Acts of kindness to be performed in Valleys for Rodef Shalom's Mitzvah Day

YOUNGSTOWN

Mitzvah means good deed.

Acts of kindness will be performed Sunday during Mitzvah Day sponsored by the social action committee of Congregation Rodef Sholom. Activities will take place in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys because the congregation has ties to both. Congregation Rodef Sholom and Temple Beth Israel in Sharon, Pa., merged in July 2013.

Rabbi Franklin Muller cited words from the Talmud that sum up the purpose of the day: “In the eyes of God, deeds of kindness are equal in weight to all the commandments.”

“A mitzvah is a deep compulsion to express the profound Jewish conviction that what we do and how we act in the world is more

important than how we think or what we believe,” Rabbi Muller said. “But the urge to do a mitzvah is weighted with the feeling that somehow its origin is in God, that it relates to the whole universe, and that it is the core of all existence.”

The rabbi said activities engage the young, the old and everyone in between “to experience the special joy of extending the hand of friendship to others.”

Read more about the event in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.