D'var Torah

Sivan 5767 (Summer 2007)

Without You …

One of the great delights of technology is the way that, at the click of a mouse, entire worlds open. As we come to end of another successful year, and as we begin to celebrate what will be our 60th anniversary as a congregation, it would do us well to recognize that we would be very much other than we are as a synagogue and as a community, were it not for the volunteers who have labored mightily to serve this congregation. In honor of you, the members of the Greenburgh Hebrew Center, some random thoughts culled from the Internet. Thank you for your labor, your dedication, your support, and your love for the Greenburgh Hebrew Center.

Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation's compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another. --Erma Bombeck

Volunteers are not paid -- not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. --Mother Teresa

Some people want it to happen, some wish it to happen, others make it happen.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being. --Goethe

I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living -- the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals. --Marian Wright Edelman

Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like. --Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Service to youth is the rent we pay for the space we occupy on earth. --Jane Deeter Rippin

Volunteering creates a national character in which the community and the nation take on a spirit of compassion, comradeship and confidence. --Brian O'Connell

We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give. --Winston Churchill

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. --Albert Schweitzer

I have been the recipient of love and service, therefore I can love and serve. There is great satisfaction in service to others, in ... seeing people and their conditions change. --Clarence E. Hodges

We're put on this earth not to see through each other but to see each other through. --Anonymous

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a rare and high privilege to be in a position to help people understand the differences that they can make not only in their own lives but in the lives of others by simply giving of themselves. --Helen Boosalis

Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. --Anonymous

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. --Booker T. Washington

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. --Anne Frank

I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. --Mahatma Gandhi

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for someone else. --Benjamin Franklin

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. --Eleanor Roosevelt

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. --Edmund Everett Hale

You will find as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others. --Anonymous

The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have. --Leonard Nimoy

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