#rtw_nyc

Living in a new neighborhood can be uncomfortable for the first couple weeks. It takes time to figure out where the good spots to eat are, where the best places to go out are, and even where the closest gym is. When I first moved to Crown Heights I tried to stay at my old gym, and my only mode of transportation was to walk- for 35 minutes. Even though fitness is important to me, as the weather was getting colder those lonely walks were getting pretty difficult to motivate myself to do.

Azriel at the #SupportForRefugees campaign with coworkers Alli and Taylor ( from left to right)

Then, my City Director, Cindy Greenberg, told me about the Bed-Stuy YMCA. It was a shorter walk and I could take the bus if I needed to. So I gave it a shot and did a workout there using a free pass that everyone is entitled to. I went with a couple of other Repair fellows who were already members. It felt like I was the new kid in school. I didn't know where anything was, so I was glad that I had a few friendly faces there to show me everything. The Y gym had everything I was looking for and even more.

The Bedford Stuyvesant YMCA is located at 1121 Bedford Avenue

Everyone at the Y was very nice and welcoming. I could hear conversations about so many things happening in the neighborhood, from sports, to events, the weather ,and even politics. I realized I could get a good recap of what was going on in the neighborhood and the world by just going to the YMCA for an hour or two. After that day I told my other co-workers that I was thinking of being a member at the YMCA. So I worked out at the Y for a second time just to make sure.

That second trip really sold me on the Y. The people at the sign in desk recognized me, even asking about my day and if I was still thinking of joining. As I worked out people would just come up to me and start up a conversation about what part of the body I was working out today or how my day was. It was nice to be at a gym where you could feel comfortable enough to start up a conversation with anyone. Bed-Stuy YMCA has been great outlet for my co-workers and I. It's place that I am able to relax and concentrate while feeling connected to a community. I have been going with my co-workers to YMCA almost every day recently and I feel like I am part of that Y family. Being able to meet new people who I might not work with but still feel comfortable to talk to about what is going on in our neighborhood is now an important factor to me to have at my gym. I don't usually see that type of environment in gyms and it is something I will keep in my mind whenever I’m looking for a new place to get my gainzzz.

I’ve been volunteering at Masbia, a restaurant-style soup kitchen in Flatbush, for eight months. Last month, my parents, aunt, and uncle, who were all born and raised in Brooklyn, came to visit me and volunteer at Masbia with me. My father, Phil, and his sister, Pearl (a fellow Brooklynite) were particularly excited to come Masbia because it is located close to one of their childhood homes.

When my father walked in he said the entire store seemed oddly familiar to him. The layout of the kitchen and the placement of the cash register brought back memories. The Executive Director, Mr. Alex Rapaport, and Head Chef, Mr. Ruben Diaz, were both there that day and my dad was telling them about how he grew up and worked at a restaurant in the area. My dad asked Mr. Rapaport if he knew where Weiss’ Deli was because he had served as a busboy and short order cook there when he was younger. We found out that Masbia is exactly where Weiss’ Deli once was!

What are the odds I would be volunteering every week in a restaurant where my father once worked?

Everyone there was shocked by the situation.

Andrew poses with his parents

While everyone else was chatting Aunt Pearl and myself were talking off to the side. She took me outside and pointed at a beautiful, old synagogue that is across the street one block down from Masbia. She told me when my grandparents, her, and my father lived in Flatbush, they had belonged to it for 25 years. It is where my father had his bar mitzvah, my aunt and uncle met, and the same shul my grandfather would go to for every Shabbat and holiday. How amazing is that?

I have been trying to wrap my head around how absolutely incredible this situation is. What are the odds I would be volunteering at the same physical restaurant location where my dad once worked, and that it would also be a block away from my family’s old shul?

It makes me proud to be able to serve in a community that has such historical significance to my family. Even though I have only lived in Brooklyn for 9 months, it feels like I have been here my whole life because of my family history and the connections I have made through serving in the community. I am proud that I come from a family that hails from Brooklyn from over 50 years ago and hope to continue that tradition with my future family.

The first time I went to East New York to work with my service partner Digital Girl Inc was a shock. My experience in upper middle class south Florida schools could not have been more different than the reality of the students I would be engaging with for the next 9 months of their school year. Metal detectors to enter the building, armed security guards, social workers sitting in on each class. I felt so out of place after my first day that I sat down with my city director Cindy and expressed my concerns about if I should return or if I should find a new school to go to. Cindy, as usual, supported either decision I made and suggested giving the school one more chance. So I went again, and this time when I walked in one of the quieter girls from the class greeted me by name, and a boy asked me if I wanted to hear his newest rap. Since then, I’ve continued to go back. Each week I am both challenged by the students and also taught by them in ways I never expected.

