Creating a Forever Community
By Jim Stein
Visiting Andrea. Visiting Dick and Rhea. Visiting Kent. Visiting old friends, parents of friends, and colleagues. These are my most important reasons for supporting a Jewish community cemetery in Madison.
Visiting Andrea at Beit Olamim used to be sad for many reasons, including how alone her stone once stood in the nascent cemetery. Though none of us ever is glad to see more headstones in a Jewish community, I derive some comfort seeing her next to friends and family, in a community she loved and looks over today. Near her I see Dick Katz who was my podiatrist as a young boy and who played poker with my father’s friends. His wife Rhea was sweetness and I liked hugging her. Also nearby is Kent Mannis who was brilliant and compassionate – I wish I had known him better. I now walk around the cemetery like I did as a child when I visited my great-grandparents in Milwaukee, reading the names, admiring the markers, and remembering the people and relationships. Here, I see our Jewish community and feel a sense of permanence. I now understand what it means to go on to an eternal life, though it exists deep in our hearts and in ha’olam haba, the world to come.
Judaism is a communal religion: We pray as a community. We celebrate as a community. We eat as a community. We grieve as a community. The Torah was given to us as am echad, one people - as a kehillah, a community. My best friends bought adjacent plots to ours. Other friends and coworkers are nearby too. We all will be together someday and our kids and friends will visit us. It's our "forever" community. Together we can ensure that we have this communal place of peace and permanence for eternity.
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