Over 20 years ago, on a cold Christmas eve, I covered an incredible volunteer effort in some pretty bleak areas of Baltimore.
A Jewish woman named Linda Greenberg was spending a great deal of her own money, renting trucks and distributing gifts such as gloves, hats, scarves and socks to the homeless.
We traveled to spaces next to railroad tracks, highways, back alleys and shelters. We saw the neighborhoods of the forgotten.
It was the human condition in terrible, terrible need.
Helping lead the effort was a young lady who had been homeless, but worked her way out of it.
This was in the mid-1980s. I asked the lady if she knew of any Jews living on the streets.
She said she knew of at least four homeless Jewish men.
The very next week, we met again. This time I drove her in my car, and we found the four men.
One was a childhood friend of mine who was sleeping outside in the dead of winter behind what was the old B&O Railroad Station.
Another man was a Vietnam vet who would walk from a inner harbor shelter to Temple Oheb Shalom on Friday evenings, to stay connected Jewishly and to have something to eat.
At least one other lived in a car.
And the fourth was one of those heaps of humanity we see sleeping on a sidewalk heating grate.
The article would appear in the Jewish Times.
The very Friday it published, I was in the office of a community leader when one of his lay leaders, a local philanthropist could no better than say to me, “We have close to 100,000 Jews, you found the four who slipped through the safety net.”
It’s that attitude, while I know extreme, that is keeping Jews from seeking and getting help they need during these awful times of record unemployment.
Some people are afraid to ask. Or they live with the feeling they have done something wrong or they aren’t living up to some high bar of Jewish expectations.
Why?
Because of the 100,000 Jews in Baltimore, there is an attitude among some of “what’s the big deal? So what if there are 1,000 unemployed Jews? That’s only a small percent after all. And these unemployed. They live out there somewhere.
Jewish Community Services is the anecdote for that attitude, and I know that feeding, housing, caring for and keeping Jews alive, well and productive IS its priority. So this isn’t about an agency or a person. The Associated and other local agencies are about solutions and compassion.
I’m not concerned there.
We need to understand, those of us who aren’t unemployed or who aren’t service providers, that when we look into the eyes of an unemployed person, we are looking directly at ourselves.
Unemployment in the Jewish community cannot be looked on as a stigma. A temporary setback, perhaps. But nothing more. And it has to be that the unemployed flow through the Jewish “system” just as equally as everyone else.
And that is also the system of human nature.
We have to ask our co-community members without them feeling stigmatized, “what can I do?”
Sometimes, it’s just about listening again and again and again.
Other times it’s networking.
And still other times, it might come down to financial help.
But we have to create the environment where those conversations can happen without shame. Because the more we talk openly about unemployment, the more we take whatever stigma there is off of it.
It’s not about 1,000 people. It’s about individuals we love. It’s really about us.
Can we start by at least listening?
We can.

Sunday is going to be a day of fun, football and a community showing its appreciation for our City’s Police force.
From 1-5 p.m. the grounds of Northwestern High School at Park Heights Avenue and Fallstaff Road will be transformed into a festive carnival with children’s activities, food, police exhibitions and of course the big game. Shomrim will take on the Northwest District of the City Police Department in a game of flag football. This is the second time the two groups have faced off in football. Last year, Shomrim won, 40-13. The score, however, is less important, than the opportunity to come together and raise monies for the City Police Mounted Patrol Unit, which has been in existence since 1888 and is hampered by financial constraints.
Shomrim, which started only four years ago as the “eyes and ears of the police” in Upper Park Heights and Pikesville, is looking forward to day for families to meet city and community officials, police and other neighbors.
The Honorable Judge Chaya Friedman will serve as emcee for the day’s activities. We will be treated with the voices of the singing group “Who Knows 5?” We are looking forward to greetings from the mayor and police commissioner.
It’s going to be such a great day, something to bring the entire community together.

Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day.
Today, certain municipalities close their doors while many businesses attract customers with sale prices.
Our military is engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet, I am willing to bet that Veterans Day won’t be or wasn’t mentioned much among our families this week. Many American citizens simply don’t know what it is or where it came from or how it’s not about the pre-Thanksgiving markdowns at the department stores.
Indeed we all seem to know that “Black” Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. Veterans Day?
As long as our nation is a free country with a democracy, every day will be Veterans day. It’s syrupy, I know. I don’t think for a second that we’d be in a position to live in freedom if not for the people who had to go into a war.
On Tisha B’av this past summer, I went with a friend to Arlington National Cemetery. Yes, there’s a difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. But if you ever want to teach your children about what all of our freedoms cost us as a nation, or if you are unsure of that price yourself, then go to this historic place.
You will just look at a person in uniform or listen to the nightly news casualty figures a little differently.
You can learn all you need to know about Veterans Day by using any search engine on the Internet.
Just make sure you at least find out why there is more to this than sales and no trash pickup.
Be able to tell your children about this day, because you appreciate it yourself.

Just want to remind as many people as possible that next Sunday morning, if you have time to spare, you can do so with a huge mitzvah.
Weather forecasters are already warning us that this might be a severe winter.
It’s more concerning this year because of the worries we have of both the seasonal flu and the swine flu. So CHAI is having its annual weatherization day on November 15. And it would surely be a mitzvah if as many people as possible could show up at Yeshivat Rambam that morning, grab materials, get a housing assignment and go help someone in need. Be there before 9 a.m.
You don’t have to be an expert or handy. Just getting enough caulk to seal a leak around a window isn’t going to require expert artistic standards. But we can keep that cold from debilitating an elderly neighbor, then who cares what it looks like.
The idea is to keep people healthy and warm and safe.
It’s going to help someone feel good this winter, and you’re going to be surprised how good you feel after having helped someone out.

I was watching the other night a stand-up comedy routine by an African-American comedian.
She talked about how when she was growing up when she and a sibling would misbehave, her mother would scold them by saying, “stop it, white people are looking at you.”
She went on to say that since Barak Obama became President, she feels a little less inhibited and worried if any one is looking at her.
I couldn’t help but think of her routine recently when once again I experienced yet another act of thoughtless arrogance.
The person standing in front of me last Friday night at the local grocery store was a young, well dressed man. He was wearing a kippah and yes he was having a rather loud conversation on his cellphone. He was buying flowers for Shabbat as well as other items.
He didn’t validate the existence of the African American employee scanning and bagging groceries. He automatically slid the credit card into the card reader, turned his back on the lady when she said’ “Thank you, have a good day,” and walked out of the store.
I wanted to say, don’t do that, a black person is looking at you.
But what I wanted to say is next time we wonder why people hold certain ill feelings about Jews, we don’t have to search far for answers.
If this was the first and only time I’d seen this, I wouldn’t be writing this. But it’s not. I’ve seen young Jewish women, students, teens, all of them going through these grocery checkout lines like they are above the person that is serving them.
When it came my turn last Friday, I knew from her eyes what the checkout lady was thinking. I said thank you, paid attention to her and guess what, my phone was vibrating away. It could wait.
Several years ago, I interviewed a young woman, a senior at Beth Tfiloh Community High School. She wore a kippah just like the boys.
I asked her why.
She told me that it reminded her of her obligation to do mitzvot. Because she was from Harrisburg, Pa., she wanted people not necessarily familiar with Judaism, to understand that the person with the kippah holding the door for the elderly person was a Jew. That the person allowing another customer in a store to go ahead of them in line was a Jew. That the person who said, “have a good day, and thank you,” was a Jew.
Point is, we can study in our scholarly texts all day. We can argue over the most difficult points of Torah and Talmud. If we treat another human being by ignoring them or withholding a positive word, we really haven’t learned anything.
This morning at Dunkin Donuts, I held the door for three people. Two of them were teenage female students wearing their uniforms. The third was a black woman holding her baby. Guess who said thank you?
You don’t even have to ask.