Bruriah’s Yom Chesed began with words of inspiration from Micha Kaufman who told the story of his miraculous recovery after being hit by a car. Kaufman made it his mission, after witnessing the tremendous amounts of chesed done on his behalf, to urge others to make chesed an integral part of daily life. Bruriah students took Kaufman’s words to heart as they moved into action for the next segment of the Yom Chesed in the Bruriah gym. The gym was filled with stations of chesed opportunities that each student was eager to take part in, including cooking meals for the Ronald McDonald House, assembling teddy bears for The Hugs Project, making blankets for Project Linus and packaging toiletry bags for homeless shelters.

Bruriah senior Yocheved Sima Bohm, the head of Bruriah’s Chesed Committee, is passionate about helping others find their niche while volunteering: “It was really important to me that the chesed activities would allow people with different talents to use their strengths to do chesed. Each of us have expertise in a different area, and we don’t always realize how we can use it to help others. This year during our Yom Chesed we really wanted to highlight using your kochot to benefit others.”

Bruriah’s annual Yom Chesed underscores the primacy of chesed to its students as both members of the Bruriah family and as members of klal Yisrael. On average, Bruriah students complete thousands of hours of chesed per year with many Bruriah students going above and beyond the school chesed requirement and becoming paragons of chesed in their own communities, founding chesed organizations and initiatives on their own, both while still in high school and after graduation. “Chesed is a vital component of Bruriah programming” explains Dena Lichtman, Bruriah’s director of Student Life. “Providing opportunities to do chesed in and out of school enables our students to not just do chesed but view themselves as ba’alei chesed.”