It’s Mazel Tov time. This past Shabbat, our family celebrated our son Jonah’s Bar Mitzvah with our family, friends and incredible congregational community. A joyous kvell-o-rama!

As you may remember from earlier blog posts, Jonah attended JRC’s congregational trip to Rwanda/Uganda this past summer. In honor of his Bar Mitzvah, he’s been selling Mirembe Kawomera coffee every week at our congregation and he’s also raising money for our Fair Trade fund to help the Mirembe farmers with their capacity building. If you’d like to share in our naches, buy coffee!

Click below for some remarks from Jonah:

What I found interesting in my portion was that when Moses returns to Egypt, the Torah says that the Israelites would not listen to him at first. Maybe they didn’t listen because they were in such extreme circumstances that they didn’t know what to believe any more. Moses went to God and told God that the Israelites would not listen to him. So God instructed Moses and Aaron on how to deliver the Israelites from the land of Egypt.

The Torah never tells us what God actually said to Moses and Aaron. I think that God told them that they could tell the Israelites to work together for a common good to liberate themselves from the land of Egypt. They needed to understand that if they worked together with Moses and Aaron, they could create a better future for themselves outside of Egypt.

This is the main lesson I learned from my portion: that people living in hard circumstances, can work together to make a difference for the better in their lives.

This summer I went to Africa with JRC. We went to Rwanda and Uganda to volunteer with different organizations that provide help for people with HIV/AIDS and we also visited an interfaith fair trade coffee co-op called Mirembe Kowmara. Mirembe Kowamera is a group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian coffee farmers in Uganda who have come together to form a co-op.

In Uganda, we met with one of the coop’s founders – a Muslim man named Elias. One time when we met with him, he invited us to visit him at his house. So we went to his house for a short visit. While in his house we waited for him to return. We did not know what to do – whether we should leave or continue to wait for him. Soon he came back, and he started to talk about his house. He told us that he was able to build his house with the money he made from the coffee. He was very proud that he could show us his accomplishment.

Seeing this, I could really see where all the money was going. I saw the power of the co-op in action. I could see that, just like in my Torah portion, people can really make a difference if everyone works together for a common cause that will help change their lives.

I’ve always felt that one of the most valuable things about the New Year is the way it effectively shifts us into a different spiritual gear. Our lives and our world rush forward sometimes at warp speed, and then Rosh Hashanah comes to offer us a chance to slow down, take stock, and hopefully to recapture a sense of order and purpose before we begin again.

That’s not to say it’s easy to do.  Especially in a year such as this. It has been, needless to say, a profoundly eventful year for our country and for the world. It’s been a powerfully eventful year for JRC. And I will confess there have been times these past few weeks when I’ve done my share of time just gazing into my computer screen, unsure of just how or where to start.

Still. as difficult as this can sometimes be, I receive this opportunity as a gift.  I wanted so much tonight to talk about our pretty remarkable year at JRC – and yes, there was just so much to say. But in the end I appreciated the chance to sit back and think about how far we’ve come since we last gathered here together. And as I gave myself more time to put the year into context, little by little, I found myself inevitably returning to certain common denominators, certain common themes.  One word in particular seemed to present itself more than any other.  And that word is sustainability.

Now I know this word is bandied about a great deal these days, in a variety of different contexts. Some might even consider it to be something of a buzzword. But the thing about buzzwords?  Sometimes it’s true, they do reflect temporary fads or the concept du jour if you will. But in some instances the popularity of a particular word might just indicate an idea whose time has come.

So what does it mean when we say that something is “sustainable?” In the most basic formulation it simply means that something has the ability to live and thrive with permanence and continuity without exhausting limited resources. This is a fairly straightforward concept, but in the 21st century it appears to be increasingly difficult for us to grasp.  In the Western world we tend to take our sustainability for granted.  In our country in particular, I believe our power and privilege creates the illusion of permanence – we take for granted that our resources are somehow inexhaustible; that everything upon which we’ve come to depend will somehow be magically sustained on its own accord.

But of course it isn’t so. The earth’s natural resources are not inexhaustible. Nor are the human resources of our communities. Nor are the economic resources of our nation. And if we continue to plunder or exploit any of these impermanent commodities, our wells will eventually run dry. This may seem patently obvious, but if it is, we certainly don’t seem to be getting it. The only way we will sustain the precious but limited resources of our world is if we ourselves take responsibility for their sustenance.  If we understand that their care and maintenance are up to us and only us. If we live mindful disciplined lives, taking care at every turn not to squander our blessings. Indeed, only when we see ourselves as primary agents of sustainability will we truly ensure the future viability of our lives and our world.

