This morning, I woke up, and my eyes literally did not want to open.  Not out of exhaustion, but because they were so uncomfortably dry.  I attribute it to a combination of excessive A/C to combat this overbearing heat and my LASIK surgery 18 months ago that occasionally leaves me wondering if my eyes have been relocated to the Sahara desert while I’m still in Chicago.

I knew the solution before I even realized the problem.  I stopped at CVS on my way to work and picked up a bottle of eye drops.  I wasn’t paying a lot of attention as I grabbed them, and suffered a mini-bout of sticker shock at the register.  Sixteen dollars.  Ugh.  So I pulled out my debit card and begrudgingly handed it to the cashier while silently cursing at my eyes for being so difficult.

It really sucks that my $16 went to CVS and the jerks that make Systane eye drops, but let’s be honest, my bank account will survive.  When I go to the grocery store on Sunday to pick up food for the week, my card will not be declined.  I will have totally forgotten about this morning’s liquid gold eye drops ($16 for a .667 ounce bottle—imagine if you converted that cost to gallons like gasoline!?).  And in a few months, if my eyes act up and decide to hate me once again, I’ll probably rummage through my purse, wondering where I left those silly drops, and when they don’t appear, I’ll run into CVS again to grab another (expensive) bottle.

I’m lucky.  I know it.  While I certainly didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I have never had to worry about where my next meal would come from or whether I could afford my prescription or grocery bill.  Nearly everyone feels broke in college, but my perceived poverty mostly affected my drinking habits (pre-game before the bars) and dietary choices (Out for dinner?  No way!—more like mac and cheese, my college staple).

And even now, with my husband in school full-time—yes, that means no income for two years—we have planned well and have enough cash stashed away so we aren’t frantic when the rent is due.  Sure, we’re not going out to eat as much as we used to and I’m trying to scale back on the shopping, but we’re fine.

Not everyone is that lucky.  And that has never been more apparent to me than in the past three months, since I began my new job at The ARK.  The ARK’s primary mission is to create a safety net for Chicagoland Jews in need by providing vital human services within a framework of Jewish values and laws.  The mission statement is vague, but I can paint a picture of what that looks like.

As I drove past The ARK at 8:45 a.m. to detour to CVS, there was a line six people deep outside the building (we open at 9), waiting to take a number to see the dentist.  Most of them haven’t had the money to see a dentist in years and they aren’t just popping in for the regular old tooth cleaning and cavity check—they are treating infections, receiving free dentures, and having complex procedures.  And they are finally getting in after waiting nearly two months on the waiting list.  (Know any Jewish dentists?  We have about a dozen who volunteer their time in our dental clinic and it’s still not enough to meet the needs of Chicago’s uninsured Jews in need.  Same goes for doctors in the medical clinic!)

As I am typing this article at my desk, there are four volunteers in the food pantry helping clients of The ARK assemble their monthly food packages.  Most of the recipients of food from The ARK are already enrolled in Illinois’ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that helps low-income residents buy the food they need for good health.  This governmental aid helps recipients get through about three weeks worth of groceries each month and covers only items that go in your mouth (think about things like toilet paper, shampoo, or diapers for your baby).  The ARK steps in to cover that gap and help our clients stay afloat by providing toiletries, paper goods and nutritious kosher food.  We’re Jews—we feed each other, it’s what we do.

Outside the entrance of the food pantry is a table where we place dozens of boxes of matzah each morning.  Local grocery stores donate it here by the boat-load once Passover ends (because who would really want to eat it when it wasn’t a mandatory holiday requirement?  I’m fairly certain that if I had to make a list of my top three least favorite foods, matzah would be number one).  The Passover Hagaddah describes matzah as lechem onim—the bread of the poor—and it was not until I witnessed the sheer amount of needy Chicagoans who take it home in July to feed their families that I understood why the moniker lechem onim really fits the bill.

Before I worked at The ARK, I imagined The ARK’s clients as elderly Jews and recent immigrants, but what is most baffling is that many of the people who frequent the pantry and the medical clinic look just like you or me—they are recently laid off professionals, elderly Jews who have outlived their retirement savings, mothers with young children, middle-aged suburbanites, and Jews from the former Soviet Union.  They are people from the suburbs and city and from all walks of Jewish life.  Most of them never would have thought that they would ever become a client of The ARK.

And I imagine that many of them never thought they would blink an eye at a $16 price tag on a bottle of eye drops.  Certainly puts life into perspective.

Pictured in a photo circa 1978 is Cindy’s Grandma Tessie and Grandpa Harry—a dinner guest at her fictitious Shabbat dinner—her sister, Melissa, and the author, a baby at the time.

