Category Archives: mitzvahs

Small Gift, Big Impact: A Mitten Tree

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Friday May, 4th is World Give Day sponsored by GiveForward. In response to this simple question, please tell us about a time when a small act of giving created lots of unexpected joy I wanted to share one of my favorite stories from my book, 1,000 Mitzvahs: How Small Acts of Kindness Can Heal, Inspire and Change Your Life.

“In October, I had an idea to participate in some Christmas giving. I shared it with my then nine year-old-daughter, who loves the Christmas holiday and finds it difficult that we don’t have a tree, stockings, or Christmas decorations like other kids. I decided it would be fun to create a mitten tree for the clients of the Dress for Success program I volunteer for. We’d find out what clients needed or wanted for Christmas, and then we’d work with my networking group of approximately fifty women to try to gather the money and gifts. I hoped my daughter would help me make the one-dimensional paper tree with paper mittens on a bulletin board that I could carry to my meeting for the women to choose from.

I gathered the art supplies for our project. Immediately, my daughter began to complain. “I didn’t volunteer for this, how soon will we be done?” she whined. We continued working despite her complaints. I distracted her by reading some of the requested items, which included dance pants for a thirteen-year-old girl. “How does someone who needs our gifts pay for dance lessons for their child?” she asked. “Maybe a scholarship,” I told her. Another woman wanted a Burger King gift cer- tificate so she and her husband could go out to dinner. My daughter commented that she didn’t think Burger King was a very special place to go out to dinner. Another woman requested a gift card for gas. My daughter continued cutting mittens and a few minutes later said, “Wow, Mommy, I am really lucky. We have a house, we have food to eat, we aren’t worried about paying our bills or buying gas. I am glad we are doing this together.” Then she chose a mitten for a grandmother raising her grandson who’d requested a winter snowsuit for the boy.

In December, a thank-you note arrived from the volunteer coordinator at Dress for Success. She told me that seventy-two women had received gifts through the mitten project. To this day, this is one of my favorite and most memorable mitzvahs.

••••

Being a catalyst to make something happen is incredibly rewarding. It requires seeing an opportunity and taking initiative. This mitzvah was gratifying on two levels: first, knowing that seventy-two women received a special gift for the holidays, and second, that my actions taught my daughter a valuable lesson. My role in this mitzvah was being the person who got the ball rolling. The coordination meant collecting and gathering the goods, but this was relatively easy and didn’t even take that much time. The outcome from these simple actions was huge. The recipients and donors alike felt blessed by the opportunity, and I had the pleasure of knowing I’d been the catalyst and a teacher.”

This post is part of a blog series inspired by World Give Day and hosted by GiveForward.  To find other posts in this series please visit www.worldgiveday.com or follow us on twitter @worldgiveday.

Give a book (or books) away as a mitzvah

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Jessica and Vanessa Gordon

I’m so excited to share this blog post, because it’s meant so much to me. Several weeks ago, I received an email from Jessica Gordon, a mom in New York who was inquiring about purchasing my 1,000 Mitzvahs book as a gift to share with her guests at her daughter’s upcoming Bat Mitzvah on April 28th. We had several emails back and forth and Jessica ended up purchasing nearly 100 copies to give away. We also created a book-plate that I signed and was placed in the front of the book.

I have written in a previous post about my thoughts of the value of giving books away and that my first mitzvah actually was gifting a book to a friend myself. Yesterday, when I was meeting with a colleague about some potential work opportunities, I gave her a signed copy of my book as well. What a wonderful joy it is to give a book away as a present.

Ironically, next Monday night, April 23, 2012 is  World Book Night. It’s a wonderful idea and unfortunately one I learned about too late to participate in myself this year. But you know what? None of us has to wait for an official night to gift a book to a friend, a child or someone else we know who would benefit from a book.

So this weekend, donate or buy a book. Find out about opportunities in your communities to do good with books. In our community, the Children’s Book Bank always comes to mind.

As I’ve said before, books are powerful. Buy them. Read them. Gift them. And of course, if you’d like to gift 1,000 Mitzvahs to your friends and relatives at your upcoming simcha or celebration by all means contact me!

