Raising money to provide food, clothing, furniture, car seats, and tutoring for the welfare recipients assigned to specific caseworkers.
Congregation provides holiday meals and gifts to less fortunate families in their area.
Congregation “adopts” the Ukrainian Jewish community of the Zvenigorodka shtetl.
Donation drive for clothes, books and toys for social worker clients – including survivors of child abuse.
An interfaith effort to bridge understanding and cooperation between African-Americans and Jews.
Congregation set up a school tutorial program for neighboring inner-city elementary school students.
Congregation re-envisioned its food drive by requesting non-perishables by assigned first letter.
Local clergy work together to create an inter-religious coalition to combat homophobia.
Series of events about gun violence in advance of a local NRA convention.
Initiative to educate community about issues of gun control, safety measures and awareness.
Congregation fundraises to help members of a small Ugandan synagogue.
North American bar/bat mitzvah students sponsor and exchange letters with Ethiopian-Israeli peers.
Congregants pledged to volunteer 18 hours a year.
Congregation built a house with Habitat for Humanity
Red Cross Blood Drive organized at the synagogue.
Creation of charitable centerpieces for a B'nei Mitzvah celebration.
Synagogue can hold a drive to test potential bone marrow donors.
Volunteers are trained to tutor local students.
A program designed to sensitize the congregation's youth to anti-Semitism and racism develops into a multicultural dialogue program.
Creation of a week-long day camp for local homeless and battered children.
Congregation sends non-perishable kosher food to hungry Jews in Ukraine.
A program providing support and training for adult children of the frail and elderly.
Distribution of toiletry kits to local homeless shelters.
Congregational families with children visit a local senior community.
Congregants throw a holiday party at a center for children with emotional and cognitive deficits.
Synagogue sponsors an annual charity 5K walk/run.
Congregation provides social welfare services to alleviate the devastating effects of poverty on the community.
Collect and distribute books to under-resourced classrooms or disadvantaged families.
Congregation sponsors an annual Christmas Dinner for their local homeless, distributing meals, toys and care packages to families in need.
Synagogue creates a committee to speak about issues involving Church and State.
Synagogue members cut coupons to donate to agencies that purchase food for the needy.
Cultivating produce on synagogue grounds to serve at a local soup kitchen.
Congregants volunteer regularly at local soup kitchens.
Musically talented synagogue member(s) performs to raise money for local charities.
A synagogue's attempt to expand the work of its social action committee by increasing the number of Temple members involved in social justice programming, the number of programs involving other faith groups, and the numbers of programs addressing poverty issues in the local area.
The Temple put social action as the centerpiece of its culture. By creating on-going programs in many different areas the congregation enables its members to be involved in many different areas of Social Action work.
Panel discussion and creation of a task force to speak about GLBT issues.
Congregation “adopts” a school in a poverty-stricken neighborhood.
On designated day, participants were asked to wear “Stop the Genocide in Sudan” T-shirts around town.
Grassroots, community-wide advocacy and relief effort to raise awareness about genocidal conditions in Darfur, Sudan.
City-wide program supporting HIV/AIDS support organizations by eating out at specific restaurants.
The Temple has built a strong social action program which has seeked to mazimize opportunities for members to be involved.
Suggestions on making Sukkot celebrations environmentally friendly.
Visit a different social action website each night of Chanukah. Use these sites as a springboard for volunteer work and charitable giving.
The congregation collaborated with the administration of a local inner city school. Congregants tutored students, others provided supplies and money for field trips, while others gave their time during after school projects.
Synagogue works in tandem with a local church organization to provide assistance and resources for homeless families.
Panel of local experts discuss the evolving views of homosexuality and definitions of marriage.
A congregation's commitment to Social Action initiated two comprehensive projects. The first was an annual three-day trip for underprivileged students which takes place at URJ Greene Family Camp. The second project, which was done as a fund-raising effort, the committee began offering intra-congregational shalach manot baskets, thereby performing the mitzvah of sending food packages to friends and relatives on Purim. In addition to these projects, the Steering Committee created the Mitzvah Messengers program to encourage the congregation's children to become involved in the community.