This is, in fact, a primary teaching of Jewish tradition.  It’s actually the very first teaching in the Torah. In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God creates an ordered and orderly world – and along with it, God creates the means for its ongoing sustenance. The earth, in turn brings forth “seed-bearing plants…each true to its type, with its seed in it.” (1:2) God also creates the various species of the animal world each with the power to procreate and commands them to be fruitful and multiply. When God creates man and woman, God also commands them to be fruitful and multiply but then God goes one step further. God puts the ongoing care and sustenance of the earth in their hands.

For whatever reason, God doesn’t just take care of the world alone, nor does God create a world that will simply take care of itself. This sacred job is given to humanity just as creation is barely out of the starting gate. A famous Midrash – one I know I’ve shared with you before – makes this point radically clear for us:

When God created the first human beings, God showed them around the Garden of Eden and said to them, ‘Look at my handiwork, my creation, how beautiful and balanced it is. Be careful not to ruin or destroy my world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.

The point here, I think, is clear. The world was designed to be sustained, but it is not self-sustaining. The future of the world, quite simply, is up to us.

We are now all too familiar with the environmental implications of this teaching. And I am immensely proud that as a religious community, JRC is not just talking the talk. By now you all should know the recent happy news: JRC has officially attained LEED certification at the Platinum Level by the US Green Building Council, which makes our synagogue building the highest-rated green house of worship in the world.

By all means, we should take profound pride in what we have accomplished.   But for me at least, my pride comes not from the certification itself, but largely from how we managed to accomplish this.  People are often surprised to learn that before we began our building process, JRC was not particularly known as a leader in the environmental movement. When we considered building green, most of our members were not all that knowledgeable about sustainable technology or energy efficiency or the science of carbon footprints. But what did excite us and eventually commit us to this project were the spiritual values underlying it. Once we grasped the religious imperative of living sustainably, we quickly found folks became invested in this project in a much deeper way.

Now that we’ve become ambassadors of this issue in the religious community, this is my primary message: it’s not as difficult as it looks.  You don’t have to a scientist or an engineer or a lifelong environmental activist. Like anything else, all you need to be is someone who cares about the future of our world, who is willing to learn what you need to know and who is ready to live a more mindful way of life.

In the end, as wonderful as it is to be honored in this way, I think the biggest honor will be when we see other houses of worship seeing what we’ve done and following suit.  Then we can take real pride in the fact that what we did truly made a difference. That we, in our way, helped to contribute to a new movement of spiritual sustainability in the religious community.   And by the same token, I hope what we’ve accomplished will continue to be a source of inspiration to us – to compel each and every one of us to take stock and to think more deeply how we can live sustainable lives.  In our homes and as advocates in our communities, our nation and the world. So yes, Mazel Tov to us all. We send out our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all of the members who contributed to this amazing, humbling accomplishment. And now the real work truly begins for us.

By the way, while we are talking about our new building, we also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is facilitating sustainability in another way: it is enabling our JRC community itself to be sustained into its future. After all, before we ever heard of LEED certification, we decided to build a new home for JRC to ensure its viability for future generations of Jews. It was a leap of faith for many reasons, but in the end it was a leap we felt we needed to take. In an age in which many synagogues are shrinking or merging or disappearing completely, we believed in what JRC stood for and felt it was a religious vision worth preserving. That we were able to accomplish this – and in such a way that further invested our members in JRC’s future – should be an important and hopeful sign for us all.

Now I’d like to share with you yet another example of how JRC learned important first-hand lessons about sustainability in the past year. It occurred this past July, when twenty-five of us participated in JRC’s second service delegation to Africa.  We traveled first to Rwanda, where we were hosted by WE-ACTx, an NGO that seeks to serves Rwandan women and children affected by HIV. A primary focus of WE-ACTx is serving the numerous women who were infected with HIV through rape during the 1994 genocide. During our stay, we also toured genocide sites, spoke with citizens and witnessed Rwanda’s courageous attempts to sustain the soul of their nation in the wake of that terrible trauma.

In Uganda we visited our old friends in the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities, the NGO who hosted us during our first service delegation three years ago. As many of you know, FDNC promotes grassroots sustainable development in Eastern Uganda through a number of wonderful initiatives, including community health projects, a vocational school, music education, capacity building, among many more examples.

