By Leah Raich
On an average night in 2023, 4,922 people were sleeping on the streets of Washington, D.C.
Each year, the sophomore class at The Leffell School embarks on a Chesed trip to Washington, D.C. to learn about homelessness first-hand. Designed to be a purposeful and impactful experience for the students framed by the Jewish value of tikkun olam (fixing the world), the trip consists mostly of community service and political advocacy.
“When running this trip, we have two goals in mind,” HS Principal Eric Bassin said. “The first is to open students’ eyes to the problems surrounding them and sensitize them to the challenges of homelessness they may not have thought of before. Our second goal is to support students in using their voice and understanding the power it holds, a crucial component of developing leadership skills.”
One of the activities to achieve these goals is “Street Torah,” during which students turn the teachings of Jewish texts about social responsibility into action by meeting and speaking with D.C.’s homeless. This is how we came upon the following story.
It’s a cold early spring day. Outside Union Station in D.C. sits two women in their mid 70’s, shivering from the cold and talking in hushed whispers. One wears an oversized coat and tattered shoes, while the other dons a warm winter coat and designer sunglasses. They are surrounded by overstuffed plastic shopping bags and sit on a statue underneath an American flag. A flag meant to represent freedom and equality for all. We approach them in the hope of hearing their story and they are more than willing. While parts of their story were unclear, one thing is apparent; everyone must hear this story.
Of these two women, one is experiencing homelessness, while the other lives in a gated community. They are Mara and Evelyn Janson (names changed for privacy), sisters who grew up in New York until their father died in 1972 when they moved to Arizona.
After moving out of the house, Mara served in the Air Force, from Japan to Korea to the Philippines. Following her tenure in the Army, she ended up in California, where she went to nursing school. From there, she served as a nurse anesthesiologist and while she didn’t clarify for how long, it seemed to be for about 15-20 years. Mara says that after that, she retired and “simply sat around tired in California”, until she was “older than the hills.” For most, this is when their story begins to come to a close, but for Mara, this is where she starts a new chapter; its genre, a tragedy.
Though the details are not entirely clear, Mara somehow ended up living in her car, driving around for years. She does not consider those months to be times when she was homeless. In December of 2022, Mara got into a car accident while roaming around Missouri, resulting in her truck being crushed. While Mara didn’t expand on the lawsuit that resulted from this crash, it is clear that the situation remains unresolved. From there, she got on a train and ended up in Washington DC. From December 2022 until early April 2023, Mara was classified as a missing person. Her family was unable to find her and searched frantically.
Mara was only found when a neighbor of hers was searching her mail and came across bank statements that traced her transactions to DC. Evelyn, her sister, and Evelyn’s husband of 55 years immediately traveled to DC, scouring the city to find Mara. Eventually, Evelyn found Mara sitting outside Union Station in April of 2023, under that American flag, in the same spot we interviewed them together.
You might be wondering why we found Mara sitting outside homeless over a month after her sister found her. When we asked the two sisters this very question, Evelyn responded that Mara refused to go home and live with her in her residential community in a suburb of Philadelphia. Evelyn has lived there for 55 years with her husband and raised her 4 children there. Now, her grandchildren are at a time to start thinking about college. Based on these known facts, we can assume that Mara was simply too embarrassed to accept help from her sister, but we learned that due to other unhoused people stealing her belongings, such as her sneakers, Mara relies on Evelyn to bring her essential items.
While Mara may be at a low ebb in her life currently, she continues to dream of returning to her paradise in California, a piece of heaven in her eyes. Yet, while Mara has continued to look to the future, she has also managed to reflect on her past life and what she could have done differently. She envied us for our youth and advised us to plan, go to college, and get a degree that would help to maintain a stable job.
After hearing the story of these two sisters, we asked them what type of resources would help Mara to return to the life she had and desperately wanted to go back to. Evelyn had a strong reaction, quickly stating her opinion that psychological services should be brought to the homeless.
In 2020, a staggering 80 percent of residents surveyed in a homeless encampment in D.C. reported having a diagnosed mental illness, including schizophrenia, ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, depression and bipolar disorder.
“On the many trips I’ve been on, it seems many people that are homeless could benefit from mental health support, but there are also some who are perfectly mentally stable and have just gotten unlucky,” Bassin said. “The question that arises from this is what kind of help do we prioritize as a society then?”
While it would be great to provide a plethora of services to those who are dealing with homelessness, it is simply not possible to create the funds for that.
“A lot of ideas to help homelessness costs money, specifically tax-payer dollars,” Bassin said. “However, psychological services, similar to mobile medical teams, could help to avoid future costs, but as humans, we like to think in the now.”
If funding from the government isn’t able to help people who are homeless get through hard times, what else can we do to help? This is where the political advocacy aspect of the 10th grade Chesed trip is displayed.
“Part of our curriculum is showing videos of people mistreating and looking down on homeless people,” Bassin said. “If anyone commits a crime anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, they not only get penalized for the crime itself but it’s also considered hate crime status. I think homelessness falls into that category as well. We need federal hate-crime legislation that includes the homelessness as a protected class of people.”
While students can choose what piece of legislation to focus on while speaking to representatives at Capitol Hill, this is one Bassin highlighted as a key focus every year.
Whether it be handing out supplies to the homeless on the streets of D.C., volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, to advocating and lobbying for the rights of the homeless, The Leffell School is dedicated to teaching their students about homelessness, hunger, poverty, and the notion of political advocacy. There are a variety of ways for students to develop skills to advance any ideology, cause, or passion, resulting in a meaningful and memorable experience!
