Mitzvah Projects Serve as Example and Inspiration

As the summer comes to a close and school starts again I want to highlight some students and projects who have been busy this summer making a difference.

Keri Jucha, 13, of Carlsbad, CA who had brain surgery at age 10 has raised $15,000 to buy a home movie system, laptop computers and DVD players for patients at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. As part of his Mitzvah Project Chadwick Tindel of Beachwood, OH launched a “Save The Music” campaign to collect instruments and raise money to benefit the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Daniel Newmeyers, 13 of Suffern, NY organized Splash for Life to raise money for the American Cancer Society and raised $5,725. Eton Ziner-Cohen, 12, of Toronto helped create Eton’s Living Room of Hope, a fundraiser for pediatric oncology at an area hospital and hopes it will inspire others his age. Simone Bernstein, 17, of St. Louis started a website that highlights volunteer opportunities for students in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Simone was inspired by Mitzvah Projects and frustrated in trying to find interesting and flexible volunteer opportunities for high school students.

These students serve as examples to all of us. They all took a personal experience and created a Mitzvah Project that added to their celebration while making the world a better place. We all need to follow in their examples. We all need to find ways to incorporate chesed into our lives.

At Areyvut, we have a variety of resources and programs to help facilitate your infusing your life with the core Jewish values of chesed, tzedakah and tikkun olam. Areyvut features over 225 organizations that offer meaningful and hands on projects for students. Areyvut also offers a service to help individual Bnai Mitzvah celebrants find a personalized project that adds to their celebration and brings programs to schools, synagogues and JCC’s to highlight Mitzvah Projects and community service.