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News 'N' Views | To Drill or Not to Drill? | This article uses a Jewish lens to explore the national debate about drilling for oil along the Unites States coastline. | Students will identify and articulate their own opinions about the issue through text study and formal debate. |
Torah Page | Chasing the Good | Verse: “A person who chases after tzedakah and hesed will find life, righteousness, and honor” (Proverbs 21:21). | Students will participate in a scavenger hunt around the school or synagogue building to seek out examples of tzedakah and hesed in their surroundings. |
Kid Power | Shui Maizlech: Kind to the Core | This article features a teen who performs the ultimate hesed: serving as a shomer (guard) for the deceased before burial. | This lesson deals with understanding kindness as a virtue, as well as the different ways to be kind to others. |
Spotlight | Danny Siegel: Mitzvah Manager | In this interview, Danny Siegel, head of the Ziv Tzedakah Fund, introduces some of the Mitzvah Heroes he knows and shares his thoughts on the hows and whys of doing acts of hesed. | Students will create innovative, important, and engaging hesed projects based on their own talents and the needs they perceive in the world around them. |
Quiz Central | What’s Your Gig? | This month’s quiz encourages students to reflect on how they approach performing hesed (kindness). | Students will think about the relative merit that they personally place on different types of hesed and represent these relationships in custom-made board games that they will design. |
W.O.W. | Altruism Gene | This article explains what an Israeli research team discovered in 2005: a gene that predisposes people towards altruistic behavior. | Students discuss how altruism is an integral part of hesed. Students will measure their own altruistic tendencies and consider what factors contribute to their level of altruism. |
| Special Feature | Benevolence Behind Bars | This article describes hesed toward people removed from society—prison inmates | Students will roleplay different hesed scenarios to examine the mitzvah of performing hesed toward all people, even if one must reach beyond his or her own comfort zone to do so. |
Israel Feature | A Slice of Hope | This article introduces readers to Yad Eliezer, the largest food relief organization in Israel. | Students will compare a perfect Shabbat meal to a Jewish text about how a meal must include opening your home to those less fortunate. They will think about acts of hesed to help relieve hunger in their own communities. |
