Principles of Christmas

Dave Beldon writes on Tikkun Daily:

Mimi teaches the principles of Christmas — that it’s about giving

This is a story for Christmas about an extraordinary Jewish woman: Mimi Silbert, who founded the famous Delancey Street self-help drug rehabilitation center.

She lives on the job:

Many of Silbert’s roommates have bottomed out after an average 12 years of drug addiction and four trips to prison. Delancey dwellers spend an average of four years rebuilding their lives, learning values and a trade in one of many Delancey enterprises: the Christmas tree lots, the restaurant, the moving company, or wood furniture making.

My wife and son and I buy our tree each year from the Delancey Street lot in El Cerrito. The service there is something special: you know that everyone has a story and you see the hope in their eyes and their energy.

Over almost four decades, Delancey has grown to a $30 million foundation following an each-one-teach-one philosophy – Silbert has never taken a dime from the government, given herself a salary or hired anyone. The residents do everything – from answering the phones to teaching the academic classes to building the dorms and counseling one another.

Silbert gets business suits as Christmas presents for all her residents.

“We don’t do things like other places,” she said. “We don’t boo-hoo in therapy sessions about broken childhoods. Blaming leads to acting out to guilt and a cycle of self-hate. At some point, you gotta cut it out. Everyone has the ability to sink to the worst or rise to the best of themselves.”

Playing Santa

On Dec. 25, Silbert, a former high school cheerleader with a doctorate in criminology from UC Berkeley, will dress as Santa and pull sleds of the boxed and wrapped suits into Delancey’s gathering hall.

In years past, after watching the uncomfortable newcomers try to slip away to be in private with their foreign gifts, she now insists residents model their new clothes on the spot. The suits have to fit, and they have to be in textures, shades and designs that make the wearer feel good.

“Everyone says, ‘Ooooh, aaaaah!’ as you turn around,” said resident Robert McCormick, 30, who experienced his first Christmas at Delancey in 2008. “It’s an amazing feeling. I finally felt what it must be like to have a family.”

Going from rags to Brooks Bros. was such an uplifting experience for Sean Cronk, 34, that he can’t contain his tears remembering it.

“All of a sudden people perceived me differently,” he said.

Once, while at a hospital, the staff mistook him for a doctor. That moment of respect left a lasting mark on his soul.

… “Mimi teaches the principles of Christmas — that it’s about giving,” said former resident Mike DeLane, a San Francisco fire captain. “She’s like the mother nobody around here ever had.”

For Cronk, it isn’t about the stuff in the box.

“It’s about being in that room on Christmas, to finally actually feel loved by people who are going to go through the hard times with you and truly love you no matter what,” he said.

The way Silbert sees it, everyone at Delancey is an immigrant to mainstream society, just like her parents who fled Eastern Europe to escape the Nazis during World War II. They settled on Delancey Street in New York, pooled their money and eventually moved to a better flat in Boston, where Silbert grew up learning to share resources with her extended family.

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A Jewish woman giving family and dignity to her human family at Christmas and always. THAT'S what that man came to teach us so many years ago.

Merry Christmas to you this beautiful winter day.