We also spent a great deal of time with the members of the Mirembe Kawomera Fair Trade coffee cooperative.  JRC has long been a supporter of this project and I know many of you have bought Mirembe Coffee at JRC over the years. For those of you who are not familiar, Mirembe Kawomera is an interfaith effort of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim coffee farmers who have founded a coop to get a fairer price for their product, to create better future for their communities, and to make a provide a real, living example of inter-religious cooperation. During our visit, we got to meet with the leadership of the coop, attend Muslim, Jewish and Christian services, and even had the opportunity to participate in the coffee harvest.

There is a great deal to say about our experiences in Rwanda and Uganda.  I think there are easily at least two dozen sermons that could come out of this one trip alone. For now, however, I want to return to my theme of sustainability. For primary among the lessons we learned was this eternal, sacred truth: communities can only be sustained when individuals take responsibility for their sustenance.   The developing world provides us with the most powerful examples of this fact.  Indeed, every day of our trip we came face to face with this reality: over and over we met with individuals who didn’t take the future of their lives or their communities for granted for one second.

As it turns out, the Torah also has a great deal to say about socio-economic sustainability. Over and over again God tells the Israelites they are about to enter a land flowing with milk and honey – a land that contains all they will ever need. But God also says it will all be lost to them in a second if they do not uphold the covenant and create the kind of holy community they have pledged to create.

God commands the Israelites repeatedly that they will have a future on the land only if they ensure the sustenance of all their citizens. And even though there is bounty in the land, they’re told that they cannot merely assume the equitable distribution of resources. In Deuteronomy we find this famous passage: “For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and the needy kinsman in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11)

Jewish tradition has expanded considerably upon these laws from Torah.  While we must never shirk our responsibility to sustain the needy among us, the ideal form of tzedakah, as Moses Maimonidies famously taught, is to enable others to become self-sustaining. In Jewish tradition, we are commanded to sustain others, but ensuring their future sustainability is among our most sacrosanct commandments. Why? Because on a purely human level, it breaks down the unequal power dynamic between giver and recipient. It views human dignity and self-sufficiency as our highest aspiration – in a sense even higher than charity itself.

I believe what Maimonidies suggested so long ago is still powerfully relevant to the work of global sustainable development: the highest and most effect form of global action is the kind that will help a community to sustain itself. This is why I am so proud that JRC has forged such deep relationships with NGOs such as WE-ACTx and FDNC and a cooperative like Mirembe Kawomera. Because these organizations represent real members of real communities on the ground who are working every day to create sustainable development for themselves and their communities. Here again, I am so proud to be part of a congregation that gets it. That nurturing sustainability is an important part of the congregational work we do.

I mentioned earlier that those with power and privilege – those blessed with abundant resources – tend to take their sustainability for granted. Our country in particular has been particularly adept at living under an illusion of self-sustainability and invulnerability. But those days, it seems, are fast coming to an end. Our nation’s financial meltdown hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. It’s not a current event. We might well put it this way: our country has been living in a decidedly unsustainable way for far too long and now we’re finally seeing our chickens are coming home to roost. This, however, is a sermon for another day – tomorrow, as a matter of fact – so if you want to hear that one, you’ll have to come back in the morning.

I’d actually like to conclude by addressing a different form of sustenance – one that is particularly relevant to our season. After all, why do we gather here year after year? Why do we come back here if not our desire for sustenance? To give thanks for the blessings of the past year, to mourn its losses, and to pray that we and those we love will be sustained for just one more.

I do believe with all my heart that everything I’ve been talking about: environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, it all applies to the human condition as well. There is such a thing as spiritual sustenance. That is to say, our inner lives – our souls, if you will – are also designed to be sustainable, but again, they are not self-sustaining. At the end of the day, each and every one of us must take responsibility for our own spiritual sustenance.

Again, this sounds like an obvious claim, but if it is, then why do we have such a difficult time doing it? Too often we treat our emotional resources, our spiritual resource,s as endless springs that have power of eternal self-renewal. The truth is, our inner resources more accurately resemble a well. We need to be actively involved in replenishing the water in the wells of our souls or else we will surely run dry.

On this I speak from personal experience, trust me. Like most of you, I have come to learn that it’s all well and good to preach and promote the sustenance of our world – but if we cannot commit to sustaining our own lives, our own souls, then in the end, we will not really be any good to ourselves or to anyone else.

