In a horse pulling
contest at a county fair the first-place horse moved a sled weighing 4,500
pounds. The runner-up pulled 4,000 pounds. The owners of the two horse
wondered how much the animals could pull if they worked together. So they
hitched them up and loaded the sled. To everyone’s surprise, the horses
were able to pull 12,000 pounds.
Just like these
horses, we human beings as individuals are strong; however, when we team
up with others we work with greater efficiency and can accomplish so much
more. The desire for community is our search for shared responsibility.
Marathon Jewish Community Center fills that role in our members’ lives.
In our synagogue
founders’ wisdom, they named our shul The Marathon Jewish Community
Center emphasizing community. Community comes from the word “common.”
The word assumes an awareness that we share in the most basic way: tears
loss, love, illness, joy, fear, birth, death, life. We are not meant to
live alone. We are not supposed to ignore or deny what we have in common
as human beings. That is the power of community. It is the
acknowledgement of the universals of life, the sameness, the common
ground. It is the knowledge that I will never be alone when I am sick;
that my joys are doubled because I am surrounded by people who love me,
that I can share the mixed emotions I will have when my children go away
to college; that when I pray for the secret desires of my soul, I will be
joined by others doing the same. I live amid strangers, acquaintances,
friends, and even a few people whom I do not like. What makes Marathon a
special community is the sense of share responsibility; when one is in
need, the other simply responds.
Marathon Jewish
Community Center actualizes our members individuality by belonging to our
caring community, a community that breaks down walls of isolation, a
community that responds to you, a community that will ask you when you
join us (and I hope you will) to respond in kind.
