Good Deed Projects

In the Jewish religion, when a child reaches the age of 13, they go through a Bnei Mitvah. This is a right of passage for Jewish teens that begins their ascent into adulthood. The process to get to a Bar Mitzvah for a boy, or a Bat Mitzvah for a girl, takes about 9 months to a year. The kids learn a portion of the Torah and learn many parts of the service itself. They have a large role in leading that service on their day.

In many synagogues, there is a requirement that the kids take on a Mitzvah project. The word Mitzvah actually means commandment, but in its secondary meaning, Hebrew mitzvah, as with English "commandment", refers to a moral deed performed within a religious duty. This is how Wikipedia describes it.

When Josh was going through this process, we needed to find a Mitzvah project for him to work on. A couple of years prior to this, I had gotten on Facebook and reconnected with people from my childhood as well as high school. One of my high school acquaintances (Alesia (Cohen) Shute) was a childhood cancer survivor who had written a book about her experiences and started her own foundation. I had no idea that she was sick when we went to school together but when I read about her illness and how she came through it to create this foundation and help other sick children and their families, I was amazed and in awe of her resolve, her transparent honesty, and her mission.

The Alesia Shute foundation sells Alesia's book, "Everything's Okay". People can buy the books to read, or buy them and donate them to be "gifted" to families dealing with childhood illness. The book can provide them with hope and inspiration that everything can be okay. All proceeds from the sale of the books goes to Childrens Hospital Of Philadelphia. Alesia also visits Ronald McDonald houses around the area and often goes with a group to serve dinner to the tenants. If you are interested in buying the book for yourself and finding out more about Alesia's foundation, please go to her web site http://everythingsokaybook.com/.

I contacted Alesia and asked her if we could raise money to buy and donate books from her foundation. She was thrilled that we wanted to help. She even invited Josh to be her guest at her annual "Evening of Inspiration". This is a fun event that has raffles, auctions, and prizes where all proceeds go to the foundation, and in turn the foundation donates money and purchases things for CHOP from a wish list. We decided to try to raise enough money to buy 100 books.

We created Josh's Mitzvah Project Facebook page, and used all of our accounts to ask for donations from friends and family. We set up a PayPal account to make donations easier and it wasn't long before the generosity started coming in. We were truly humbled by the number of people willing to help us reach our goal and also help the foundation. By the day of Josh's Bar Mitzvah, we hit our goal and were able to purchase 100 books from Alesia's foundation. Over the course of the next year, we donated those books to families at CHOP, and the Ronald McDonald house in Philadelphia.

We stayed involved with the foundation and the whole family became friendly with Alesia. When Seth needed to select a Mitzvah Project, he also wanted to buy Alesia's books and donate them so we followed the same process to set up a Facebook page and once again, our friends and family did not let us down. We were able to buy more books and again gifted them to families that needed them. We attended quite a few events with Alesia including dinners and face painting at Ronald McDonald houses, an outside "Touch-a-Truck" display in Marlton, NJ set up by RMH of South Jersey, and we still attend the annual events such as the Evening of Inspiration and the foundation's comedy night. The boys helped with setup, cleanup, raffle sales, and prize distribution at foundation events up until this last year.

I believe that the things we've done with the foundation have helped the boy's grow their compassion for helping others. It assisted in the development of their work ethic, and taught them the benefits of volunteerism.

Both boys conducted their Bar Mitzvah service and read their Torah portions to perfection, I could not have been any more proud of them than I was on those days. Getting there was half the battle, but working with the foundation was a big part of that too.

The best part was that we got to work for a good cause as a family. We made some good friends and still support the foundation today. So out of one Mitzvah project, came many Mitzvah's and events for our family, and the humbling understanding of what families with ill children deal with, and that we, in some way, can help them.