cash dilemma

Last night I went to the fundraiser at the synagogue, a formal dinner and dance where the participants were a sight to behold as impressive as the stars at any red-carpet Hollywood event. I would not usually be interested in or attracted by this sort of hoopla, as I am not particularly impressed by money. But two people at the synagogue whom I respect were being honored by the event, so I arranged to volunteer, and naively assumed that I would therefore be permitted to take part in it, like anyone else, in exchange for my labor. The one uncomfortable difference was that I was not going to be permitted to sit at the table to eat with my friends from the choir, and had to eat dinner with the other volunteers in a separate room.
As it turned out, however, I was not going to be allowed to enter the gala at all, even just to hear the honorees' speeches. Even the help at the party (the paid help, I mean) hesitated before handing over the gingerale I ordered at the free bar, though he finally gave it to me, and to be fair, all the volunteers got champagne and rather forlorn appetizers.
I had chosen the volunteer route because I did not wish to go begging for a hand-out, and thought, as I said, that a work-exchange was the most sensible way to to do this. I held up my end of the bargain. It turned out that there was a lot to do at the party.
Whenever committees rule and no one person particularly is in charge, confusion tends to ensue. By the end of the evening I was one of the only volunteers left in the room, trying to catch all the loose ends, running after people in my heels (luckily, they were sensible, small heels, as befits my difficult feet) to hand them their receipts, being sure they were paid up for the fund-raising dinners and parties they had pledged to attend. But I ended up the evening at about 8:00 in a room with a dozen or so retired people and teenagers, munching stale sandwiches. None of them had assumed they were going to be allowed to enter that room. So what's wrong with me that I didn't understand that, that I resented it?
It simply seems wrong to me to create a subset of second-class citizens, workers who, it is understood by all (except me, apparently), are just not going to be the ones being feted and fussed over or doing the feting and fussing either. I would respectfully suggest that the synagogue brass rethink this system, though I clearly understand that it was a fundraising event, and that exhorbitant rents and morgages demand a constant flow of cash.
We are supposed to be a family, and, having been the poor relative for much of my life, I am not now interested in being a poor cousin in the organization, especially since I have chosen to work at a far less lucrative but no less important job than my brethren in the synagogue.
What if I had decided this year to run for a synagogue office on the Board? Would I then have been treated in the same way? If so, I would submit, there is something wrong with the system.
I have left synagogues before because I felt this divide. However, I have too many ties to leave this one now for the same reason.