So how do we do this? How do we find the kind of spiritual sustenance that lasts; that truly makes a difference for us? This may sound like a cop-out for a spiritual leader, but in the end I’m afraid each of us needs to answer this question for ourselves. Each of us needs to ask ourselves seriously: What are the things that cause my spiritual well to run dry?  Then in turn, what are the things that truly sustain my soul?  What are the things I need to do to fill my well back up? And finally, what am I going to do about it? How am I going to change the way I live so that I can indeed live a sustainable life?

As I say, each of us must to answer these questions ourselves. Believe me, I’m asking myself these questions and I struggle with these issues just like everyone else. But I would be doing this for a living if I thought that the spiritual traditions of Judaism didn’t have a great deal to offer us by way of spiritual sustenance.

And I will say this: although I might not believe in God in the traditional manner, I fervently believe that our searches for sustenance do bear fruit. That beyond all the exhaustible resources of our lives and our world, there is a Source of Permanence. Of Eternity. Where wells never run dry and blessings flow freely and in abundance. And however we choose to believe, whatever our theologies, I hope we can all find, connect with and hold on to this place of permanence, because I don’t think we’ll ultimately be able to sustain ourselves any other way.

Rosh Hashanah comes to remind us of this every New Year. Traditionally speaking, this is the time in which we acknowledge Malchuyot – we enthrone God’s rule over the world. I choose to understand this as the sacred recognition of a power ultimately beyond our own; and acknowledgment of that which truly lasts. During the course of the year too many of us we enthrone impermanence, we ascribe ultimate meaning to that which is only temporary, to that which will ultimately pass away. On Rosh Hashanah, however, we affirm something else: we celebrate staying power, we open ourselves up to a source of endless sustenance.

Tomorrow, before the shofar is sounded, we will proclaim, “adonai, melech, adonai malach, adonai yimloch, l’olam va’ed!” “God reigns, God has reigned, God will reign forever and ever!” Yes, these are heady and difficult words to say out loud – especially for us ornery Reconstructionists. But maybe we might view this statement as our way of affirming permanence and sustenance in a world that too often feels unsustainable. This Rosh Hashanah it’s my hope and prayer that we will find the strength to connect to this place. May it renew our thirsting spirits, may sustain our world, may it give us life as we enter this new year.

And as we are truly blessed to have been sustained long enough to reach this place once more, let’s say the blessing together:

Holy One of Blessing, your presence fills creation. You have given us life, you have sustained us, and you have brought us all to this sacred season together.

Amen.

Today was another full day for our group. It was completely devoted to a visit to the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities (FDNC) – an NGO that JRC visted three years ago during our first Africa delegation.

In April 2005 JRC was the first group hosted by FDNC, on a trip made in collaboration with American Jewish World Service. (You can read excerpts from my travel journal on the JRC website). The visit was a transformational one for us – and we just knew that whenever we returned to Africa we would meet again with our friends at FDNC. Indeed, several members of our current delegation were part of the original visit in 2005. (That’s us above in a pic taken today: from left to right: Debbie Wolen, me, Elaine Waxman, FDNC founder Samuel Watalatsu, Robert Israelite and Dan Litoff).

I’ll put it simply: if anyone asks you for a definition of “sustainable development,” just point to FDNC. Through Samuel’s inspired leadership, FDNC has grown into a model of self-reliance and grassroots sustainable development for the most impoverished communities of Eastern Uganda. They are particularly adept at developing strategies that promote community empowerment in the critical areas of vocational training, women’s rights, health/AIDS awareness and music/dance education.

During our first visit, we stayed for a week in the FDNC vocational school located in Nantandome Village, an impoverished rural area not far from Mbale. Living and working in this environment had a profound effect on our group. Among other things, we helped with construction of a classroom – we well recalled how painstaking it was to mix the cement for the mortar. Water had to be hauled in jerry cans from a river half a mile away and the mud bricks were made by hand and baked in the sun.

Just three short years later, the transformation of the area is profound. The classrooms of the school are complete and the grounds are beautifully landscaped. They are currently being served by numerous volunteers (we met teenagers on an AJWS service program as well as interns from as far away as Spain and Japan). The school no longer has to haul their water in from the river – they now have large tanks that collect rain water. They also have an ingenious brick making device that makes mud bricks quickly that require a minimum of mortar.