The students at FDNY High School became a group of people I really care about over time through conversations about their lives at home, and I tried my best to talk up college and trade schools. The volunteers I brought to the school each week would be intimidated at first, but all of them would say the same thing after - that seeing the relationship and my interactions with the students made them feel more comfortable.

       RTW fellow Jon Cohen poses with Broward College Hillel and Digital Girl volunteers before teaching students how to code.  

It was with all of this in mind that when 4 students from the alternative break I was leading asked if they could join me at FDNY (on their day off!) that I easily agreed to it. Upon our arrival the woman in charge of behavior at the school informed me that the daily snacks for my class were taken away, due to a few students taking them and throwing them at police officers from the third window. I looked at my volunteers to see their reaction and they remained professional and calm, looking to me for a reaction. I paired the volunteers with students and watched over as two different parts of the job meshed together seamlessly. An hour of selfies, sports talk, and computer coding passed quickly and it was time to go.

As we entered the subway station to return to the workshop I noticed that there were a lot of people standing back against the wall and some sort of physical altercation happening. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence after school so at first I just brought the volunteers closer to me and continued on. Almost immediately after I made the decision to move on I realized that the conflict was between one of my students, Mike*, and two police officers. Aware that the 5 of us were the only non-black people in the station, I looked to my volunteers and said “I think this is something I need to get involved in.” They looked at me and took a step back. I knew Mike through Digital Girl, and was worried about his safety and that he was being targeted. I spotted another one of my students and asked him what was going on. He told me that the police officers accused Mike of starting a fire on the tracks and wouldn’t let him leave. When I walked up to one of the officers and asked, “Is everything alright officer?” they told me someone had started a fire and they were asking questions. Then I explained that Mike was one of my students and asked if he was the one who started the fire, to which an officer responded by saying they didn’t know who it was. At this point Mike said they had accused him and held him against the wall. I wasn’t sure what I would be able to do to change the situation, so I asked the police if Mike was being arrested or detained and they said no. I took a chance and asked the police if I could leave the scene and take Mike with me and they nodded.

I left with my volunteers and students on the next train. I had ridden the train with students in the past, but they’d never sat with me or talked to me besides a quick hello. After the incident, Mike sat with the volunteers and me and told them about life as a “perceived” troublemaker. As he got off the train and said he would see me next week, he used my name.

         Jon and elementary Digital Girl students at PS 21

Looking back on this experience which happened a few weeks ago, I realize that I lived an experience first hand which Repair the World has trained the fellows for since the beginning. That is: to truly understand your own privilege, you have to confront the realities of others’. In order to be able to step in for my student at that moment, I needed the trust and credibility on his end, which I have earned by building relationships with Mike and other high school students. I would not have been able to do that if I hadn’t appreciated how important it is to show up for and get to know the individuals I work with.

*Names have been changed in this story to protect the identity of the students

I’ve never thought of myself as a great event planner or tour guide. I’m the kind of person who just goes with the flow when it comes to laying out my schedule. When it came time for me to plan and organize an alternative break, I was terrified. Not only did I have to plan a schedule for myself, I also had to do it for 12 young men from Zeta Beta Tau fraternity who had little to no experience in traveling through NYC.

       ZBT brothers prepare a meal at the East New York Club House earlier in          the week (photo by Shannon Ferguson)

When they arrived in Crown Heights, I wanted to give them a small neighborhood tour of the community; that in itself was a challenge. I’ve only lived here for 6 months and still haven’t seen all of Crown Heights. As we walked down Nostrand and Kingston Avenues, I became aware of how special Crown Heights is through the eyes of those who were seeing it for the first time. There is this unique mix of Black, Caribbean, and Jewish cultures coming together with a new generation of residents and it’s amazing to witness.

I grew up in Rhode Island where the Jewish community was pretty small. There was not the same type of strong Jewish presence that there is in Crown Heights. While walking through the neighborhood the students from the alternative break asked an interesting question, “How do these communities live together?”

This question sparked a conversation about the history of these communities, which led me to tell them about the Crown Heights Riots of 1991 and how the communities were not always so pleasant to each other. I briefly told them about the cross-cultural violence in the past and how the Crown Heights Mediation Center was founded on the premise of managing tensions and addressing disputes between the Black, Carribbean, and Jewish communities.

