Community Corner
Video: Hundreds of Volunteers at Kehillat Israel Make Big Sunday Count
Rabbi Bernstein says, "If we all just get our act together, it's possible to make a difference."
The din was breathtaking as hundreds of volunteers from Pacific Palisades and across the city filled ’s social hall.
Adults, kids and even toddlers worked with speed and concentration to fix a thousand pb&j sandwiches, decorate and fill a thousand lunch bags, collect books, clothes, diapers and toiletries for the homeless and hungry, and make blankets, cards and placemats for those in need of comfort.
Bruce Rosen, co-coordinator of Mitzvah Day sack lunch project, was rosy from exertion after loading dozens of volunteers’ cars and directing them to drop off points. He explained that most of the food donations were going to the Westside Food Bank and some would be delivered to Samoshel, and New Directions. Rosen is on the board of the food bank and participates in a number of projects at the temple. “And I’m just a guy who likes to do this kind of stuff,” he added.
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The congregation is in the midst of their annual Mitzvah Month, a tradition for the past 11 years, during which members do charitable projects ranging from participating in an Interfaith Community Blood Drive to building homes with Habitat for Humanity, delivering groceries in South Los Angeles and planting trees in the Angeles National Forest.
For the last couple of years KI has made sure to synchronize their month of good works with the statewide charitable effort of Big Sunday Weekend when the synagogue becomes a hub of more than a dozen projects. Members also participate in off-site activities like preparing and serving breakfast at a transitional living shelter and planting flower boxes at a senior center where they lead residents in sing-a-long of Broadway show tunes.
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Mitzvah Month goes on for another week and volunteer opportunities can be found at BigSunday.org all year long. As KI reminds readers of their Mitzvah Month brochure, “What You Do Matters!” adding this quote from 13th century Jewish ethicist Yehiel ben Yekutiel:
“If you do acts of loving kindness for another, it is accounted to you as if you built the world.”