Mazel Tov Vanessa on reaching your Bat Mitzvah! Thank you Jessica for the mitzvah you have given me by your actions of gifting my book.

Share Your Umbrella with a Stranger

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It’s those lovely simple opportunities that sometimes allow a human connection with another person. Case in point, last night was the first baseball game for our little league team. The weather, in typical Portland fashion, started out fairly dry. As our game began a massive dark cloud rolled in, literally dumping water on us as we huddled together under a dozen umbrellas. But, by the final inning of the game a gorgeous sunset appeared on the horizon.

I had remembered to bring a warm blanket to the game but hadn’t even thought about taking an umbrella with me. When one of the other moms sidled up next to me as the weather started looking gloomy and asked if I’d like to share her umbrella I gladly accepted. We’d only met briefly a few days prior at a practice game. Her husband and I had said hello and he’d introduced his wife and mentioned she was currently getting treatment at the university hospital where my husband works. After she sat down under the umbrella we bantered on like we were old friends, discussing hair or lack there of, motherhood, raising boys, working, chemotherapy and several other subjects during our time, sharing her umbrella.

Had this complete stranger not offered to share her umbrella with me, I doubt we would have made that connection. Sitting so close to someone for more than an hour and a half allowed us some time to get to know each other in a deeper way than just a passing stranger. It turned a rainy dreary game into an opportunity.

I’m certainly eager to share an umbrella again. Guess I’ll have to remember to bring mine the next time.

Passover and Chicken Soup with Matza Balls

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Passover (Pesach) celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It begins this Friday night, April 6th and lasts for eight days. We gather together on the first two nights of the holiday for a special meal called a seder (means order) where we retell the story of this Exodus as well as Pharoah and all of the plagues he inflicted on the Jewish people (hail, boils, frogs, death of the first born) before he finally allowed the Jews to leave Egypt.

The central theme of the holiday is liberation and freedom. We retell the story during the seder and the holiday is filled with symbols and traditions. It is especially told for the benefit of the children so many seders while serious do have some levity in the retelling (for example, the kids might do a play, wear clothes like they were slaves in Egypt or even toss around marshmallows for the hail plague.)  One of the main symbols of the holiday is matzah which we eat during the week of Passover instead of bread. We clean our homes thoroughly before the holiday and refrain from eating any kind of leaven bread (hametz) during Passover replacing it with matzah. Matzah is meant to evoke the story of the Exodus and reminds us that the Jews fled Egypt without enough time to even let their bread rise.

In addition to matzah, we eat maror (bitter herbs to remind us of a time of slavery when we wept), a haroset - sweet food made from apples, sugar and wine which reminds us of the break and mortar used to build the pyramid during this enslavement but in contrast to the bitter herbs their sweetness reminds us of the sweet hope of freedom. We ask the four questions – why is this night different from all other nights, drink four glasses of wine throughout the seder and the children search for a  final piece of matzah that has been hidden by an older relative at the end of the meal called the Afikomen before finishing our final part of the seder (usually the child can hold the Afikomen for ransom from the relative.) We also sing many familiar holiday songs. This is a holiday that brings generations together for this retelling of the story. It is one of our most important and significant Jewish holidays and though I sometimes joke that I feel like a slave cleaning and preparing for the holiday meal. It is always a wonderful treat to host the gathering of friends and family.

One of the many traditional foods we eat for Passover is matzo balls in our chicken soup. Here is the recipe for matzo balls:

1 cup of matza meal

4 large eggs

1/4 cup of oil or melted margarine

1/4 cup water or chicken broth

1 tsp salt or to taste

Pinch of ground pepper

Beat eggs. Add water, oil, salt and pepper.

Mix well. Add matza meal and stir thoroughly.

Refrigerate for 1/2 to 1 hour.

Partially fill a large pot of water and bring to a boil.

Moisten palms with cold water.

Form mixture into balls about 1 inch in diameter.

Drop matza balls into boiling water.

When all the matzo balls are in the pot, reduce heat to low.

Simmer covered for about 30 minutes or until done.

Remove with slotted spoon into large bowl.

Simmer the matza balls for 15 minutes in your favorite chicken soup before serving.

Click the photo of chicken soup  to watch a clip of how easy it is to make Matza Balls from my segment on AM Northwest.