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