As posted on March 15, 2012 by Sam Blustin on Soup for the Neshama
It’s good to have friends. Someone to lend a hand. They can be high, or low, or just a plain Joe Schmo. They’re here, they’re there, they can be anywhere. And indeed, it’s nice to have them everywhere.
A couple weeks ago I spent Shabbos at the B1G (Big Ten) Hillel Shabbaton hosted by the University of Illinois. Over 130 students took part in this amazing weekend of bonding, sharing, and general Purim festivities. We had spirited (and occasionally entertaining) services, wonderful meals, endless singing, and breakout sessions ranging from music, to the Holocaust, from outreach, to sex, led mainly by our peers, for our peers. Perhaps the most important thing I took from the weekend was the importance and the power of collaboration.
“Chassidic master Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk once referred to a certain rabbi as ah tzaddik in peltz — ‘a righteous person in a fur coat.’
The Kotzker explained: When it is winter and it’s freezing cold, there are two things one can do. One can build a fire, or one can wrap oneself in a fur coat. In both cases, the person is warm. But when one builds a fire, all who gather around will also be warmed. With the fur coat, the only one who is warmed is the one who wears the coat.”
As college students, we often think we know the answers to life’s mysteries. We think we have answers to every problem that our organizations face, and that we face in life. More often than not though, we don’t have the answers. We need the input and experience of others. We can’t do it alone.
Despite our differences in campus involvement, staff roles, money issues, and many other important factors, we were able to come together as a Jewish people who are involved and care about the future of Jewish life. We shared our experiences, our best practices, our issues with our organizations, and together created a framework for collaboration and sharing that has begun to tear apart the fur coats that we all wear and throw them into the fire of rich collaboration from which we will all be able to benefit from.
Separate, none of us have all the answers. But together, we can build, create, and use our combination of experiences to create lives, organizations, and experiences that will honestly and truly impact our own lives and those of the people around us.
To find out more about the work B1G Hillel is doing, tune into our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/B1GHillel
Shabbat Shalom,
SB
The Playing For Change project takes people from all over the world to create some amazing music. Here’s one of their songs.
Story from the Kotzker Rebbe taken from http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/258534/jewish/A-Tzaddik-in-a-Fur-Coat.htm
