Shelter. The social justice committee concentrates on nonpartisan political advocacy at the local, state, and national levels, often with other community groups such as the Center for Jewish Resilience at JPSA, the NAACP, and Pima County Interfaith. The social justice committee has teams for environmental responsibility (climate change), immigration/refugee advocacy, and housing instability. It recently held discussions with congregants to explore other issues of interest.
At Congregation Anshei Israel, besides volunteer-led blood drives, professional staff oversee social action efforts, including a lobby collection bin for Southern Arizona Community Food Bank donations and another collection station for snacks and toilet paper for Primavera’s homeless shelters. CAI’s annual Hamantashen for Hunger event raises funds for the Community Food Bank and Leket Israel, the national food bank of Israel.
Connie Greenwald, chair of the Beth Shalom Temple Center social action committee, says some of the group’s ongoing activities include food collections for the food banks in Sahuarita and Green Valley, purchasing pajamas for the Tucson-based Angel Heart Pajama Project, and making cards that Youth On Their Own gives to beneficiaries along with monthly stipend checks. In partnership with the Santa Cruz Valley United Methodist Church, committee members collect hundreds of pounds of dog and cat food — with much donated by PetSmart Charities — and pack it into quart bags for Tucson’s Sister José Women’s Center. Ten years ago, the committee also started a Mitzvah Day that grew so large it became part of the Green Valley Foundation’s Good Deeds Days program.
Congregation Chaverim does not have a formal social action committee but takes on projects suggested by congregants, including volunteering at TIHAN’s Poz Cafe, Aaron says. This year, in addition to the community-wide Project Isaiah food drive during the High Holidays, the congregation held an extra food drive for the Community Food Bank in November. Aaron says many other projects are in the works for the remainder of the Jewish year 5785.
Congregation Beit Simcha has an active social action committee, Cohon says. Recent programs have included a drive for school supplies for students in low-income neighborhoods; a fundraiser for Israeli causes, particularly Leket, Israel’s national food bank; and participation in the Project Isaiah food drive. Other activities have included two projects with Habitat for Humanity and pro-democracy/voting rights programs. Cohon says Beit Simcha’s social action efforts begin with its religious school students, who have become pen pals with Israeli students and soldiers.
This article is an introduction to synagogue chesed and social action programs. For more information, check with the congregation of your choice.
