How two ordinary people built a Jewish community long before we had a building.

Every Jewish community has people like Norm and Esther Wean.

They aren’t rabbis or major philanthropists. Their names aren’t engraved on buildings. They simply open their homes, teach children, drive carpools, organize events, and quietly create the communities the rest of us inherit.

Growing up in Holbrook, Massachusetts, in the 1960s, my Jewish education didn’t begin in a synagogue. It began around the Weans’ dining room table.

Before Holbrook had a Jewish Community Center or a synagogue, it had Mr. and Mrs. Wean.

A couple of evenings each week, a handful of Jewish kids gathered around the dining room table in their ranch house on Loud Road to learn Hebrew. I was one of them.

Holbrook was a working-class suburb south of Boston with fewer than a hundred Jewish families. There was no synagogue. No Hebrew school. No rabbi. Those would all come later.

For us, Jewish education began in the Weans’ home.

Mr. Wean spent his days teaching fourth grade in the Boston Public Schools. A few evenings each week, he came home and taught another classroom full of children. Mrs. Wean welcomed us into their home, kept the whole operation running, and somehow managed to get many of us there and back each week.

Mr. Wean was a stout man with a surprisingly high-pitched raspy voice. His house always smelled faintly of sweet........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)