Mitzvot meets Jane Goodall at UMASS Dartmouth event

A group of students enrolled in the after-school educational program at Tifereth Israel Congregation, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, has been invited to present their class project at an event where esteemed primatologist Jane Goodall will speak.

“Gombe & Beyond: An Afternoon & Evening with Dr. Jane Goodall” (which is already sold out) will be held at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on April 7. The event will include a Green Fair, which will recognize student-created projects that address environmental issues. 

Tifereth Israel’s students proposed the creation of “mitzvah strips,” thin slips of recycled paper on which students write down their mitzvot.

The temple’s education director, Melynda Schudrich, of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, has been working on the project with the students, who are in second through seventh grade. She explained that since their invitation to the fair, the students have been writing down “green” ways they fulfill acts of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. These good deeds include recycling, composting, and even pushing the economy button on Schudrich’s car. 

One of Schudrich’s goals is to ensure that the students do a variety of mitzvot; they can only use the same mitzvah once every five days, which encourages them to find new ways of tikkun olam. Another goal is to create a chain of the mitzvah strips that is as long as the Torah: 140 feet. 

“We’re about halfway there!”  Schudrich said with a laugh during an interview on March 22.

Another component of the event is a student environmental essay contest. Tifereth Israel seventh-grader Julia Rosenberg earned one of eight spots at the dinner table with Goodall by writing about ways to reduce our carbon footprints. Her straightforward logic and cleverly simple language prompts readers to wonder why they’re not already doing the things she suggests in her essay.

Schudrich says her students are excited about the project and she believes the values they are learning will carry on beyond the classroom. Since starting the project, she said, the kids have started to complain that they don’t have a compost bin, and have become enthusiastic about taking other environmental measures.

In addition to her students, the project has inspired Schudrich’s sons. Her oldest, 17-year-old David, teaches the class at Tifereth Israel that is “doing the mechanical part” of the mitzvah strips project, as Schudrich describes it. That is to say they are measuring the mitzvah strips and putting them together. avid is assisted by his brother, Asher, 15. And Schudrich’s youngest son, 11-year-old Ezra, came bounding into the room when he heard his mother talking about the project to share his idea of allowing members of the audience to create mitzvah strips to add onto the chain.

“A never-ending chain of mitzvot,” aid chudrick thoughtfully. “I like it.”

ARIEL BROTHMAN is a freelance writer who lives in Wrentham, Massachusetts.