Community
Perhaps you are just beginning to learn about Boston Workers Circle or want to get more involved, but have no idea where to start. We invite you to sit down with a community leader or staff person to learn more and get answers to all of your questions. Email Organizer Zohar Berman at zohar@circleboston.org to find a time to connect and discuss involvement options. Whether you are looking for particular programming, or hoping to get involved in our committees’ work, there is a niche for every person in our community.
Community Care
Boston Workers Circle (BWC) is a vibrant multi generational community of secular Jews involved together in social and political activities and in providing a Jewish education to the next generation. Within BWC, the Community Care Circle (CCC) focuses on creating and strengthening connections among members and providing personal support as needed.
What often brings us together is our interest in supporting each other. We want your help in recognizing a birth, a b’nai mitzvah or a wedding, or sharing news of difficult times, illness, or death. Here are some ways for you to let us know/find out about what is happening with you, your family, and other members.
The BWC Mutual Aid Network: Our listserv/email group that connects our members so that we can ask each other for help and offer to help in many different ways, from grocery shopping runs to requesting rides to asking and answering questions about Zoom, etc. Immigrants founded BWC in order to support, care for, and fight for each other. Our Mutual Aid Network is one more way that we continue that wonderful, vital tradition.
We hope you will use this resource to ask for help and to offer your skills and availability. Click here for more information, guidelines, and how to join.
If you would like to volunteer to help another BWC member in need outside of the mutual aid listserv, please fill out the form here.
The Community Care Circle would like to help if you – or a member you know about – needs more active support. Contact us directly at communitycare@circleboston.org and we will follow up with you.
The Community Care Circle along with other BWC members is creating rituals and practices so that we can offer each other
support during life cycle events such as birth, illness/healing circles, end-of-life/shiva, marriage/divorce, and more.
Other Mutual Aid Resources
Here is a member-sourced list of resources.
Here is our Secular Memorial Guide and our suggestions for What to do When Someone Dies.
Young Adult Community
The Boston Worker's Circle Young Adult Community brings together people in their 20's and 30's to build meaningful friendships, create rituals that speak to us and our values, take action, and host community-wide events.
We have fun together while figuring out what our Judaism, our activism, and our cultural inheritances mean to us. We are students, organizers, artists, cultural workers, professionals, creators, teachers, librarians, rabbis, nerds, musicians, performers, clowns, and general dreamers & schemers. Join us!
We are especially excited about Gragger, our radical Purim party, and our Young Adult Shabes gatherings! MORE DETAILS ABOUT GRAGGER HERE.
Subscribe to our young adult community mailing list here! If you want to get more involved in the BWC Young Adult community, contact zohar@circleboston.org.
Young Adult Calendar
Aging in Community
The Aging in Community Committee gathers the voices of BWC’s older members and works to create a community that can sustain and nourish us as we age. We provide opportunities for learning, support and activism.
All of our programs have moved online! If you're not already on our Aging in Community email list and would like to be added, email co-chairs at aic@circleboston.org and they can send you the link for the sessions. New to Zoom? Click here for a step-by-step how to use Zoom guide. All sessions listed will be at 10:30am unless otherwise listed. We hope you will join us!
Aging in Community Calendar
For a full list of resources we offer, please visit the Archives & Resources page.
Previous Committee events have included:
What do We Do with our Bodies When We Die
Climate Change
Small Groups, with a focus on Legacy
Death & Dying Small Group Discussions
Housing/Living Arrangements as We Age
Caregiving
Are you providing care for others? Receiving care from others? How does this all feel? What are strategies to keep yourself and your caregivers/care receivers sane and as independent as possible.
Let’s Dismantle Ageism, facilitated by AIC member Kathy Dalton
What is ageism? How does it appear in our lives? What can each of us do to dismantle it? We’ll explore how ageism affects each one of us. We’ll do an exercise to help us see ageism in our lives. We will look at some of our own attitudes about aging and some of the messages we’ve heard all our lives from the media, the entertainment industry, and others to sell us an ageist agenda. We’ll take some steps, practice a response to ageist experiences, and identify what else we can do to be the change.
Book Discussion of Philip Roth's "Everyman"
Facilitated by Mike Felsen and Ava Cheloff, we hope you will join us having read the book first. We anticipate a lively conversation about this honored, andoversial titan of American literature.
Film and Discussion
A screening and discussion of the PBS documentary Grow Old Along with Me: The Poetry of Aging. In the film, artists, actors, writers and others reveal how aging can be a creative process that allows us to access our full humanity.
Aging with Wisdom
A book talk and slide show with author Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. Her first book was the award winning Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple's Journey Through Alzheimer's. In Aging with Wisdom, she "explores the ways readers can nourish their inner lives and spirit even as their bodies age and facilities diminish."
Housing Options As We Age
Panel presentation with Emily Saltz, geriatric care manager along with Boston Workmen Circle members Miriam Habib and Sandy Sachs who will share their journeys in making housing choices as they grew older. There will be opportunity for small group conversation following the panel. We encourage all those who are interested to join us whether or not you participated in the first session.
Identity, Meaning and Generativity
Who are we once we retire? Where do we find meaning in our lives? How do we continue to feel like we’re making a difference: for ourselves, our community, our world. Join with other BWC members to share experiences; examine our feelings; consider options and enjoy one another’s company.
Shabes Gatherings
Every Boston Workers Circle Shabes is an opportunity for members and friends to gather together, to relax and enjoy one another’s company, and to share the traditional Friday night blessings that acknowledge our gratitude for what community, candles, wine, and challah give us. The gatherings are also a chance to get to know some members of our community better. Learn more on our holiday page.