         ZBT brothers color smaller versions of the “One Crown Heights” mural              with smaller versions of Crown Heights community members (photo by              Alli Lesovoy)

Later that day I led an info session about the Crown Heights Riots to set more context for the community which the alternative break students were serving in. Afterwards, the alternative break group and I volunteered at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum to paint for Groundswell’s “One Crown Heights” mural. This mural is important because it was designed to incorporate people within all of the communities within Crown Heights, black, white, and Jewish. Community members were encouraged to help bring peace to the neighborhood by creating art together in this project. Council Member Laurie Cumbo of the 35th district even stopped by to paint part of the mural and talk about what it means for the community. When I was watching different families from all parts of the neighborhood come by to paint this mural full of diversity, it made me think again how special Crown Heights is, and how lucky I am to live here this year. It is a neighborhood with a past scarred by conflict, and now these same communities have found a way to work towards peace and heal the damaged past by working with each other to literally paint a better future for their neighborhood. I’m glad I was able to learn from this experience along with the brothers of ZBT who spent a week in service to the neighborhood.

      ZBT brothers and RTW fellows pose with a nearly completed piece of               the “One Crown Heights” mural (photo by Hana Elwell) 

Valentine’s Day can be super exciting if you have a significant other, or kind of depressing if like me, you don’t. When I found out that Brooklyn Community Services was going to have a toiletry giveaway celebration for the women at Transitional Living Community on that day, I was really excited to participate for multiple reasons. I had been wanting to visit the shelter since I learned about it, and I knew this project would give me plans on a day that might otherwise be spent eating chocolate alone on my couch while watching romcoms. TLC is a 40 bed section of the Brooklyn Women’s Shelter in East New York, Brooklyn, which is an amazing resource because it provides low-income, homeless, and mentally ill women with temporary shelter and assists them in securing permanent housing.

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, Pnina and I arrived early to the shelter and were excited to discover that the schools, religious institutions, and businesses that collected had been so generous! The house manager was delighted by how many people had even thought to donate feminine hygiene products, which are very expensive and extremely necessary to have on hand for all women. Here’s an article about some of the extra challenges women struggling with homelessness face in regards to hygiene.

Volunteers organize donations (picture by Kent Victor)

The 20 volunteers who came were tasked with going through and sorting a large pile of toiletries. It was a little rough at first due to the number of volunteers and amount of items we had to organize onto one table. After about 20 minutes though, everyone fell into a rhythm and people were tossing mini shampoo bottles and deodorant to others at the side of the table where someone would catch them and put them in the right stack. It was high energy and a lot of fun! When we were halfway finished with sorting and packaging the items half of the volunteers went to play bingo and do some other activities with the residents, while the rest of us finished putting together the care packages.

Volunteers packaging toiletries into V-Day gift bags! (photo by Shannon Ferguson)

The morning led up to a pizza lunch celebration, where volunteers handed out the care packages with cards that had been previously made by other volunteers at various service projects. Many of the women started looking through their care packages, trading this and that, and joking with one another. So many hugs, handshakes, and smiles were exchanged between everyone in the room. You could really feel the love.

Finished care packages! (photo by Kent Victor)

My favorite part of the day took place during our closing activity. In the spirit of V-Day, we all went around and introduced ourselves to the circle, sharing something that we loved with one another. Between the volunteers and the residents, there were many common answers. People said they loved their kids, their family, music, spending time with people, and a few even said they love LOVE! When we got the the last resident, you could tell she was a matriarch of sorts. She was older than most of the others, and had a comfortable yet important and confident way of holding herself in her seat. When she used her turn to say, “I just love cheesecake”, the room erupted with laughter. I’ll never forget that moment. At the end of the day, I left with a happy heart, feeling like we had been able spread a little love, and received some of it too.

