Written by David Binkovitz

Shishim, Congregation Beth Tikvah’s senior group, ended its season with a picnic and concert in a park on July 9. Over 60 people from around the Columbus community attended. The picnic was held at Mirolo’s Community Shelter in Worthington. “We selected this site because of the beautiful natural setting surrounding the shelter as well as the array of amenities available at this site,” said Marcey Foreman, one of the event coordinators.

After a lunch from City Barbecue, Imber Solis provided musical entertainment. “We enjoyed her elegant vocals and acoustic guitar,” said Jackie Kon, a member of the Shishim planning committee.

Shishim also announced its new season of programs for September 2026 through June 2027.

“Our planning committee has been hard at work finding a variety of speakers and entertainers,” said Jane Mitchell, Shishim’s chairperson. “The upcoming speakers will present diverse talks in the areas of history, art, literature, Judaism, gardening, and medical concerns for seniors. We even have lighter topics such as the history of pizza in Columbus as well as several musical concerts.”

The season starts on September 3 at 11:00 AM with former political strategist Dale Butland talking about “When Ohio was Blue: My Twenty-Year Journey with John Glenn.” At 1:00 PM there will be a talk by OSU Professor Angus Fletcher entitled “You Are Smarter Than AI.” A lunch will be held between the two programs.

Shishim, which holds its programs at Congregation Beth Tikvah, is open to the entire community. “Shishim’s outreach is to all seniors,” said Mitchell. “We have about 60 to 80 people coming to our programs each month from all around the Columbus area.”

If you would like to be added to the email list for monthly program messages, send a message to shishim@bethtikvahcolumbus.org.

Morissa Freiberg-Vance, Tzedek America Rabbi Emily Feigenson Impact Fellowship

This summer, I had the privilege of completing the Rabbi Emily Feigenson Impact Fellowship through Tzedek America, a yearlong professional development experience for Jewish educators centered on social justice, Jewish values, and experiential learning. The fellowship culminated in an immersive educational journey through Los Angeles, where we explored what it means to live out the Torah’s repeated commandment to “welcome the stranger” and pursue justice in our own communities. Throughout the week, we visited organizations and neighborhoods that tell powerful stories of resilience, strength, and hope.

We began at Historic Belmar Park, which commemorates the thriving African American community that once existed there before it was destroyed through eminent domain in the 1950s. Our tour was led by Tzedek America educator Pastor Rondell Eskridge. At Inkwell Beach in Santa Monica, we learned about its history as a safe haven for African American beachgoers during segregation.

One stop that was especially meaningful to me was Beit T’Shuvah. As an organization that integrates Jewish spirituality, psychotherapy, and the 12-step program to support individuals recovering from addiction, its work beautifully demonstrates how Jewish values can be woven into healing, personal growth, and second chances. We heard testimony from residents and participated in a moving text study with their head rabbi, Iggy Gurin-Malous. We have welcomed Beit T’Shuvah educators to Beth Tikvah in the past, and I look forward to hopefully bringing them back for another program soon.

We also visited Liberation Coffee House, a social enterprise of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where LGBTQ+ youth and older adults build job skills and community through its Culinary Arts program. We heard the story of a young person who moved to Los Angeles from a small town in rural California so they could be accepted for who they are. The LGBT Center provided them with housing, gender-affirming care, and now a job at the café.

Our visit to Chinatown offered another powerful lesson, led by tour guide and local DJ Kev Lu. After the original Chinatown was demolished in the 1930s because of discriminatory housing policies, residents rebuilt their community while preserving their rich culture and traditions. We also learned how anti-Asian hate resurfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting community members to organize and protect one another. Their story is a testament to resilience in the face of repeated injustice.

One of the most inspiring experiences of the week was touring Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program. For more than three decades, Homeboy has provided training, employment, counseling, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated individuals, helping them rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose. Hearing our guide share his own journey of transformation was unforgettable and served as a powerful reminder of what becomes possible when communities choose compassion over judgment. Every major city in our country needs a program like Homeboy!

Perhaps the most impactful experience, however, was an afternoon spent with the Los Angeles Mission on Skid Row, distributing water and connecting with individuals experiencing homelessness. Out of respect for those we met, I chose not to take photographs. Instead, I left with stories, conversations, and a renewed sense of responsibility. With more than 70,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County and critical funding for service organizations continuing to decline, the need is overwhelming.

