Some Temple Isaiah congregants are taking the idea of repairing the world to a whole new level: by building houses for people in need.
These congregants are part of Maryland DreamBuilders, an interfaith nonprofit organization that plans mission trips to low-income areas and areas affected by natural disasters. The DreamBuilders then get to work on building houses from the ground up over the course of several days, as well as connecting with people in the affected communities.
Temple Isaiah is actually the only synagogue participating in DreamBuilders — the others include the Church of the Ascension in Westminster, Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Highland and Trinity Episcopal Church in Elkridge. A few years after its establishment in 2002, one of its founders, John McBeth, approached Temple Isaiah’s Rabbi Craig Axler to see if any congregants would be interested in participating.
At the time, congregant Margaret Gold served as the synagogue’s education director, so she and her husband, Arthur, were among the first to participate. They are still active in DreamBuilders’s leadership team to this day.
“We go to wherever we decide we’re going to build. We’ll hook up with a local group who’s doing the building activities, and we provide the muscle and power to help them build their houses,” Arthur Gold said. “We start from scratch, and most often we do blitz builds. The area where the house is is just a slab of cement when we get there, and by the end of the week, all of the exterior walls are up, the roof is on and finished, the siding installation is all done and the doors and windows are up.”
Amy Levitt, another frequent DreamBuilders participant along with her husband, Ben, first got involved in the group when her daughter volunteered on a mission in Albuquerque. The year after, the Levitts all participated in a mission in Panama.
“We found it to be a very worthwhile endeavor: personally helping other people, getting out of the bubble that we live in and just really getting to meet homeowners and people from different walks of life,” Amy Levitt explained. She added that though her children are adults and have moved away, participating in DreamBuilders missions has become something of a family tradition.
Most recently, DreamBuilders went on a five-day mission to Hazard, Kentucky. The small town, with a population of approximately 5,000 people, was ravaged by floods in July 2022. Hundreds of houses were destroyed, 45 people died and the impact of the floods is still felt by the town’s inhabitants two years later. DreamBuilders joined Housing Development Alliance, Inc., an East Kentucky-based housing organization that has been building and repairing homes in flooded areas.
HDA is also notable for having a volunteer program designed to help people recovering from addictions, teaching them life skills that can be applied to future careers such as carpentry.
“One of the carpenters we worked with was a young woman, a single mom with two kids, in recovery from substance abuse,” Amy Levitt recalled. “She was such an inspiration to the girls who were volunteering. … We found out at the very end of the week that she was eligible for one of the homes, and she and her kids were so excited about being able to have their own rooms and a place to do laundry.”
Amy Levitt and Arthur Gold both agreed that the backbone of DreamBuilders is the volunteers, both from Temple Isaiah and from the other congregations.
“Everyone’s spending a lot of money to go [on mission trips],” Arthur Gold explained. “This year, we each paid around $600 to make the trip. Everyone’s there because they want to be there, and because they’re committed to the task.”
Adults like Amy Levitt and Arthur Gold only make up about one-third of the volunteer pools for DreamBuilders missions. They are primarily staffed by teenagers, with any teen who has completed ninth grade being eligible for mission trips. Teens as young as seventh graders are able to participate in their local efforts.
For these teenagers, going on DreamBuilders mission trips not only teaches them meaningful life skills, but connects them with people across the globe from vastly different backgrounds.
“I definitely find the teens inspiring, they’re amazing. They usually don’t have jobs and some of them can’t even drive yet, but they’re so eager to work,” Amy Levitt said. “We have so much fun with them. We learn from them, and they learn from us.”
She added that one DreamBuilders leadership team member is currently working on a documentary about the organization.
“This was something we’d hoped for for many years, that we could have someone help us tell these stories,” she said. “We’re really looking forward to it.”
