Any Jewish professional or lay leader knows that sometimes you have to field complaints.  The optimist in me believes it’s because we come from a culture that thirsts for goodness, raised to believe we have the power to create the best scenario possible.  But do we have the tools we need to get us there?

In the past few years at GW Hillel, residing in a temporary space without an oven, I often heard complaints about the cancellation of the beloved Thursday night challah extravaganza.  Each week, stage one of the process involved one or two volunteers arriving to make the dough in the morning. Stage two involved many friends joining them later that afternoon, cramming into the kitchen to braid and kill time while the challah baked.  Our students missed the camaraderie and couldn’t find a creative way out of this loss.