Team Organize!

L to R: Helen Feinberg, Merle Berman, Betsy Teutsch,
Simone Zelitch, and Serena Eisenberg

Dorshei Derekh has been meeting in the Maslow Auditorium since 1987. As its name “auditorium” implies, it was not designed to be a dovvening space; when our minyan outgrew meeting in a classroom, that location was what was available. It had no kitchen area for preparing kiddush, and no storage space. We made do.

Around a decade later, a fundraising campaign resulted in both the Temin and the Maslow acquiring lovely book shelves and storage cabinetry. While there’s no running water in the Maslow, we were able to equip it with a refrigerator and a small kitchenette for prepping kiddushes and other functions.

Many groups use the Maslow. Staff eats lunch there, bridge games are held, the ECP and Religious School hold programs in it, Children’s High Holiday Services take place in it, and classes and Board Meetings take place there, too, all harmoniously co-existing.

About 15 years ago, our beloved Donald Joseph introduced Schnapps Shabbat, a monthly happening. We quickly noticed that the schnapps would disappear over the course of a month, so we added a cabinet lock. Why did all the other cabinets also acquire locks? No one remembers.

Recently someone tried, unsuccessfully, to match the ancient key hidden on a high shelf to the cupboard locks. In frustration, they asked me, Dorshei Derekh’s present chair, to try to straighten out the locked cabinet situation.

After consulting with our synagogue office staff, we discovered they had presumed Dorshei Derekh stored important things in those locked cabinets. And Dorshei Derekh had likewise presumed that GJC used them. As it turns out, neither of us used them in any systematic way, and they had just slowly filled up over the decades with random stuff. This is unsurprising, given how many different people use the space.

On an appointed June Tuesday at noon, I asked for volunteers to help me with a clean-out. I pretty much expected I would be doing this solo…. Who wants to come clean out cabinets? People don’t even want to clean out their own cabinets, right? Imagine my surprise when I walked in to find Merle Berman and Simone Zelitch already flinging open the cabinets and cleaning them. And it wasn’t even Pesach!

Within a few minutes Past-GJC President Helen Feinberg and Serena Eisenberg also arrived. Our team of five included one PhD, three social workers, a rabbi, and two lawyers. We dove in and in no time flat we removed all the contents of the cabinets, sorted them, and figured out what to do with each category. With Jose and Kate’s help, endless items were moved on to new homes.

Simone was reunited with her Deviled Egg carrying case. We chuckled over the archeological records of our minyan’s commitment to sustainability: glass kiddush cups (too heavy for the weekly dishwasher to shlep), small metal cups (too light to stay on DW shelves), and an enormous collection of Dollar Store ware – bowls and trays for a lifetime. Plus the synagogue’s pre-composting accumulation of plates, cups, and cutlery in dozens of sizes, all of which we sorted. (We were very good at that, as it happens.)

We were delighted to donate our vintage IKEA plastic plates, forks, and spoons to the ECP. We used those for about a decade. One fine day, Dayle Friedman opined that she was tired of eating on nursery school plates every Shabbat, and we upgraded. But the old stuff remained in, you guessed it, one of our locked cabinets.

Within 90 minutes, we were done. There aren’t many jobs where after 90-minutes you can see  gratifying results from your efforts. (Ever been to a Committee Meeting?). We are all just compulsive enough to love looking at the newly empty closets and cupboards, with the shelves we actually use looking so orderly.

The biggest surprise? The vast majority of what was stored in the cupboards wasn’t there for any particular reason, except someone once put them there. Fixed!