Let’s be honest: It’s NOT a myth that Jewish men are totally useless when it comes to home repairs, tools, construction, etc. My dad sure couldn’t do much more than change a light bulb and the only tools I ever saw him use from his toolbox in the basement were a screwdriver and a hammer, and even then it was only a couple times. There is an old joke about it being around the time of a boy’s bar mitzvah when he realizes he has a better chance of owning the baseball team than playing on it. Or, he realizes he has a better chance of owning the apartment building than being part of its construction.
Mike Frisch breaks the stereotype.
A Twin Cities native and St. Louis Park resident, Frisch has been helping build and rehab houses with Habitat for Humanity for 17 years. For many of them, he’s been the coordinator – the leader of his crew – which is sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Frisch didn’t organize the crew, which started in the mid-2000s with Stan Alexander from Bet Shalom took the lead. At one point, most of the crew was Jewish, but now there are only two Jewish regulars and one other who helps out whenever she’s available.
The JCRC Habitat crew puts in six or seven hours every Friday wherever they’re sent. Frisch got involved because he was looking for an active project in retirement and learned about Stan’s Habitat crew. He approached Stan and the rest is history.
“I always tried to recruit volunteers who showed up at sites for the first time to work with Habitat,” Frisch said of his time as coordinator. “I also tried to encourage others to join who I met elsewhere (synagogues, other Jewish places), particularly Jewish people. My standing joke to encourage them was to say if they knew which end of the hammer to pound with or which end of the paintbrush to paint with, they were eligible to work with Habitat. There, they would be taught what skills they needed to do the work by friendly site supervisors who are used to volunteers with all levels of skills from beginners to advanced people.”
Frisch said he was handy around the house before he started volunteering with Habitat, but he learned a lot about actual construction from his Habitat experience. But building a new house or rehabbing a dilapidated one is different from changing a washer on the kitchen faucet.
“One of the most difficult things to do in my Habitat work has been to put up drywall on a ceiling. You have to work overhead putting enough screws in to hold it up and then finish with the rest later. Luckily, almost all the time, we can use lifts, which positions the panels right up to where we have to start putting in screws. Occasionally, we have to work in a small space where a lift won’t fit, and then it’s harder because we have to manually hold the panels in place before starting the screws. The thing about Habitat is that you learn to do a LOT of things!”
Frisch’s favorite project – although he never worked on it himself – was one done by the “Brush with Kindness” unit of Habitat, which does small jobs for elderly or homebound people who just need a little help to meet the landlord or City’s standards. He recalled a 2012 call for help at a familiar address: 1634 Upton Ave. N. in Minneapolis.
“I was amazed because it was the house I grew up in for the first 24 years and hadn’t been there in 45 years,” Frisch said, but he wasn’t able to volunteer that days because he was out of town for a wedding. “I called [the homeowners] and arranged a tour sometime later. The one thing I most remembered about my visit was the upstairs flooring. It was still the vinyl tile that was there originally when my parents had two bedrooms and a half bath built to house.”
Before becoming involved with Habitat in retirement (he was a computer programmer at the U of M for years), he volunteered locally with Nechama: The Jewish Response to Disaster. He’s always been active in the Jewish community through his membership at Beth El synagogue, along with his wife Bernice. You often can run into them at a Lake Harriet concert or while walking at most of the local lakes. Their daughter, Flip, lives in Portland, Ore., with her daughter and is a cantorial assistant at the shul across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash. Frisch’s son Tom also lives in Portland, combining work in videography and building new homes – especially smaller ones.
Frisch says he believes in the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world. Habitat for Humanity represents that concept by making housing available to working families at a reduced price by providing volunteer labor.
Mike’s put down the scepter of JCRC Crew Coordinator, but still is looking for other local MOTs who’d like to join the crew. Contact him at [email protected] or call his cell at 612-805-0287, and he’ll put you in touch with the JCRC Habitat Crew who can get you on board.