This Giving Tuesday, The Moriah School proudly launched its newest chesed initiative—a school-wide Day of Chesed.
On a day when most organizations were focused on bringing in gifts of support, The Moriah School saw an opportunity to inspire, to educate its students about the importance of chesed and to bring to life a core mission value of olam chesed yibaneh.
“Grades participate in chesed throughout the year, but how powerful would it be to see the entire school come together on one day—and really teach our students that together we can make a difference,” shared Erica Tannenbaum, director of Development.
As a school, Moriah wanted to create an experiential learning opportunity for kindness. And so, 820 Moriah students, faculty and staff—across 12 grades—joined together to partner with four organizations in just one day.
The day began with cross-grade learning between Moriah middle and lower school students. “The middle school had the unbelievable opportunity to serve as leaders at Moriah, leading our younger students in a meaningful cross grade learning session where they had the chance to delve deeper into the important topic of chesed through Torah sources and interactive components,” said Sarah Heller, assistant principal, middle school Jewish Studies and Life.
Middle school students then joined together to create activity packages for three major upcoming events through Chai Lifeline. One student shared that his mother participated in a Chai Lifeline run and he was excited to directly help the same children through Moriah’s Day of Chesed.
Bikur Cholim of Rockland County, in partnership with Moriah, delivered hundreds of pounds of snacks, thousands of toiletries and bags of besamim to Moriah for the early childhood and lower school students to pack. These packages will be distributed to the 14 hospitals serviced by Bikur Cholim, Partners in Health, of Rockland County.
Gila Bretter, Moriah’s master arts educator whose creative teachings fill the halls of the school in monthly exhibitions, led the next initiative of the day. Her talent helped inspire Moriah’s project for The Bayit Association—to fill the rooms of the new home being built in Teaneck with Judaica inspired masterpieces created on this day by Moriah students.
Kosher Troops supports Jewish American soldiers serving in the United States military. Students
wrote messages of gratitude to soldiers along with wishes for a happy Chanukah. Even the youngest children, in the 2s program, participated, brightly coloring Chanukah cards to send to the service men and women.
“The impact of students, teachers and parents coming together to perform acts of chesed is something that will stay with the children way past their years in elementary school. And the bracha that we give them is ‘tziku l’mitzvot.’May they continue to be able to perform mitzvot and acts of loving kindness,” said Odelia Danishefsky, associate principal of the lower school.