A hypothetical question
Here’s a question to pose to people around your Shabbat dinner table this Friday night: If you could invite anyone for Shabbat dinner, living or dead, who would it be? Like me, I hope you get to share Shabbat every week with loved ones—family and friends—but what if you had just one night to spend time with people you normally couldn’t?

I ponder this question from time to time and have come up with my fictitious Shabbat dinner guest list. These individuals would bring warmth, laughs, and engaging conversation to the table.

Harry Luck
Topping my guest list would be my Grandpa Harry Luck. While I was fortunate to grow up around three of my grandparents, my maternal grandfather died at age 75, exactly two weeks before my second birthday.

Though I don’t remember him, my family would share stories of Harry with me throughout my life. He had wit, intellect, and was a mensch. The second youngest of 10 children, Harry was born in a shtetl near Minsk, Belarus, in 1904. At age 20, he immigrated with his family to America. En route, they lived in London for a year, where Harry picked strawberries by day to make a living. An Englishman who wanted to learn Russian befriended Harry. A member of the Fabian Society, an intellectual Socialist movement, the Englishman took my grandpa to meetings, where George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell also attended.

Then, Harry moved to Wisconsin, where he eventually fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a farm, becoming one of the very first Jewish farmers in Wisconsin. Soon, he met my grandmother; the young couple bought a dairy farm in Mapleton, where they also raised cattle, corn, two sons, and a daughter.

Yeshiva scholars would stay with my family to learn about farming before moving to kibbutzim (collective farms) in Israel. My grandparents were true Zionists. Long before the creation of the Jewish state, they invested a portion of their small savings in Israel even though it was a gamble on an uncertain future. Harry would say, ‘If this is worth nothing, then our lives are worth nothing.’

Irene Opdyke
Recognized as a “Righteous Gentile” for saving Jews during the Holocaust, Irene Opdyke was one of the first people to teach me about the meaning of heroism. When I was in junior high, my family hosted Irene, a Polish Catholic woman, at our home while she was in town for a speaking engagement.

During World War II, Irene worked for an SS officer on a villa as a housekeeper. Surreptitiously, she saved 12 Jews from capture, smuggling them into the basement of the villa without the officer’s knowledge. Eventually, the officer discovered her friends; he threatened to turn them in unless she would become his mistress.

In all, she hid the Jews for nine months, and one even gave birth while in hiding. After the war, Irene immigrated to America, where she lived until her death seven years ago at the age of 86.

Oseola McCarty
About a decade ago, I read an obituary of Oseola McCarty, an African-American washerwoman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Ever since she was a little girl, Oseola made her living washing and ironing clothes. She lived frugally, saving every penny she could. She didn’t own a car, opting to walk everywhere. She never married and outlived her relatives, putting away the money that was bequeathed to her.

At age 87, Oseola established a trust through which, at her death, a portion of her life savings would be left to the University of Southern Mississippi to provide scholarships for deserving African-American students in need. In the end, Oseola left approximately $150,000 to the students.

Darcy Pohland
When I was in college, local CBS news reporter Darcy Pohland welcomed me into the newsroom as an intern at the Minneapolis affiliate TV station.

Pohland, who passed away last winter at the age of 48, was bubbly, talented, and always smiling, despite an accident that almost took her life as a young woman. When she was in college, she dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool and broke her neck, causing permanent paralysis from the chest down.

And yet, she was one of the most capable people I have ever met. At CBS, I shadowed Pohland on news stories, some serious and others fun. She would drive us around town in a van designed to accommodate her paraplegia. Once, we covered a story about a Minneapolis boutique that sold funky clothes made of Astroturf and bubble wrap. Pohland coaxed me into modeling the clothes in an on-camera fashion show as part of the story. I had a ball during my fleeting time on the catwalk, twirling around for the camera, while Pohland cheered me on.
 
Adam Sandler
I realize one of these things is not like the other and that the final guest at my Shabbat table—alive and well in Hollywood—is a bit of a departure. But Adam Sandler, the Jewish movie mogul, comedian, husband, and father of two, could add a lot of levity to our dinner conversation.

From his early days portraying Theo’s friend “Smitty” on “The Cosby Show,” to helping Jewish boys and girls feel a little less alienated at Christmastime with his smash hit “The Chanukah Song” to playing a heartbroken 1980s wedding singer, Adam’s always been my biggest Hollywood crush.

In addition to his comedy career, he’s also a philanthropist. A few years ago, he donated $1 million to the Boys and Girls Club in his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire.

I think my grandpa and Adam would really hit it off.

Let’s eat
The guest list is complete. Now, who could do the cooking? I bet Julia Child would make a mean brisket…