Page 16 - C.A.L.L. #37 - Winter 2013/2014

November 2013 saw the Pearlstone Retreat Center, in suburban Baltimore,
hosting the inaugural conference of a growing Jewish movement of intentional
community building in North America. What follows is a speech given by Rachael

Cohen at the opening plenary session

My passion for intentional Jewish community building is likely a result of the
social isolation I felt in my early years. I was a child of suburbia. My mother
went back to her job when I was six weeks old and I went off to a babysitter
each day. My father spent most of his waking hours at work. Both sets of
grandparents lived out of town. My sister was five years younger and, in my
opinion, an unacceptable playmate. We were minimally affiliated Jews. I went
to Hebrew school, but we had no connection with synagogue life. We rarely, if
ever, had guests. What if the house wasn’t clean enough? The food tasty
enough? We gave cursory waves to the neighbors, offered quick smiles to

people we passed in the supermarket, made perfunctory exchanges with gas
station attendants and bank clerks. I observed: be pleasant but detached.

I felt a loneliness and lack of connection that I could not adequately voice to my
parents. As I matured, I had windows into other people's lives. Friends whose
families took vacations together, my large pack of cousins that all lived in the
same distant town, kids that went to one summer camp year after year, families
with many children. These groups were building a shared sense of belonging and
I felt envious.

When I was fifteen I worked at a small, rural, Jewish day camp. For the first
time I felt held and supported through a sense of deeper meaning and
connection to community. That fall I joined my synagogue’s youth group, and
again, felt the tenderness of intimate communal belonging I had never known
but so instinctively craved. As I gently allowed myself to feel relevant and
purposeful in these chosen communities, I saw myself defined not just by my
own individual qualities, but by who I was in relation to the community. It was a
revelation. Who I am is directly linked and impacted by who I am to you and
who you are to me.

It took me fifteen years to find that sense of belonging again. I attended five
colleges, nine programs in Israel, made Aliya, left Israel, and was a resident of

more municipalities in America than I have fingers to count. I dragged first my
husband Yishai, and then our kids, around with me to numerous conventional
communities, gauging the social climate, measuring, calculating, computing, and
assessing all aspects of the prevailing social systems and interpersonal
patterns. And over, and over, and over again I was disappointed - sometimes

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