Fill your mishloach manot baskets with Fair Trade products and create a more just and sustainable world while enjoying tasty treats.
Congregants provides monthly dinner to residents of a local apartment complex for citizens with physical disabilities.
To ensure a coordinated volunteer effort, a proactive committee was formed encompassing representatives from Brotherhood, WRJ-Sisterhood, Youth Group, and the congregation as a whole. This clearing house identifies community needs, organizes and coordinates activities and involves as many congregants as possible in social action projects.
Congregants bring the “spirit of Christmas” to needy families through gift-giving and by hosting an annual Christmas dinner.
Tzedekah collective to fund a variety of projects throughout the year.
Interfaith effort to raise money for Israeli-Arab co-existence initiative.
A congregation's social action program which enables temple family members to participate in such programs, focused on inner-city residents. These intensified efforts resulted in greater participation in synagogue social action in and around the congregation.
A congregation's initiative that focused on three programs that have been particularly successful: a homeless shelter for men to assist them and offer support; an AIDS education program; Mitzvah Day program which supported and helped the wider community in meaningful and profound ways.
Congregation involves local Jews in building a house with Habitat for Humanity.
Emphasizing Purim gift-giving to children in crisis.
Congregation built a food pantry for a local homeless shelter, decorated their dining room, and assisted in serving meals.
Congregation feeds the hungry in the local community.
Health fair provides important health, safety, nutritional, and insurance information to the local community.
A synagogue and an African American Baptist Church united to create an after-school academic enrichment program.
A synagogue “adopted” a local low-income public school by donating school supplies and volunteering as tutors and mentors.
High Holiday tickets had sign-up information for six upcoming social action projects.
Youth prepare weekly lunches for the homeless.
Congregants provide support services for HIV/AIDS patients and their families.
Hurricane relief committee created post-Katrina to aid those affected and prepare in case of future disasters.
Volunteers augment donated food at the Inspiration Cafe, cook, and serve one Thursday evening a month. Every Saturday, volunteers pick up day-old goods at a local grocery store and distribute it to local agencies.
The Temple created an integrated social action program, where each "Mitzvah of the Month" column educated congregants of various social action programs and other approaches to pursue justice.
The synagogue worked with other inter-faith religious groups to educate and speak out about gun control.
Congregation collaborates with a local church and a local mosque for its annual Mitzvah Day.
The congregation continues to do tikkun olam projects through partnerships with various churches and other inter-faith groups throughout the year.
Congregation creates a safe space for homeless families.
Interfaith program to assist and foster care parents and children.
The Temple created a tuition free learning center that allows the economically disadvantaged to gain important job skills allowing them to move towards economic self-suffiency.
Congregations and individuals donate surplus Judaica to developing Central and South American Jewish communities.
Shul-In educates youth about the special needs of physically and mentally challenged adults.
Synagogue works with an African American Church to ensure racial and economic diversity in the county juries.
A synagogue's Social Action Committee has implemented an ongoing program of tikkun olam. The synagogue creates year-round programs, demonstrating the congregant's unwavering commitment to those is need, at home or abroad.
Congregants prepare holiday gift packages for Jewish seniors.
Congregants organized visits to local cemeteries for seniors who wished to visit the graves of their loved ones.
Integrates Passover observance with combating hunger by partnering with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.
The synagogue's B'nai Mitzvah students, teens, and adults work together to improve literacy through tutoring programs, donations of books and backpacks, and through volunteer at after school programs.
Many congregants’ homes experienced serious destruction. The Social Action committee responded by formulating a plan for the congregants’ immediate and long term needs.
Tzedakah project focusing on the mitzvah of tikkun olam during Chanukah.
Congregation and local NAACP co-sponsor annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative service at synagogue.