FDNC is clearly flourishing, serving many more students from the surrounding districts and they are currently in the midst of building a new headquarters for their operations in Mbale. It was deeply inspiring for us to witness the fruits of their labors – and how powerfully they have impacted their community.

In the morning we toured the vocational classes, which include hairdressing, computer skills, tailoring and masonry/carpentry. We also visited with an inspiring new educational program for special needs children (above) which is virtually unprecedented in Uganda. (The writing on the board in back of the children reads “Disability is not Inability.”) We also made a special donation of supplies to the school, which included some hula hoops courtesy of the Waxmans. (Below you can see FDNC vocational school director Walter Urek-Wun trying one out).

In the afternoon we visited the village of Wapando, one of the many nearby communities served by FDNC (bottom pic). They received our group joyfully, singing songs and dancing with us – and we reciprocated with a few rousing rounds of “Oseh Shalom.” They also cooked and served us a full lunch, an almost overwhelmingly generous gesture under the circumstances.

Our day ended back at the vocational school, where young people from the FDNC brass band and a traditional dance group performed for us for over two hours as the sun set behind them. Children and families from the area turned out in droves for the occasion as did numerous volunteers and we all helped cheer the performers on. By the end of a cathartic day, we were virtually spent – and deeply moved by what can be accomplished by people so thoroughly devoted to their community.

Tomorrow we’re going to spend the day with our good friends from the Mirembe Kowamera interfaith fair trade coffee coop. There’s much more to come…

We’re in Uganda now, after one night in Kampala and a four hour plus bus ride to the town of Mbale. Before I report on Uganda, tho, I want to write about our final visit in Rwanda: a stop at the Millennium Village Project in Bugasera (which is in the same district as the Nyamata genocide site we visited last week). MVP is the product of the United Nations and has been piloted in several locations throughout the developing world with the aim of helping communities reach the UN Millennium Goals.

The MVP in Rwanda presents an extremely impressive model of community development. We visited a district primary school – that’s me and Rich Katz above with some of the students. We visited on the last day of school (the young girl to my right is holding her report card). We also visited an MVP health clinic and a women’s craft cooperative that is helping to build economic capacity for the area. (That’s Rhonda Stein below, learning basket weaving from one of the coop members).

Our first stop in Uganda was along similar lines. Uganda Crafts in Kampala is a Fair Trade org that creates and sustains jobs for the disadvantaged throughout Uganda, Kenya and the Congo – employing women, the disabled, orphans, and people living with HIV. Before visiting the shop, we sat with Betty and Rose, who help run the project and described its genesis and evolution in depth. On the right is Lauren Parnell, who will be working with Uganda Crafts for the coming year and is our guide (with her husband John) for the rest of our sojourn in Uganda. We met Lauren through her work in Chicago with the Interfaith Youth Core.

We have a full day tomorrow. Stay tuned…

When we caught up with the kids later on in the afternoon, they were all having a fabulous time at the Islamic Center field, playing Frisbee and soccer with joyful abandon. We joined them with a handful of hula hoops that Elaine and Kelsey Waxman had brought along. Aduts and kids alike proceeded to play together for over an hour before the WE-ACTx children’s program put on a special presentation they had prepared for us.

The children’s program is directed by a remarkable young man named Bertin Mulinda Shambo (bottom pic, in the yellow shirt) who guided it from a handful of kids to over 250. Virtually all of the children are either infected with HIV or have been orphaned by the AIDS pandemic. Bertin explained to us how many of these children originally came to WE-ACTx: angry and profoundly bitter about their fates. Seeing these engaged and confident children today, you would never even dream that they were living with HIV/AIDS. As one teenager from the program told our group, “We are strong, we are healthy, we are fine.”

At the presentation, we were graciously welcomed and treated to a girls’ dance performance. Our group reciprocated with the skills of JRCs teenage members Aaron Nachsin (juggling above) and Kelsey Waxman (hoop dancing). We stayed and visited with one another for hours afterwards, several of us enjoying a marathon (and steadily growing) game of volleyball.

Moday was our day to sample a bit of the natural beauty of Rwanda. One half of our group went gorilla trekking at Virunga National Park while the rest of us went on a brief safari to the Akagera National Park in the South Eastern part of the country where had seemingly endless interactions wtih impala, hippos, giraffes, and baboons. After lunch, our group visited the hospital run by the venerable Partners in Health – a state of the art community-based hospital founded by Paul Farmer. It was, as expected, beyond impressive – especially after our experience in Kigali’s public hospital.

