Judy Roitman
When I moved to Lawrence in 1978 (the way back times) I hadn’t set foot in a shul — except for the random bar/bat mitzvah or to please my parents or grandmother — in over a decade. To be honest, I started regularly showing up with my ex-Catholic husband in order to prove to the adoptive services division of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Kansas City that we would raise our hoped-for child in a Jewish home. I have always felt Jewish. I just never cared for congregational life as I, a cantor’s daughter in a semi-suburban Conservative shul, had known it.
But from the minute I walked in I could see that the LJCC was different. It felt like family. Sure, people would bicker at times — all families do — but people were there for each other, in good times and bad. The LJCC was mishpochah. It still is.
The LJCC is unaffiliated. It is lay-led. Its resources are its community; its community is its resource. And this community creates a full Jewish life in Lawrence — learning and worship, kid programs and adult programs and family programs, hanging out together, casting our bread into the waters (Tashlich) and staying away from bread (Pesach); a community that is truly inclusive, truly egalitarian; a community that rejoices in its members’ joys, grieves with them in their sorrows, and steps forward to help when help is needed. On the rare occasions when I find myself in another town in another shu,l I am so grateful that the LJCC is my shul. Our shul. The shul we build together.
Our community has changed over the decades, the way we do. So many things are different than they were back in 1978, but that heimishe feeling is a constant. As is the need for financial support (you knew I was going to get around to this).
The need for this support won’t go away when we do. I believe in this community long-term, and want to help sustain it past my lifetime. Which is why the LJCC is a beneficiary on my retirement accounts. I don’t know how the LJCC will morph over the next many decades. But I know that its wonderful, quirky, welcoming spirit will remain as long as the resources are there to sustain it.