By Maksim Grinbgerg
Every strong community rests on institutions — places where people gather, mark life’s milestones, and find support when they need it. For many New Yorkers, including me, faith communities are among the most important of these. Synagogues, churches, mosques, and the organizations around them do far more than hold services; they’re some of the last places in modern life where people of all ages and circumstances come together as one body.
I’ve long believed these institutions are worth supporting, not only for the religious life they sustain but for the social fabric they weave. A congregation is a built-in network of care: when someone is sick, a meal appears; when someone dies, a community gathers; when someone is celebrating, there are people to celebrate with. In a city that can be profoundly isolating, that’s no small thing.
Supporting these institutions is one of the ways I try to invest in the community’s long-term health. Buildings need maintaining, programs need funding, and the people who run them — often stretched thin — need backing. It’s quiet work, rarely visible, but it keeps alive the spaces where community actually happens.
I also think there’s wisdom in how these traditions approach giving and care. The idea that looking after the vulnerable isn’t optional, that hospitality to the stranger is a duty, that community is something you owe to and not just take from — these are old ideas, and good ones. My vision for New York borrows heavily from them. A city is only as strong as the institutions that hold its people together, and those institutions are worth defending.