Tomorrow is our last day in Rwanda and then we’re off to Uganda. I’m all too mindful that I’ve only scratched the surface with these posts – there’s so much more to say and so many more in our group that have stories to tell. Suffice to say we’ll all miss this beautiful country and its amazing people…

There have been several instances on this trip in which smaller groups have opted for side trips separate from our main itinerary. I’ve asked two participants to share their experiences with you – our first report comes from JRC member Rich Katz, who visited a Rwandan organic farm with fellow JRC’ers Ray Grossman and Jonathan Nachsin (above). Here’s Rich’s report:

“It’s Milk – Not Meat”

One of the best examples of a grass-roots effort to improve the lives of poor and low-income families and individuals in Ruanda the work of Richard Munyerango, the Managing Director of the GAKO Organic Farming Training Center just outside of Kigali. We first met Richard when he participated in the Earth Box training session we conducted at the Remera Center earlier in the week. At that time, he invited us to his farm and training center to see what he is doing to promote more nutritious diets for the people who cannot afford them.

The Center was started to help the widows of genocide and children who are heads of households, and it has expanded since. By working with local associations who suggest the names of participants, he invites eighty people at a time to his training center for a month to learn organic farming techniques.

It is his opinion that people will be able to reduce the expense of their medications if they eat better food, which they can grow locally without the use of expensive chemical fertilizers. In addition, he sends trainers to each province of Rwanda to work through the local health agencies to promote organic farming practices. Since its inception, the Center has trained over a thousand people all over the country.

Richard’s farm consists of two small plots of land, gently sloping down a verdant hillside. At the upper end, he has built a modern classroom building and two dormitories for men and women. We were most impressed, however, with the number of small demonstration/experimental earthen mounds that he developed, each of which is devoted to growing a particular fruit or vegetable. We saw mounds that were growing cabbages, leeks, strawberries, spinach, kale, peppers and so much more. There were also small areas devoted to growing corn and bananas.

At the lower end of the property, Richard has a demonstration project for training people how to use cow manure and other animal products to produce compost, which he uses to amend the clay soil that is so prevalent here in this part of Rwanda. It is this composed material that makes the mounds so productive. He derives the compost from cow manure (hence the title of my post).

We learned so much from Richard about his method of organic farming, and at the same time we were pleased to be able to help him better understand the process we use in the States (using earthworms to create compost). He appeared to be very interested and excited about the possibility of adding this practice to his already considerable the curriculum. We also mentioned the nascent practice in the US of developing farming co-ops to connect growers and buyers, so that the farmer has a reliable source of capital and owners/consumers have a reliable source of organic produce. All in all, this was a very valuable and mutually beneficial experience.

Our second report comes from Kelsey Waxman, who attended a yoga group (above) run by WE-ACTz at the Remera center while the rest of the group went to the Nyamata genocide site. She was joined by two other JRC members: her mother (and inspired trip organizer) Elaine along with Beth Lange.

Here’s an excerpt from Kelsey’s travel journal:

We were then dropped off a Remera again: me, Mom and Beth for the afternoon yoga class. We went out on the cement porch with ten women, all chatting giddily in Kinyarwanda. They all had on African print fabric yoga pants and there was much disputation about when to start.

Two women led the class through a basic primary Ashtanga set, and the women laughed, chatted and helped each other through the entire thing. It was apparent that some of them had done this before. Some were more flexible than anyone I’d ever practiced with.

After quite a few laughs, they asked us to teach them some poses. My mom, being an experienced yogi, led them through some crazy poses like pigeon, headstand and the boat. The faces of agony and hilarity some of the women made during the boat pose were so funny and the faces of the other women made those imitating them sent us all into giggle fits. More and more people came around and either watched or participated, laughing along with us,

It was the end of the class, during Shavasna, corpse pose. You’re supposed to be completely quiet…like a corpse, but everyone chatted like little girls through the entire ten minutes. It was so funny, everyone pouring through the doors, sharing laughs and yoga mats. After, Beth pulled out the camera and we took many, many pictures with our new yogi friends.

The central experience of our Saturday was a visit to CHABHA (Children Affected By HIV/AIDS) – an NGO that supports youth-led initiatives serving children left vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. A myriad of local children turned out for our visit. CHABHA’s Rwanda director, Richard Mutabazi greeted us and welcomed us on behalf of the organization, and helped us to converse with the children. As has been the case everywhere we went, our presence in the town caused a great sensation: children sprinted up to us as their shouts of “Muzungu!” (“white people”) filled the air.

