In a beautiful tribute to honor the memory of her dad, Avi Karesh, z”l, Senior Emma K. launched Mezuzah Project 2025. “From her overall vision to the smallest details,” says Rabbi Tully Harcsztark, “Emma showed painstaking love and an act of courage to step up and say this is what I’d like to do…to connect Torah, friendship, family and the memory of her dad to our school community.”
Emma took a few moments to tell friends and faculty about the amazing person her dad was. “In 2016, my dad, Avi Karesh, z”l, passed away from complications from Leukemia and two stem cell transplants. He loved to play sports, loved to cook and was always doing chesed and giving tzedakah. He was deeply involved in organizations that meant the world to him. He volunteered to fly to Greece to deliver stem cells to a patient and he and his friends once smuggled a sefer Torah out of a museum in Poland and brought it to Israel where it was restored and is now being used in a shul there. He was famous among his friends for doing almost anything on a dare. He was a huge cheerleader in all of my endeavors, including gymnastics, baseball, art, or anything else that I was interested in pursuing. He loved spending time with his family and friends.”
Since SAR has been her home away from home for the past 14 years, Emma has wanted to do something in her dad’s memory for a really long time. “My dad grew up in Chicago,” she says, “and in 2019 my family decided to do a mezuzah project at his old shul in his memory, replacing all of the mezuzot with new handmade ones. I felt that this was really a beautiful way for me to honor my father, allowing me to think of him whenever I walked through a doorway or saw one of the mezuzot.”
She explains that the existence of a mezuzah on every doorway of a home, school or shul allows for Hashem’s presence to be more tangible in the places where we live, learn and grow, so she decided to recreate the project in school. “In addition to this being something I could do for me and my family, it was also a mitzvah I could do for our school and I hoped it would excite those involved,” she says.
Emma and her mom bought 150 mezuzot in Israel this past summer and 90 of them were hung at SAR throughout the week. Each gemara and Tanach class learned hilchot mezuzah and put up a new mezuzah together. Seniors were given an opportunity to be leaders among the underclassmen, and those who were interested were assigned to a 9th, 10th, or 11th grade Gemara class in order to help them when they hung up their mezuzah. Emma and her family hung the first mezuzah outside the beit midrash, a communal place of learning and praying, where students and faculty frequently gather. They will have the opportunity to see the mezuzah on a regular basis and be reminded of this unique mitzvah and of Avi Karesh, z”l, the special person that is commemorated throughout this meaningful endeavor.
