I want to share with you a spiritual moment I had on Friday afternoon, December 15. It was the dedication of a Habitat for Humanity house.

More correctly, it was the dedication of the Habitat for Humanity house that was begun last fall at the UR] Biennial Convention held here in Houston and finished this past summer by a team of Emanu EI volunteers headed up by Bruce Shelby.

The house sits on a tract of land in northwest Houston owned by Habitat on which sit over 100 homes. As the director of the Houston office told me, the subdivision is a microcosm of our city. The homes are inhabited by Anglos, Hispanics, Asians and African Americans. There are at least 10 or 15 different languages spoken by the inhabitants, since they come from all over the world. And they live together peacefully in a single community. Despite the fact that the houses are all very similar, virtually identical, in construction, you can easily see how quickly people individualize their homes - different shrubs, decorations of all kinds. But back to the dedication.

This wasn't a large affair. The mother and father and one of the two children (the other one was still in school) who will be living in the home joined me and three members of the Habitat for Humanity staff outside the house. There was a brief responsive reading, I made a few remarks and we cut the ribbon. It took maybe 10 minutes.

But if you could have seen the look on the faces of the couple and their son - thinking about the fact that within the week they would be moving out of their tiny, cramped apartment into this brand new three bedroom home - if you could have seen their faces, you would know why it was a spiritual moment.

I shared with them in my few remarks that though the house was finished by Houstonians, it was begun by people from all over the country, indeed from all over the world, who had come together for a religious convocation. In that sense, as unique as each home is, their home is truly unique.

One of the things Habitat does for a family is to have cleaning supplies and a week's worth of food in the house, since the move taxes the finances of the families. I know you will smile approvingly when I tell you that the next week, I drew money out of the Good Works Fund, went back out to the house and gave each member of the family a gift card from Target, so they would have money to buy themselves something for Christmas.

I share all this with you because Mitzvah Day, as wonderful and important and special as it is, is not the end of our commitment to reaching out to help make our community a better place for others. I am always proud to be the Rabbi of Congregation Emanu El. But never more than when we put our faith into action. There's hardly a place I can go in Houston that, when I introduce myself as the Rabbi of Emanu El, people don't respond. with knowing admiration. Who wouldn't be proud!