The Pandemic has isolated us from the people we know and from people we don't know.  Our circles of influence have gotten smaller. We physically shy away from others, especially those who are unfamiliar to us. Are they sick? Have they been vaccinated? But you know what? Our loss of connection to fellow Americans started long before Covid. Before we began nesting, we were living more and more in our personal silo, slowly losing touch with people different from ourselves. We need to reconnect. We need to reintroduce ourselves to people we don't know and many of us don't have a strong desire to know.  From Susan Rice to Stanley McCrystal to Pete Buttigieg to Tammy Duckworth to Steve Lankenau (haha) proposals and calls for enhanced or even universal service to the nation and to the less fortunate are being made -- again and again because we are teetering on the edge of a powder keg. We saw a felt a version of it last summer with the Black Lives Matter protests. We saw it again with the January 6 Insurrection. Some of the first organized service came through things like the Civilian Conservation Corp of the New Deal.  Three million unemployed Americans were put to work in parks planting trees and building fire roads. This service was meant to put people back to work. JFK initiated the Peace Corp that a different set of goals: to serve the world where it needed it most and give people who didn't really know us a chance to see and feel and benefit from some of our best intentions.  Other presidents have added to the opportunity to serve through structured programs. Bush 41's Thousand Points of Light. Clinton's Americorp.  But all of these programs are only built and funded to take 75,000 or so paid volunteers. Each year there are over 4 million Americans turn 18 years of age.  We need to have either a mandatory national service requirement because as Rabbi Chiam said "my neighbors material needs are my spiritual needs." A national service program that if not mandatory, at least creates the expectation of service for everyone will begin to enable everyone to get to know the layers of our society from race to geography to economic status to political outlook. Another program to build bonds among us would be a renewed and updated and respectful assimilation and integration program for new citizens and immigrants to the United States. There is or at least used to be an implicit contract between native born citizens and naturalized citizens that if the newbies learned the language pledged their belief in hard work and self reliance and belief in the principles of democracy, then we would welcome them with open arms showing our pride in being a nation of immigrents where nearly all of our families came here from somewhere else.  It is in these ways that we get to know each other and trust each other - even if we look different and even if we have different religious or political beliefs.  We ignore the powder keg upon which we sit at our own risk.