Transcript

TEDxOmaha - Magda Peck - Lighting Shamashim for Community Good

been a wonderful afternoon I just am amazed at the amount of energy and enthusiasm and passion that people have and have brought to be as gifts giving to us so as your last speaker today I want to be able to ask us what is possible when the spark within us of passion is ignited that's the question overall and the person that I want to introduce you to that has given me the opportunity to ask this question again and again and again is this woman here I first met Evie when she was 90 and I was half her age she gave me the question what could be possible if you had 45 more years to live when I was getting a little tired and not sure exactly what my next steps were going to be and so with my conversations with Evie which have started when she joined the social justice committee at Temple Israel here in Omaha Nebraska she would ask the toughest questions and at the end of the day she would say honey what are you going going to do about it Evelyn zeisman was born and raised here in Omaha Nebraska she's one of the first women who received a master's degree in social work in Columbia came back she started the first educational toy company she has been someone who has been the conscience of this community and I think it's only appropriate that we start by honoring our elders overall and so I asked her a couple of questions she said why don't you come come to my kitchen and we'll have martinis it's just a half a then you put all the olives on a given stick and you swirl it around but don't eat the olives you got to throw them away I don't drink Martinez but I learn to sit at every zeeman's table and have conversations with her almost every Sunday and we would talk about what it takes to ignite the passion to change the world and as she grow to be 90 and ' 92 and ' 95 and 98 and older those conversations have continued what I want to do is to bring to you a little bit about those conversations about what could be possible you see Evie zeisman taught me what it is to wake up with moral indigestion she said that she would open one eye thinking that she still wouldn't make it through the night cuz she's really ready to go her sisters her parents her husband most every friend has already gone before her it's not that easy a Life to Live late into your 90s and she would say but what about child hunger and so we would sit around in her kitchen table and talk about the fact that in Omaha Nebraska the wealthiest town in this general area there are children going hungry and I would say to her did you know that they're having a bake sale on the lawn of ConAgra to put together a hunger Coalition and she'd say honey that's just not right and we would talk about the polarity in politics in which the only way people can have conversation now is to be right or wrong especially those that think that they are really right and she would say to me honey what happened to civil discourse and she take another sip I would tell her about riding my bike on the Keystone Trail here in Omaha Nebraska as one of those 6,000 Jews and I have to see this hatred and vitral in my community and I take personal offense and she would say honey I have seen that before and it's still not gone and we would talk about the fact that people basically have opted out of caring that they're so numbed by so much complexity and problems that they just don't know where to begin and in the face of that she would say honey what are we going to do about that I feel so badly that I'm leaving a whole generation of children and and young adults with soft to solve problems that that that are just so tough honey they got to start caring and they've got to do something so I want to talk to you about about keeping my microphone in we're good we Jews talk with our hands and so things might fly who's going to do something who that's the question that I've been struggling with is someone who tries to grow great leaders for the greater good who is going to be responsible for going from apathy to action now this man at least the one to one side has been brought up a number of times here today in various do domains the other one is the one that I'm more interested about who happens to be my son and I want to rely on him and his generation to be the ones to do something so that eie can pass on knowing that in fact something will be done we insist upon the fact that our leaders are Big L leaders we look to them to say solve it make it happen do something right and then we set them up for failure it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and we cannot believe that in fact they have any capacity to lead and we become hard and cynical so I've resorted to my own place of faith to try and understand how to get out of this conundrum because if in fact we believe that it's too big to fix and we're not the ones to do it we're screwed so I want to tell you something I've done in the last couple of years as I'm fairly new to being an observant Jew I didn't become a bot Mitzvah you usually do that at 13 so I was in my 40s this is kind of new as to discover the rituals that come with one's faith and we're really old people and we've been doing this stuff for a really long time and so I took the ritual of Hanukkah you know Hanukkah makabe destructed Temple oil lasts how many nights eight one night after another and we as Jews teach our children how to celebrate not only that victory of freedom but we teach us how to do this ritual so my job to you today is to use this ritual with you and try and deconstruct this notion of how do you light the lights of Hanukkah and I'm going to show you how it gives us the secret to being able to ignite The Passion of change let me show you how that works if I were to ask you how many nights of Hanukkah you would say eight and we would light candles and you would probably say we would light eight candles we do this in some really interesting ways the rabbis were brilliant in constructing ritual that would bring memory and meaning together to be passed on from generation to generation you start only with one candle for the first night and on the second night you like two candles and on the third night you write three candles and on the fourth night you get my point here and so what happens is by the eighth night you will have done 1 plus one 1 plus 2 1 plus 3 1 plus 4 until it goes all the way out and you could say how many candles do you light for Hanukkah and in fact the answer some might say is 31 we have learned that if we're going to ingrain the values of action you've got to do it iteratively and repetitively and by the time the eighth Night Comes we're a little tired of it but it takes that many times to transform a community to bring Community good the secret that makes it even more spectacular than lighting one and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and letting them burn down CU you can never blow out the lights that cast out darkness is this right here this candle is called the shamash can you say that for me shamash one more time shamash and even in plural in Hebrew it's shamash let me hear you shamash now what a shamash does it recognizes the most profound notion of making change happen that candles don't light themselves that Miracles don't happen that change is not possible unless someone lights the first candle you light one and you have possibility that things can change you light the second and it brings more light to cast out the darkness cuz we celebrate this holiday at the darkest time of the year you like the third to invoke all of the dreams that you may have to think about what could be different next year when you do this you light the fourth to invoke the possibility that we might be able to find peace in our time you fight the fifth so that you can bring it to your children that they will pass it on to their children you light the sixth so that you can know that even though you're tired there's just a few more to go you light the seventh is a way to saying could you blaze a path for possibility you light the eighth and imagine in our household where everybody gets their own little candleabra we put one candle up right in the middle because it's the one that lights the others and and it's the one that doesn't count that's the key that's where we're going to be able to get our Sparks for justice the change that needs to happen that's what's going to be possible that's where we get our courage courage is the light within us to light others for possibility and it doesn't matter if we ever count can you imagine what would be possible if we were selfless in our passion not only for our own dreams and our own business but to ignite the possibility of the person sitting to your right sitting to your left what would happen with hunger and poverty with Injustice with disparity what would happen in terms of creativity and Imagination if it didn't matter if we counted we are shashin we are called upon to be shamash in this generation and in the next Evie zeisman is 101 years old imagine living past the century mark when I go to see her tomorrow for martinis can I tell her that you will be there you see the last time that I saw her she said to me Magda I need you to make me a promise keep my flame going I said to her Evie you are the oldest living social justice Champion that I know you inspire me she said that's right I'm passing my light on to you and I said to her I promise you I promise you I promise you that I will not only never let it go out I will keep it in my heart and I will light the light of others so I ask you as we bring this Ted talk to a close will you be willing to light the light of others for possibility even if in fact you don't get any credit any visibility any airtime will you invite the possibility that just by breathing your own dreams that it might infect someone else to take theirs further will in fact you be willing to lead not with positional leadership but with the passion and Spark of your heart so that we can pass from generation to generation can I tell her that even if you don't count she can count on you can I tell her that in Omaha Nebraska for the next 100 years there will be shamash that light the Miracles that make it possible for us to transform our community unities for the greater good what shall I tell her tomorrow thank you [Applause]