A weekly brown-bag lunch program for children at a neghbouring daycare center.
Congregants worked together with First AME Zion Church to mentor and tutor 4th grade students at Main Street Elementary.
The congregation created a Free Medical Program for those in their community who do not have access to afforable health insurance.
A community's initiative program which suggested inviting guests to a "Mini-Mitzvah Day" after services to add a socially responsible element to Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations.
The Temple creates "Mitzvah baskets" which are baskets filled with non-perishable food items that decorate the sanctuary during B'nai Mitzvah and other special occasions.
The synagogue created a Mitzvah Day Carnival in which the most vulnerable children received a happy and carefree afternoon at the Temple. Children of immigrants and those with Down's Syndrome partook in the carnival and were welcomed to an afternoon diversion by Temple members.
A congregation's Mitzvah Day initiative which has turned its efforts to a Mitzvah Weekend, educating and learning about the weekend's theme: Foster Children. The Mitzvah Weekend began at Friday night services with a speaker, who updated congregants on the status of the local state's foster care system. The next morning, congregants met for a panel discussion that outlined the needs of foster children in the local area.
A coming together of various multicultural groups participating in a broad range of activities in order to infuse social action programs in the local area.
North American students and congregants help Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia and Israel.
"Not In Our Town" is a lecture-film program about the people of Billings, Montana, who joined together when their Jewish neighbors were attacked by white supremacists.
A synagogue's initiative to infuse the key facets of their congregation's synagogue life, including life-cycle events, youth education, adult learning, worship, and the capital campaign with social justice, learning, and action.
The synagogue runs a homeless shelter from November until April in which guests are given a hot meal, a warm bed to sleep in, and a breakfast in the morning.
fund raising to help homeless shelter in Cleveland, Ohio
The Temple dedicated a Shabbat service to the cause of organ and tissue donation. Through the rabbi's sermon, educational materials, and discussion, the congregation was taught the Jewish position on organ donation.
The synagogue set up an inter-faith conference focusing on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) people.
The Temple works to provide shelter for the homeless and needy one night a week during the long winter months. They provide warm meals, a place to sleep, and breakfast in the morning for those who need to take shelter in the synagogue.
A congregation's community outreach program to support an impoverished community in rural America by using Maimonides' injunction that the highest form of tzedakah is to help people help themselves.
The synagogue proves that bigger is not necessarily better! As a small synagogue, they were able to acheive significant results in the community through disaster relief programs, food drives, hosting a shelter, and an Intergenerational Mitzvah Day.
The congregation developed an overall social action program where the values of social justice were included in worship, study, communal activities, and board discussions. From these discussions, they devloped a comprehensive social action program that involved hundreds of congregants during the year.
The Temple seeked "to strip away all the excuses people have for not participating in social action" by offering its members an unusally wide array of social action opportunities.
Local Jewish community worked together to create multi-faceted social action programming.
A synagogue's Social Action Committee's partnership with Legal Services to help impoverished clients work towards self-sufficiency.
The synaoguge partnered with other social service organizations to begin phone calls to elderly people in their area.
Three-part program educating the Jewish and GLBT communities about homosexual victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
A congregation's partnership with Pioneer Valley Project, whose aim it is to empower low-income and working-class communities to participate in the economic development of the region at every level, from new enterprise ventures to job retention during plant closings, to city and regional policy making. The central goal within this mission is to revitalize the manufacturing sector of the economy to generate good jobs at decent wages.
The Temple began conducting Shabbat services once each month at area prisons and also conducted a Passover seder.
Project Ezra is a non-profit organization that serves the Jewish elderly of the Lower East Side in New York City.
Congregation Emanu-el in San Francisco, CA created Project H.E.L.P.
A synagogue's initiative which strives to improve the basic living standards of impoverished families who live in sub-standard conditions in Mexico. Temple members feel motivated to continue this work because providing shelter and helping others work toward self-sufficiency fulfills an important Jewish value.