These particular children were part of a local youth-led initiative called Amahoro (“Peace” in Kiryawanda). Amahoro presents a remarkable model of young Rwandan leaders who support and educate children orphaned by AIDS. The AMAHORO Association now counts more than 2500 orphaned children, many of whom live with one parent or other family members.

By far the highlight of our visit was a dance performance by the children of AMAHORO. As we watched, transfixed, the girls went up to our group and invited us to join them. As I danced with one particularly gifted dancer, huge shouts of laughter went up from the crowd (and I don’t think they were responding to my dancing prowess…)

We had a similar experience in JRC’s last trip to Africa – I remember all too well how dancing can be the “great equalizer” for peoples from vastly different social contexts. I guess that is my fancy way of saying it was so wonderful to connect with these children in this joyous way, even for this brief moment in time.

PS: Another member of our group, Hannah Gelder (above), is blogging about our experiences as well. I encourage you to read her very eloquent personal impressions of JRC’s journey…

In my previous post I mentioned an emotional visit to Kigali’s public hospital – that actually doesn’t even begin to do justice to the intensity of our experience. Mardge Cohen arranged the visit for us, to give us a better sense of the Rwandan health care system. Until this visit, we had only seen privately funded clinics, not actual hospitals used by large numbers of Rwandans.

A local doctor gave us a tour of different wards, including the pediatric care unit. For privileged Westerners socialized who take a certain standard of medical care for granted, it was a sobering experience to say the least: beds crowded together, patients and family members thrown together in a jumble in decrepit room after room. Most of us like to talk about the ways our own American medical system is broken, but the brokenness of public health system in Rwanda is truly difficult to fathom. The public hospital doesn’t supply patients with food or bedding; these items must be provided by individual families. We also learned that when hospital stays are completed, patients are expected to pay in full. Unbelievably, those who cannot pay must stay in the hospital until they are able to pay their hospital bills.

Private medical insurance is available in Rwanda, but it is obviously beyond the means of most Rwandans. There is also a national system known as “Mutuelle,” which is less expensive, but the social safety net system here overall is close to non-existent. It’s just so overwhelming to see the sheer number of people holding on for dear life or simply falling through the cracks.

On Friday our group split up into groups. One visited a WE-ACTx supported maternity clinic in rural Nyacyonga and the rest of us accompanied WE-ACTx social workers on their home visits to families. Our group visited the home of Beatrice and her 14 year old daughter, Leontine, both of whom are infected with HIV. We visited with them for close to two hours, sharing our stories and learning as much as we were able about one another.

Beatrice was infected by her husband, who later died – and she passed the HIV on to Leontine when she was pregnant. With disarming frankness, Beatrice told about how angry and depressed Leontine became when she first learned how she contracted her illness. She was near suicidal when they discovered the children’s program at WE-ACTx. Today Beatrice is a happy and confident teenager and a leader in the program. (We’ll get to see her perform with the children’s dance troupe this Sunday).

Our final visit of the day was an excursion to Nyamata – a rural village which is home to an infamous genocide site. In April 1994, a mass of Tutsis attempted to find sanctuary inside the church. 2,000 were eventually slaughtered inside and 10,000 were killed in the surrounding area.

The inside of the church remains much as it was during the actual genocide – the sanctuary itself is filled with the bloodied and torn clothing of the victims. The basement of the church and an underground crypt outside essentially serve as mass graves, filled with row upon row of human skulls and bones.

Incongruously enough, as we emerged from the crypt, the air was filled with the joyous sounds of Afro-Pop filling the air. A local church was celebrating a “Festival of Hope” just down the road. For many of us, the paradox of the moment was just right: in a sense we were experiencing both the horror of recent Rwandan history as well as the hope of the Rwandan present.

Even so, the visit shook our group to the core. Before leaving for Kigali, we gathered together for Kaddish (above). During the drive back, the sun set over the green hilly countryside. Rwanda is just such a beautiful country in so many ways. Looking out at this gorgeous, tranquil landscape, it is impossible to comprehend the sheer hell that was unleashed just fourteen short years ago.