This fellowship challenged me to think more deeply about justice, empathy, and the many ways Jewish values call us to engage with the world around us. It left me deeply concerned about those whom we call “strangers” in our community. It reminded me that tzedek, justice, is not simply an abstract ideal, but an ongoing practice of listening, learning, showing up, and recognizing the dignity inherent in every person.

As I prepare for another year with our Religious School and Adult Learning communities, I look forward to bringing these experiences into my work with our learners and families.

Reflections by Rabbi Karen Martin

The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater

from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section

of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly—

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

but that did not keep me from crossing

strand over strand again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world,

she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough

to make us even.

---

It’s incredible to me the way memory works. Sometimes, I feel like my memory has more in common with Swiss cheese than a steel trap. Words won’t be where I need them, or I’ll remember every detail of a conversation, including where we were standing or sitting, but the name of my conversation partner eludes me. And yet, when I encountered this poem in When We See You Again by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, it felt like being teleported back in time. For Rachel, it was back to her own camp summers and the night she shared this poem with Hersh, who was killed after 328 days in captivity after being taken on October 7, 2023. For me, it was back to January of my senior year of high school, when my dad took me to the Key West Literary Festival to hear Billy Collins share his work. I read several of his books of poetry that year and was so excited to meet one of my literary icons.

Aspects of that trip came rushing back. Getting a hug from Billy Collins was pretty cool, but more poignant was the memory of how loudly my dad snored and how he would collect stories from everyone he encountered on the street. We shared a love of poetry and language. To borrow Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s language, he was my person.

Collins is a master of drawing out the deeply poignant in what might otherwise be seen as the painfully mundane. My kids have brought home myriad lanyards in different colors and states of completion. They litter their rooms and seem to spontaneously spawn in the backseat of my car. While these are not usually gifts, my younger son loves to draw pictures of hearts on whatever paper he can find and proudly presents them to me as a token of his love.

Goldberg-Polin zeros in on the last stanza of this poem, when Collins, as the speaker, confesses that in his youthful naïveté, he believed the gift of a lanyard (made with help and mostly out of boredom) was enough to repay all that his mother had given and done for him. He confesses this from a distance, no longer the child he was, and with this new perspective, no longer able to say the words to his mother.

Goldberg-Polin answers from the mother’s perspective:

I know how Hersh repaid me. He stayed alive and let me fight for him. For 330 additional days after Death came to the door of the opposite-of-shelter bomb shelter. Hersh let me prove how much I loved him by letting me go into the arena to battle without training or armor, just with my tiny fists of primal love. He gave me hope that I could save him by wrestling with the world. He kept breathing so that I would be motivated; he kept me motivated so that I would keep breathing. I was, and I still am.

I find her answer beautiful and deeply moving, but I also struggled with it because I struggle with the idea of debt in loving relationships. My parents didn’t keep accounts. Only in jest did I ever hear, “I gave birth to you, so…!” Life, care, and love were and are to be given freely and generously. To the extent that love is an exchange, I find myself repaid when my older son leans on me to show his affection between one thing and the next, or when my little one hands me yet another paper heart and asks for cuddles while sitting on the couch. I pray they never lose their affectionate natures.

In many ways, that’s the crux of the poem. It’s not about repaying in any real sense. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment of how perspective changes. As kids, we don’t see all that our parents pour into us, all that love and care and energy and time and financial and emotional resources. With perspective, we can see and name the impossibility of repaying all that was given, even if it is too late. As a mother, Goldberg-Polin’s answer turns the expectation of repayment on its head. Hersh paid her back, so to speak, by being Hersh. By waking up each day, by giving her the opportunity to be his mother, to love him fiercely, that was all she needed. No bauble or lanyard was necessary. He was the gift. He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfectly Hersh, and that’s all she needed him to be.

There’s a story told of the Hasidic master Rabbi Zusya. On his deathbed, he said to his disciples, “In the world to come, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” I hear the echoes of The Lanyard and Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s response. As I watch my children grow and discover who they are, I pray that they don’t lose themselves in the world’s tempestuous winds. I cannot imagine the challenges they and their friends will face, or how they will change and grow. In Zusya’s story, God is like a parent, knowing that the world will be filled with trials. Zusya’s words remind us that what God wants from us is not perfection or conformity to some imagined ideal, but rather that we weather the storms of life and come through them—not unchanged, which would be impossible—but anchored by that which makes us who we are.

¹Rachel Goldberg-Polin. When We See You Again (Random House: New York, 2026), 179.