Repair The World NYC Team Leader, Sam Sittenfield, interviewing Amy Ellenbogen and David Gaskin, of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center (photo by Jon Cohen)

This past Wednesday night, I had the chance to interview Amy Ellenbogen and David Gaskin, of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, on the topic of gun violence.  It reminded me of one of the key take-aways from our racial justice shabbat dinner that Repair The World NYC held to kick off our MLK weekend of service, back in January.  I’ll let you guess which one, from the list below.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner (right) and Tynesha McHarris (left) speaking at Repair The World NYC’s Turn The Tables Shabbat Supper on Racial Justice (photo by Alli Lesevoy)

At our MLK Shabbat Dinner, Rabbi Rachel Timoner and Tynesha McHarris held a powerful, yet intimate conversation on their own life stories, and the role that the Jewish community can play as allies to Black Lives Matter.  In the middle of the conversation, I ran over to the sign in table where I could take a few notes, because I wanted to remember the powerful words that they spoke.  I was able to jot down a few notes and ideas on how, and more importantly, where to be an ally: 

1 ) Know when to lead, and know when not to.  To me, this is the golden rule of being an ally.  It speaks to the nuanced role of an ally.  A good ally can be a leader, a facilitator, a supporter, and a friend -- but unless you are invited to speak, you should probably keep your mouth shut.

2) The best places to lead are the places where you have the most to lose. Sorry if the first idea made you feel like you are not allowed to participate, but here is where you can.  Bringing discussions and conversations to places where you feel comfortable, where you are respected, and where people may disagree is the most active part of allyship.  The goal does not need to be to convince anyone else of your beliefs, but just to let them know that you are not participating in the silent majority.  There are a lot of people in your community who want to engage in issues of racial justice, they just need someone to open the door.

3) Make sacrifices and take risks to interrupt oppression. This one is really hard, because you never know when you are going to witness oppression.  It can happen on the street, in a store, or on the subway.  It is hard to think on your feet, and sometimes you won’t even realize the act of oppression until it is too late.  It is also hard to make a public action.  It is much easier to sit behind a computer screen and type a blog post or a written statement, where you get to reconsider each word and each keystroke (like yours truly).  In real life you don’t have that opportunity, which is what will make your actions even more powerful.

4) Create spaces for children to have conversations about Racial Justice. This one is a hard one for those of us who don’t have children or don’t interact with children regularly.  I think that is what makes it the most important.  Racism is built into the fabric of our society, and for those of us who have lived in society long for enough, it becomes part of the fabric of our own behavior, even if we try to fight it.  The more that we can create safe opportunities for young people to talk about racial justice, the better the chance that the next generation will be able to live in a more just world.

Did you guess correctly?  I think it was a combination of 1 and 2, by bringing another topic related to racial justice into Repair The World’s workshop, but you are welcome to disagree.

As I learned from Deray Mckesson and Stephen Colbert, I hope that I have been able to, and will continue to use my opportunity as a Repair The World fellow living in the Crown Heights community to take risks and lead vitally important discussion within my overlapping circles and communities.

RTW Fellow Jon Cohen leads service learning for the Muslims Against Hunger food preparation event on 1.18.16

Have you ever said a word so many times in a row that it became abstract? I have. Being a Repair the World fellow I've heard the word "community" a lot. Whether it be the Jewish community, the Caribbean community, the Hasidic community, the communal living we do, etc. But this word is not like other words, because community isn't something you define, it is something you sense and feel.

A word that seems to start off as abstract.

Before the fellowship started I did some research about Crown Heights and where I would be spending 11 months of my life. When we pulled up to our storefront on Nostrand Avenue on August 22nd, I can honestly say that I couldn't imagine myself ever being considered part of this community.

Here I was - a 22 year old, Jewish, nonblack, gay man from South Florida. What did I have in common with an Afro-Caribbean community dealing with gentrification and a society that oppresses them? I still don't have all the answers, and I don't think I ever will. But the answer I do have is that love and solidarity is what we can all have in common.

Some of the fellows pose together at an MLK Shabbat Supper About Racial Justice, the kick off to a weekend of service in BK

So, what is community? Community is when the woman who sells hats on our street corner teamed up with the cashier at the knickknack shop next door to get a package for me when The Workshop was closed. Community is when I found myself in a room with the cashier from my favorite restaurant, a man I met at the art gallery visiting the RTW workshop, and a volunteer from one of our partner organizations and found out they were all brothers. To which one of them said "yeah we all blood" and brought me into a group hug. Community is when a woman approached me at our MLK Shabbat Supper and said "I know Aliya and she told me I had to come tonight and I had to give you a hug for her." Aliya being a woman I met while volunteering with CityHarvest and Weeksville Heritage Center for 6 weeks. Community is also looking around at a table of my fellow Fellows and tearing up, because I am overwhelmed with being surrounded by people who inspire me this much.

I could go on and on with anecdotes like the ones I've already mentioned, but instead I will just finish with - I feel welcome to Repair the World, I feel welcome to Crown Heights, I feel welcome to OUR community.