Your manager at work tells you that, because of your 25 year anniversary at the company, you have three extra weeks of vacation this year and, yes, you can spend them all at once—with your regular annual vacation time.
What would you do?
Take a cruise? Stay at home and binge-watch all your favorite shows? Drive across America and visit dozens of national parks and monuments?
For Highland Park resident and Congregation Ahavas Achim member David Friedman, a manager of software developers for a major consulting company based in NYC, the decision of what to do with his big bonus vacation was a no-brainer. He planned and conducted a four-week personal volunteering and chesed mission to Israel.
Friedman left for Israel on November 10, 2024, and returned on December 8. As he stated in a quick recap on Facebook, his first priority was spending “quality time with Shani”—his daughter, who is studying at Midreshet in Jerusalem for her gap year.
Volunteering was a big and varied No. 2 goal on his list, and Friedman helped pick persimmons, pomegranates and strawberries; pruned tomatoes; cultivated microgreen plants; tied tzitzit for soldiers; helped an organization called Tachlit pack food for families in need; assisted at a rest area for soldiers, Shuva Junction; and, helped set up and serve a barbecue for soldiers at an army base. All told, he averaged three volunteer stints a week or, as his spreadsheet indicates, a total of more than 53 hours of service.
Friedman managed to fit in several small acts of chesed, such as driving friends who don’t have a car to visit their son (an injured IDF soldier) in the hospital and to pay a shiva call to the family of a member of the son’s unit. He also visited a co-worker’s cousin and his favorite teacher from his days at Flatbush Yeshiva High School, Dr. Joel Wolowelsky, now 79 years old.
Friedman also visited the site of the Nova music festival, Sderot, the Car Wall, Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, the Kotel, the Churva Shul and the Davidson Center.
As a measure of how busy he kept himself, Friedman said that he brought a bunch of books to read on the trip but only got through half of one of them.
The Jewish Link asked Friedman: “Would you do this again?” He replied, without hesitation: “If I had the opportunity to spend significant time, I would probably repeat this plan.”
Friedman thanks his wife, Malka, for encouraging him to go on this trip and managing the home front (they have five other children, three cats and two dogs) while he was away.
Harry Glazer is the Middlesex County Editor of The Jewish Link. He can be reached at [email protected] and he welcomes reader feedback.
