Michlalah, like other (perhaps all) seminaries, has a chesed program in which students volunteer two hours a week to assist the needy. Every year Michlalah compiles a Chesed Journal recounting the students’ experiences and their reflections from these opportunities. Reading these journals is an uplifting experience of pride and inspiration which demonstrates that the weekly, often unsung, acts of service helped mold the students’ character as much as their classes.
I should state up front that I have a special soft spot for chesed girls, for we are blessed with a large family but did not have any support network in Israel. We managed thanks to the chesed girls; I do not know how else we could have coped. Chava Magence Orbach even moved in to watch our kids when my wife and I had to travel abroad!
Seminary students arrive in Israel for a year immersed in Torah learning, spiritual growth, and independence. But after just a few weeks of their chesed program, they learn that their growth experience is deeply enriched by something less expected but just as transformative.
At 18, many girls might be expected to spend their time scrolling through their phones or shopping in malls. The chesed program provides these teenagers with a purpose beyond themselves, transforming them into compassionate, mature young women who value the art of giving.
These past two years, against the backdrop of war and displacement, the chesed projects took on an entirely new dimension. Students volunteered in apartments that had been converted into a “Santa’s workshop” of sorts – baking over 100 challahs and treats each week for IDF soldiers. Others arranged to use a culinary school kitchen to cook Shabbat meals for units on the frontlines. At a hotel-turned-shelter, two students curated a clothing display from donations. The drudgery of folding, hanging, and displaying mountains of clothing was mega-vindicated when they spied a mother pick out a sweater for her young daughter that fit her perfectly. The two students, seeing how ecstatically happy the mother and daughter were, winked at each other as tears of joy rolled down their cheeks. Just like their fellow students preparing meals, and others assembling bracelets for the young refugees, each package prepared felt like a small offering of strength and unity.
Some organized carnivals for traumatized children whose towns had suffered horrific losses. Others tied tzitzit for soldiers, wrapped toys for displaced kids, or babysat children so that their mothers – whose husbands were away on reserve duty – could rest or regroup.
Michlalah (meaning its kindhearted and generous dean, Dr. Devora Rosenwasser) invited a seminary as well as families from war-devastated Sderot to relocate to Michlalah’s beautiful Jerusalem campus. Away from the trauma of rocket attacks and restriction to a bomb shelter, the Sderot evacuees were warmly welcomed by American students weak in Hebrew but strong in love. The American and Israeli students became fast friends, bonding over dorm life, the proverbial lending of the cup of sugar, and Chanukah parties, where they decorated, baked, and danced together.
Michlalah organized a joint bat mitzvah celebration for four girls whose families had become refugees with the outbreak of the war. It was a night of meticulous preparations – from elegant invitations to cakes, centerpieces, and heartfelt and upbeat music that transformed a modest dining room into an elegant wedding hall. The bat mitzvah girls became princesses treated to hair stylists, an array of gifts, and dancing deep into the night with the American seminary students whose energy never waned.
The seminary students from Sderot and Michlalah, strangers to one another just weeks earlier, became sisters in solidarity united in a powerful national mission. The Americans witnessed how supporting soldiers and their families fostered a profound sense of collective responsibility and affirming that, especially in Israel, we are one family. The girls had a profound sense that they weren’t just volunteers – they were part of the war effort.
Some students spent their chesed hours in a nursing home visiting the elderly and those afflicted with dementia. These visits taught them to appreciate every pain-free moment. The students’ long-awaited arrival every week brought immense comfort and happiness to the residents who gleefully shared stories of their youth and what a lifetime had taught them.
One student would spend her two hours playing on the piano, thinking at first that her concerts were inconsequential, until she looked up one week and saw herself surrounded by residents nodding to their cherished melodies and Shabbos songs, tapping their hands on the armrests of their wheelchairs. Michlalah students then upped their game by singing for the terminally ill in hospice care who so profoundly valued a live concert. They cried and clapped with the little energy that they still possessed.
As in all disciplines, the true barometer of positive exposure is implementation. So here is one more example of proof in the pudding, à la Michlalah. Outside of their formal chesed placements, the Michlalah students demonstrated how technology could be harnessed to enable chesed to flourish in their own school in routine daily life.
A girl posted a request on the internal chat “MICHspacha,” and then, almost instantaneously, the item showed up – anonymously, and clearly without thanks expected. The workings of MICHspacha were just one more feature, like the chesed program coordinated by the resourceful Mrs. Leah Nusbacher, that has created a chesed-saturated culture in the school.
One student reflected on all the small acts of kindness that she’d quietly received: Her lopsided drying rack had been stood back on its feet and the clothing properly distributed; friendly notes were delivered to her unprompted; a do-gooder shooed away the cat from her dorm room; someone removed the chair from on top of her desk that had been placed there by the cleaning staff; someone else did her clean-up job before she had a chance; another told the teacher that she was on her way when attendance was being taken; yet another folded the clothes that she had left in the dryer; someone else put a package of goodies on her bed when she wasn’t feeling well; and who knows who carried her packages down to her dorm from the bus stop where she had left the ones that she could not carry in her first trip.
A keen observer will discern that these are not random acts – they have become standard habits of the heart. For teenagers away from home for the first time (with perhaps the exception of summer camp), it’s easy to get caught up with oneself. But Michlalah’s chesed program interrupts that natural inward turn and directs it outward. It teaches that no act of kindness is too small, and no giver too trivial.
In a time defined by war, displacement, and challenge, these girls did more than study Torah – they lived it. They gave of their time, their hearts, and their hands. And in doing so, they didn’t just help others – they became the women they were meant to be.
I wish to bless all of my readers with a pleasant and sweet, healthy new year endowed with peace and only good news for our People and our Land.