20 Responses to “What are the Keys to Being Happy in A Community?”

1. Ron Coleman
   January 25th, 2012 @ 12:12 pm

   It’s very hard to separate “being happy in your community” and “being happy,” don’t you think?

   That difficulty could make the answer to this question very elusive.

2. wife
   January 25th, 2012 @ 12:57 pm

   Finding a community in which you fit; where you don’t worry about what the neighbors will think, and can just focus on what HaShem will think of you.

   Having a community in which people support each other.

   Having friends and neighbors and institutions that you generally respect, even if you don’t agree on everything.

3. Bob Miller
   January 25th, 2012 @ 1:13 pm

   It helps a lot if the community is happy. Sometimes there are cliques upon cliques who can’t get along with one another and turn simple matters into a war.

4. David
   January 25th, 2012 @ 1:40 pm

   I’m sure that a lot of people will disagree with me but I have found to be happy in a community you have to ask yourself, “If I was not frum would I want to live here?” If the answer is no then it will be hard to be happy. Yes, we make sacrifices for our frum lifestyle, but if you live in an area that the only thing it has going for it is the frum community and you hate everything else then you can run into problems.

5. Ben David
   January 25th, 2012 @ 1:46 pm

   “keeping under the radar” sounds like awful advice – and implies an awful community.

6. Michoel
   January 25th, 2012 @ 2:43 pm

   the key to being happy in a community is, of course, moving to Baltimore!

7. Judy Resnick
   January 25th, 2012 @ 8:20 pm

   Years ago, we lived in Community XYZ, and I was pretty unhappy there. I found myself to be the target of hostility and unfriendliness. It wasn’t just my imagination: I won’t go into details, but there were specific incidents that made me miserable. I can remember right after moving to Community ZYX, going to a ladies’ shiur on Shabbos afternoon, and thinking to myself afterward how amazing it was that those other women actually spoke to me in a normal tone of voice! (I was so used to in my old community being spoken to in a sarcastic or sneering tone of voice that I had almost forgotten what it was like to be treated like a decent human being).

8. tesyaa
   January 26th, 2012 @ 10:58 am

   Friendliness is the most important part of being happy in a community, more than hashkafa issues. If you live in a community where you differ hashkafically from the majority of the community, you may have some religious and/or parenting issues to deal with, but if you live in an unfriendly community, even one which matches your hashkafa perfectly, you will be miserable.

   I’m very happy in my friendly community.

9. Bob Miller
   January 26th, 2012 @ 11:21 am

   Judy,

   What signs were there in advance that ZYX would work out better for you?

10. Michoel
    January 26th, 2012 @ 12:07 pm

    I agree with tesyaa. Especially if one is easy-going and able to tolerate hashkafic differences.

11. Jay
    January 26th, 2012 @ 1:57 pm

    “It helps a lot if the community is happy.”

    How do you determine if the community is happy, or if the community is acting happy on the outside while suffering on the inside due to everything from the tuition/parnassa burden to chinuch issues to shalom bayis problems to lack of REAL community support because everyone is pretending to be happy and therefore not really in need of support…. ?

12. Bob Miller
    January 26th, 2012 @ 5:08 pm

    Everybody has pressures. The question is how well do they get along with one another as people?

13. shmuel
    January 26th, 2012 @ 9:05 pm

    A great piece of advice I received many years ago from a rabbi I respect was to focus on the individuals I surround myself with (both rav and peers) rather than the larger community. I have found that this works as it makes it much easier to find compatibility –much easier to select people one gets along with, respects, has things in common with than to try to find the same in hundreds of people (or more). This has worked for me.

    Of course, even this might be difficult if those in the community were actively hostile as Judy Resnick described. It sounds almost unbelievable that people would act like that and it sounds like a terrible thing to have to experience.

14. Bob Miller
    January 27th, 2012 @ 10:13 am

    Communities go through positive and negative changes. What you see going in might not last as people come and go.

15. Alex
    January 27th, 2012 @ 2:38 pm

    Bob, what does that mean l’maaseh?

16. Steve Brizel
    January 27th, 2012 @ 2:39 pm

    IMO, the keys are friends, mentors and being able to contribute to the community while maintaining your identity as an individual. I would not like to be part of a community where the “herd instinct” triumphs over one’s ability to think.

17. Bob Miller
    January 29th, 2012 @ 10:51 am

    Alex,

    It means that communities change, so relating to a given community may require different skills at different times. Or even that you leave if things get ugly.

18. Judy Resnick
    January 29th, 2012 @ 2:59 pm

    To Bob Miller #9: I really had no idea whether the people in my new community were going to be nicer than the people I was leaving behind. We needed to move, as we were losing our apartment and no one would rent to a family with six (at that time) young children (our landlord was taking over the whole house to accommodate his own growing family). I was happy to find that people in ZYX were so nice.

19. Bob Miller
    January 30th, 2012 @ 2:08 pm

    We rarely have complete enough information about what to expect in a new community, despite all our probing.

    Moshe Rabbeinu told Pharaoh, “For we do not know how we are to serve Him until we get there” (Shemos 10:26).

20. Larry Lennhoff
    February 1st, 2012 @ 1:45 pm

    When we made our current choice of community we visited close to dozen times (including during the week). We visited our second choice community four times as well. I think it is crazy to put less effort into deciding where you live than you might spend to purchase a new or used car.

    One thing that I finds helps a lot in being happy in a community is participating in communal events I personally might not find that interesting. If you think of yourself not as a consumer of the output of community, but rather as a contributor, you’re more likely to be happy.

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