Mitsva Day

There are 613 mitsvot (or commandments) in the Torah. The Rabbis of the Talmud felt that among the most important of these are the mitsvot concerning how we treat other people. During our Mitsva Day projects we try to live out "Love your neighbor as yourself" and work at tikkun olam, which means repair of the world. During Mitsva Days past our projects have included:

• Serving lunch and entertaining senior citizens from the Lower East Side.
• Preparing brunch for families of the children who are being treated at Schneiders Children's Hospital.
• Creating a Thanksgiving dinner for low income families.
• Making cloth dolls for kids at the local children's hospital.
• Visiting a hospital for children with physical disabilities.
• Building a house with Habitat for Humanity.
• Crocheting a full-size afghan. This was part of nationwide project to keep people warm by making afghans, one square at a time.

Readings from Our Tradition

“In the beginning God created one man and one woman in order to teach that if you cause a single person to perish, it is as if you have destroyed the entire world; and if you save a single person, it is as if you saved the entire world.”

-Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a

“If there is a needy person among you ... do not harden your heart and shut your hand against them... Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

-Deuteronomy 15:7-1 1

“The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference. In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Spirituality is living in the world with kindness, compassion and justice even when you feel like doing otherwise.”

-Rabbi Rami Shapiro

“In its heart, Judaism is a proclamation to the world that the way things are is not the way things have to be. The capacity to transform our world into one of justice and kindness ... this is why the central story of Judaism is the story of a people who are enslaved and who ... are able to then become free ... The specific way that Torah insists that human beings can break the chain of cruelty is in our treatment of the powerless.”

-Rabbi Michael Lerner, in Jewish Renewal

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