|
Dear
Friend and Supporter,
March was Lev LaLev’s busiest month
of Bat Mitzvahs to date…and it was great!
The girls at the Rubin-Zeffren
Children’s Home in Netanya, Israel so appreciated meeting some Bat Mitzvah
visitors and were so grateful for all the generous gifts they received this
month that helped to expand the music, dance, sports and other extra-curricular
programs at their Home.
So I
just wanted to take a moment to truly thank you all from the bottom of my heart
for your help; let’s keep this pace up and keep growing, after all, giving
knows no boundaries!
 |
Sheena Levi
Director of Outreach sheena@levlalev.com |
|
| |
|
| |
|
 Passover is celebrated this year starting Friday
evening April 6th and continuing through Saturday night April 14th.
Consider organizing youth groups at your Synagogue for younger kids to learn
about Passover or just play while their parents get a chance to pray or relax during
the Holiday. Consider charging for the groups with all proceeds to benefit the
Orphans in Israel. (Thank you to Bat Mitzvah girl Leora Barkai, NJ for the
idea).
|
| |
 |
| |
- Alana Segelman,
NJ on her mitzvah project fundraiser event this month! Alana is hosting a Day of Beauty Spa experience at a local beauty
school. The proceeds from her guest’s spa treatments will afford an Israeli
orphan girls own hair and makeup for her special Bat Mitzvah day.
- Leora Barkai,
NJ on her Books, Brownies, Bears Yard
Sale extravaganza this month which will help raise funds to twin her Bat Mitzvah with an
orphan girl in Israel.
- Hannah Slager, NY on her ongoing Jar of Jelly Beans Fundraiser, $1 gives you a guess at the amount of jelly beans,
whoever guesses it right wins the Jar! All proceeds help fund an ice skating
trip for the orphaned girls.
|
| |
 |
| |
|
The Bat Mitzvah
Celebrates 90 years
There is a NEW
traveling exhibition, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age,
presented by the National Museum of American Jewish History and Moving
Traditions. The exhibition marks the 90th anniversary of the first
American bat mitzvah.
Featuring the remarkable story of how, in less
than a century, communal values and practices radically changed to institute
this now widely-performed Jewish ritual, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age runs
from March 6-April 27, 2012 at the JCC in Manhattan and will then travel on to
communities throughout North America.
Consider getting
the exhibit to come to your hometown as part of your Mitzvah project and promote
the good work you are doing to bring meaning to your Bat Mitzvah!
For more information,
or to submit your unique Bat Mitzvah story, visit http://batmitzvahcomesofage.com/
|
| |
 |
| |
This year, when you are at the seder
I want you to think about Moses. As an infant, Moses was smuggled into the Nile
River to protect him from the decree sentencing all male Jewish babies to
death. He was saved by an Egyptian princess and raised in the palace before he
eventually found his way back to his people.
Thinking of this I am reminded of
the story of Irena Sendler.
Irena was
a Polish Catholic social
worker who served in the Polish Underground and the Zegota (the Council to Aid Jews) resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II.
Under the pretext
of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhus outbreak, Sendler and her co-workers
visited the Warsaw Ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in
ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages. In this manner, Sendler
saved 2,500 Jewish children, providing them with false
documents, and sheltering them in individual and group children's homes outside
the Ghetto.
She and her
co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track
of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when
the war was over, they would be returned to Jewish relatives. However, after
the war, almost all of their parents had been killed at or had otherwise gone
missing.
This April we celebrate G-d bringing
the Jews out of slavery in Egypt on Pesach (April 6-14), commemorate those lost
in the Holocaust (Yom Ha’Shoah – April 19), as well as celebrate the founding
of the State of Israel (Yom Ha’azmaut – April 26). So, let us reflect on the
story of the Jews in Egypt and how it correlates to the Holocaust and the
subsequent founding of the State of Israel. What connections do you find?
Please share them with me sheena@levlalev.com.
|
|
|
