Social Action

What we DO DOES Make a Difference!

On Sunday, April 3rd, our Religious School, Sisterhood, HUGS, and Social Action Committee came together to participate in Good Deeds Day, an international day of doing good deeds, first started years ago in Israel (no surprise) and now in over 100 different countries!

Here is a brief review of all the Good!

Religious School:

Students were tasked with two jobs: do a mitzvah for themselves and one that gives back! Our older students created beautiful wood and glass mezuzahs. Students had learned the significance of the mezuzah and were very engaged in creating them! The students wrote letters to Israeli Lone Soldiers that will be brought to Israel later this spring. They created comfort bags for Sharsharet (a national non-profit organization that works to improve the lives of Jewish women and families living with or at increased genetic risk for breast or ovarian cancer through personalized support). The children beautifully decorated the bags and wrote thoughtful notes to be placed in the bags. Each bag contained a variety of donated items including stress balls, activity books, hard candies, fuzzy socks, and individual hand sanitizers.

Our younger students had two tasks. They decorated tzedakah boxes to be taken home and filled with loose change. We hope they will bring these back to school as part of our tzedakah collections. They also created their very own spice jars to be used in their homes for Havdalah. One mitzvah for themselves and one for the community!

HUGS

While our students were doing their special mitzvot, a wonderful group of volunteers were packaging items for the Have a Matzah Ball Passover concert at CBS. Children and HUGS families received delicious and creative bags of candy representing the 10 plagues and special gifts for an at-home chocolate seder. Dickler Hall was filled with people doing amazing acts of kindness.

Sisterhood:

Bras! Pounds and pounds of bras were collected and donated to “I Support the Girls” (an organization that helps g irls a nd women experiencing homeless ness , victims of domes tic violence, victims of s ex tra fficking , ref ugees a nd eva cuees af fected by na tura l disa sters , s tand ta ll a nd with dig nity).

Bags of pet f ood, a va riety of pet supplies including toys, bla nkets , pet beds , and laundry s upplies were dona ted to Border Trails Rescue in Northbrook (an animal rescue and welfare organization dedicated to the rescue and adoption of stray dogs from Mexico and the Chicagoland area, as well as across the Southern United States).

Dozens and dozens of children’s books were collected and donated to Bernie’s Book Bank (an organization that sources, processes, and distributes quality books to underserved children throughout Chicagoland).

It was an incredibly powerful day, and it took a small army of volunteers! Thank you so much to all the wonderful ladies of Sisterhood, volunteers from the Social Action and HUGS committees, members of the Board, teachers and madrichim: all those who worked with our students sorting, assembling, hot gluing, coloring, helping children fill jars, and writing beautiful cards and letters! Thank you to our volunteers who loaded boxes, brought items to organizations, and to everyone who donated items to these important causes! Thanks to our CBS staff who helped coordinate the supplies and logistics for this very important Good Deeds Day.

What we DID made a Difference!