PS: Our visit to the Kigali Genocide Museum was featured on the Rwandan news yesterday…

Day 2 in Rwanda:

Our first two destinations were two local community associations that are supported by WE-ACTx. Icyuzuzo is an association of Rwandan widows located in the Nyamirambo district. Icyuzuzo (Kinyarwanda for “compliment” or “complete”) serves 5000 clients in the surrounding districts, sponsoring clincs, vocational training, HIV prevention education, palliative care and capacity building projects.

Upon our arrival, the doctors/nurses in our group (above, with Mardge Cohen, third from the right, Executive Director Eugene Twagirimana, right) and President Constance Kubwimana , sixth from the right). separated off to help provide care in the clinics while the children worked sorting medications. The rest of us met with Eugene and Constance (with me below) to learn more about their work with Icyuzuzo.

Among other things, we were sobered to learn about the growing income disparity in Rwanda. While the country outwardly appears to be economically rebounding since the 1994 genocide (Kigali is a clean, well-run and orderly city, and new construction abounds) most of the new growth comes from foreign investors – and very little of it is tricking down to the local population. NGOs such as Icyuzuzo are for the most part the only safety net available to the Rwandan poor. As is the case throughout much of the developing world, these grassroots institutions are stretched beyond the limit.

Our next stop was a capacity-building center in the Ramera neighborhood, to an association that produces beautiful fabric crafts. In addition to learning about the various services provided by the center, we had the opportunity to demonstrate a new and potentially exciting income-generation project. Before leaving Evanston, we purchased and packed thirty EarthBoxes – a relatively new growing process developed by commercial farmers, designed to grow a large number of crops in a relatively small space. (It was quite an adventure getting huge quantities of soil, plastic boxes and organic fertilizer through security at O’Hare!)

We brought and demonstrated the EarthBoxes at the behest of WE-ACTx; our visit was attended by several representatives from other local organizations and at least one government official (that’s JRC member Rich Katz explaing the process below). This project has real potential for local capacity building, particularly for WE-ACTx clients who do not own land. However there are clearly many variables and much will depend on the Rwandan’s ability to find local soil and substrate to replicate the process on an ongoing basis.

During this visit I had an interesting conversation with the director of counseling for WE-ACTx, who asked me how Jews continue live with the legacy of of genocide. I shared with her what studies have taught the Jewish communtity about second/third generation children of survivors and I shared a bit about the challenges of living with the darker aspects of our history. We talked about the ways the Rwandan experience is both similar and markedly different than the Jewish one. Obviously the wounds here are very fresh; and unlike the Jews of Europe, the goverment is committed to bringing all aspects of Rwandan society back together in one extremely small country.

Whether this will succeed over the long term or not is an open question. One woman who joined our conversation expressed her doubts – saying that while the political reconciliation is important, much of the underlying pain and hatred continues to simmer under the surface. How many generations does it take for this kind of pain to dissipate in a community? The Jewish people have been learning this for some time – Rwanda is now struggling with the tragic question as well.

Our final visit was a heartbreaking tour of Kigali’s Public Hospital. More on this in my next post…

We spent the morning at the WE-ACTx clinic, one of three in the country. Among other things, we learned about the important work this NGO is doing in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Rwanda. WE-ACTx is the model of a community based organization, working with 27 local orgs to help women and children with AIDS treatment, care and education. WE-ACTx was founded in 2004, ten years after the genocide, when Rwandan women suffering from AIDS learned that the ones who intentionally raped and infected them were receiving ARV treatment while waiting for trials at International Tribunals. The success of WE-ACTx is due in large part to the bravery of local communities determined to work together in the wake of this unspeakable tragedy.

We also visited the Rwandan national Genocide Memorial and Museum – an almost literally breathtaking experience for our group. Although many of us are veterans of Holocaust musuems, nothing could have prepared us for the power of this place.

Outside the museum is a memorial that is a literal mass grave – the resting place for 258,000 bodies. We gathered there, learned about the significance of thes site, then said Kaddish together. (That’s JRC member Tina Escobar above, leaving a stone on the memorial). I was also interviewed on Rwandan TV, where I had the opportunity to explain why, as Jews, it was so important to us to pay homage at this particular site.

The musuem itself is unique largely for the freshness of the wounds it seeks to commemorate. Looking at the exhibits it was difficult to fathom the pain of this society, still struggling to recover from a pain so recently inflicted. Rwanda is also somewhat unprecedented in its determination to rebuild a national community in which perpetrator and victim live side by side. I cannot begin to understand how such a thing could be possible – but I believe at the heart of this determination is a sacred lesson for the entire world.

To be continued…