Congregants assist needy families in the area by preparing and delivering monthly packages of canned goods, preserved foods and family favorites.
This project is now in its third year at Congregation Shir Tikvah (Troy, MI). Congregants provide Chanukah gifts to less fortunate children, seniors and homeless adults in their community in a very personal way.
A synagogue's initiative to infuse social action to its congregants by compelling the congregants, including its youth, to speak out and become involved in the Temple's activities. Temple members have been involved in an AIDS lunch program, repairing homes, collection of food and clothing projects, as well as various other social action programs and advocacy work.
Teens in grades 7-12 across the state went door-to-door on the evening of October 31, Halloween, “trick-or-treating” for canned goods to donate to local shelters.
The synagogue's goals are to dismantle racism and economic injustice. They do this by working with other inter-faith groups, by mentoring at local schools, by helping out at Habitat for Humanity, and in many other ways.
126 New York Congregations worked together to create a New York State advocate for Social Justice similar to the efforts of the Religious Action Center.
The synagogue worked together with other interfaith groups to help those people who suffer from poverty and homelessness. They set-up a tent city as well as created a program to allow the homeless the ability to rent their own apartments.
This congregation worked in partnership with Na Me Res (A First Nations organization) to commit itself to respond to homelessness.
The synagogue worked together with other community members to help revitalize a Day Care Center in the inner-city.
By rotating where donations are directed, one's contribution to the tzedakah box can serve a variety of efforts.
This program helps and assists more than one hundred Jewish families from the Former Soviet Union in adjusting to life in a new country and in reconnecting with their Jewish heritage.
A congregation's inspiring program to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the local community and to bring about support, healing, and comfort to those affected. The synagogue's Social Action Committee created a unique Haggadah, enumerating the plagues that hinder liberation from AIDS. This initiative has become an empowering vehicle through which many temple members have put their Jewish values to work.
Reform Jews can help serve the blind and the visually handicapped by volunteering to tape a book or other articles.
The Temple opened its High Holiday services to people with hearing difficulties.
The congregation along with other religious groups created a day care center for the elderly. The synagogue members help support the community center through money, time, and other efforts.
High school students explore issues of local homelessness by spending a night in make-shift cardboard box shelters.
A congregation's attempt to foster and support the dynamic engagement of the synagogue’s members within the local community via a social action fair.
A monthly endeavour to collect various items to benefit organizations that provide aid and assistance to people in need. These organizations serve the homeless and people of all faiths.
The Temple sponsored a "sock hop" in which the admission fee was one package of socks, t-shirts, or underpants which were donated to various homeless shelters.
The Temple partnered with two churches in the South Bronx in order to foster connections between the communities. Through tutoring, blood drives, homeless shelters, and other means, the communities have worked together through iner-faith relations to help make our world a better place.
A synagogue co-partners with a local Presbyterian Church and other supporting congregations and organizations in a program to take working homeless families through proscribed steps or phases to make them self-sufficient.
Congregation sends donations to help support our troops.
Provided free tax assistance for the working poor
A congregation's commitment to moral and social issues working in a variety of different agencies to raise funds to pay stipends for young people to do volunteer work in various community agencies such as nursing homes, camps, facilities for the disabled, and youth recreation programs.
World Food Day occurs in the middle of October. Certain restaurants will donate 7% of their proceeds on that day to fight hunger. Work with your local synagogue and restaurants to help end hunger in your city!
The congregation worked together with members of the Muslim community to build a home for a needy family while breaking down the barriers that existed between the two groups.
A grant program available for public school teachers for educational programs that address community needs.
An interfaith coalition of Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy and lay leaders, whose purpose is to foster mutual understanding, respect and cooperation.
A congregation's inspiring sense of community responsibility through their devotion to The Friendship House, a homeless shelter for abused women, children at risk, migrant workers, and the working poor, and the Sunrise Community, an agency for the developmentally compromised adults. The community's efforts were focused on three comprehensive projects: La Casa, a thrift store opened to help the Friendship House community become more self-sufficient, Breast Cancer Awareness, and the Annual Christmas Eve/Chanukah Party celebration.
