By Ben A., Seventh Grade, Krieger Schechter Day School of Chizuk Amuno Congregation
Many things in our world are broken. People are homeless and in need of food and money. Our oceans are brimming with plastic and pollution, and some people do not even have warm coats for the frigid winter months.
The students at Krieger Schechter Day School of Chizuk Amuno Congregation understand that they must play a role in rectifying these issues and others by doing acts of tikkun olam (repairing the world).
One program the school is committed to is Bunches of Lunches. Stacey Thompson, KSDS’s admissions associate, and Rabbi Moshe Schwartz, KSDS head of school, explained that “[Jewish Volunteer Connection] started Bunches of Lunches. Liz Minkin Friedman brought it to KSDS about six or seven years ago.”
Once a month, KSDS students bring in extra lunches, which are delivered to local homeless shelters. KSDS was the first school to partner with JVC for this program, and today more schools and community members are involved as well.
During the pandemic, Bunches of Lunches grew to incorporate the whole community. According to Thompson, “At the height of the pandemic, when everybody was home and nobody could go to work, we collected about 2,000 lunches at once. After the lunches are collected, the JVC will organize where the lunches go, but typically they go to about five or six different homeless shelters in the downtown Baltimore area.”
The KSDS community remained committed to this program during the pandemic, a time when so many needed help.
Another tikkun olam effort at KSDS is recycling. Miriam Glaser, science department chair and the green school coordinator, said, “KSDS has been recycling for a long time, definitely since the early 2000s.” The recycling program at KSDS has grown throughout the years to include old pens and glue sticks, not just paper and cardboard.
At KSDS, recycling is about reducing paper waste and so much more. According to Glazer, “We [at KSDS] feel that it is our duty as an educational institution to help protect the earth, and one of the best ways we can do that is by reducing our trash output.”
During lunch on Friday afternoons, students volunteer to collect contents from recycling bins around the school. They then go to the recycling dumpster outside the school to empty the bins. The students take responsibility for this because they want to create change not just by recycling, but also by playing an active role in collecting and disposing of it.
Finally, one of the biggest acts of tikkun olam at KSDS is giving tzedakah. The Jewish act of tzedakah is giving money to people in need. Rabbi Alex Salzberg, a Judaics teacher and service learning coordinator at KSDS, said giving tzedakah “is an obligation. Everyone is expected to support those who are in need.”
On Friday mornings, there are tzedakah boxes positioned around the school where students deposit their donations At lunch, student volunteers collect the tzedakah boxes and then meet to decide where the tzedakah should be donated. Students often consider the week’s Torah portion of the week, news events (like tornadoes or hurricanes), and local organizations that are in need.
At KSDS, we do our best to repair the world in so many different ways. It is our duty, and it is an amazing responsibility. We help people because we can, because we must to make the world better. Recycling paper waste and donating money and food are just some of the thousands of things you can do to help, too.
Ben A. is a seventh grade student at the Krieger Schechter Day School at Chizuk Amuno Congregation.
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