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Mitzvah Day to spread good deeds across region
By LINDA M. LINONIS
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.”
Dr. Mari Alschuler is Mitzvah Day coordinator. “I got drafted,” she said of her role as chairperson of the social action committee at Rodef Sholom, which she joined in August 2013.
“For that committee, you need a strong person to take charge,” Rabbi Muller said, adding that her background fit the bill. The assistant professor of social work at Youngstown State University said she also has involved her students in the project.
Alschuler said she envisioned the Mitzvah Day becoming an annual event. The social action committee sponsored a Family Day in June at Second Harvest Food Bank, where congregants do volunteer service, and an outdoor Shabbat service in August in Wick Park with a speaker on urban gardening and food deserts, where few food sources exist.
Alschuler said the committee, which meets regularly, generated various ideas for Mitzvah Day and decided on a theme of hunger and health. “We focused on what the needs are and what we can do to address them,” Alschuler said.
About 30 temple congregants are involved. Donations were accepted for the outreach projects in preparation.
After Shabbat services Friday, congregants made sandwiches for Joshua’s Haven, a homeless shelter for men in Sharon. “Share your bread with the hungry” from Isaiah 58:7 will be the words of the day.
On Sunday, Strouss Hall at the synagogue will bustle with activity. Some participants will write letters in a campaign against genocide for Jewish World Watch while others will pack donations and books. About 50 students at Akiva Academy and Maimonides School of Jewish Studies painted and decorated clay pots, which will be filled with silk flowers, said Tirtza Kohan, Hebrew and Judaic coordinator at Akiva. The clay pots are earmarked for senior citizens.
“We want to teach that doing a good deed is not only donating money but giving of your time and talent to bring a smile and joy to the heart of someone,” Kohan said. “Everyone benefits.”