The Giving Tree is an annual gift-giving program that benefits children, families, and seniors that would not normally have the funds to celebrate the holidays. This program has blossomed into a year-round programming project benefiting over 2,000 people.
The Temple has been able to transform its Mitzvah Day into a year-round opportunity for social action.
The Temple partnered with other faith groups in order to press a local school district to adopt a new policy on religion and schools. They also created a Diversity Brekfast and sponsored several inter-faith programs.
A congregation's initiative to help and assist the homeless. The community works in tandem with a local church two to four times a year to house homeless families for a week, supplying shelter, meals, supplies and emotional support. This congregation became a leading homeless advocate in its area by encouraging four other congregations to support the shelter.
A synagogue's initiative to work with the local Interfaith Shelter Network over the Christmas holiday to provide assistance to those who need the support.
The synagogue has partnered with a local elementary school to improve the literacy of the students. By donating money for new books, buying books, and creating tutoring programs, the synagogue has shown what it means to be "The People of the Book."
The Potato Project works to save millions of pounds of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other products that are wasted in the fields.
Beth Hillel's Intergenerational Retreat
The Temple created a multifaceted AIDS awareness/action Project. The project provides assistance, support, advocacy, and education for all who are infected, affected, at risk, or concerned about HIV/AIDS.
The JWB Jewish Chaplains Counsel has been providing services to the US armed services since World War I. The Solo Seder Kits are sent out to the Jewish soldiers in time for Passover and include all of the necessary food items and Haggadaot for a Passover Seder.
Temple members fulfill a mitzvah by picking up complimentary bottles of shampoo when traveling on vacation. Afterwards the collected items are donated to an area homeless shelter.
Raise awareness of captive Israeli soldiers by leaving 3 chairs open at community events.
The Temple created a Tikkun Olam project for every grade of the religious school. In this way, students learned Jewish texts throughout the year, were involved in the project with their families, and were able to build ongoing relationships with other Temple families.
The Temple revamped its social action program and in doing so, motivated congregants to make commitments and contributions to social action at new unprecedented levels.
The Temple revamped its Social Action Committee by creating pledge cards in which congregants can indicate which type of Social Action projects they are interesting in doing and how often they are available to do them.
A congregation's initiative to enthuse congregants to participate in community service projects. All of the projects, though, served to make Temple members more responsive to the needs of the community and to make the Temple more of a part of the community.
Volunteers from the Temple, staff the Traveler's Aid information booth at the airport.
A congregation's Tzedakah Collective demonstrates the synagogue's dedication to social justice through its various activities.
A new and successful program to educate congregants about diverse disaster relief initiatives and to raise funds to support people in need throughout the world.
During the High Holy Days and following month, congregation collects packages of underwear to distribute to local homeless community.
Union Temple partnered with The Hope project to help unemployed adults
The Temple began a program in which congregants teach what they know best to homeless residents at a neighborhood shelter. In addition, the Temple created a library for the homeless shelter and formed a tutoring program.
The Temple's religious school engaged in a year long project to support Ethiopian Jewry. They sold embroidery, hosted a Ethiopian-themed Shabbat, and created a national photo exhibit.
A synagogue can work to gather cold weather garments for area homeless shelters.
Throughout the year, the congregation had a "Mitzvah of the Month" which provided supplies and caring for the Wimauma community of farmworkers.
Social Action calendar was created to allow congregants to choose activities that fit in their schedule.
With a focus on congregant’s social justice interests, synagogue provides numerous programming and advocacy opportunities all year.
Congregation creates a year’s worth of programs and opportunities to think about and do tzedakah.
Congregants sign up for three month commitments to buy an extra can of food each time they shop. Donations are brought to the Temple and donated to local food banks.
