Temple Isaiah’s Seventh Grade Fund was inspired by a program at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco. (For the article that inspired Temple Isaiah’s Seventh Grade Fund, see: Don Lattin, “Taking the Torah to Heart: 7th-graders give bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah money to charity,” sfgate.com: San Francisco Chronicle, 3 April 1998 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/04/03/MN41460.DTL) After hearing about that remarkable success, we decided to pursue a similar project in our supplemental religious school program. The program got underway during the 1998-99 school year has been in continuous operation since then, raising and donating over $110,000.00 to twenty-five different organizations as of this writing.
The Fund’s history of giving is diverse and extensive. Each year, the Board made slight to significant departures from the previous year’s theme, encouraging the staff to learn about a new field and a range of new non-profit organizations. The cyclical nature of the process forced us into a healthy and productive critical evaluation of the program each year, leading to multiple revisions and refinements. We’re very excited to share the history of Temple Isaiah’s Seventh Grade Fund as a challenge and inspiration for your own efforts on this program.
This program promotes social and economic justice by following an in-depth series of lessons on social action causes and the humanistic Mitzvot of Judaism with a profound and deeply felt act of collective Tzedakah in which all students share and of which all students are an integral part.
The life-saving and life-changing carried out by non-profit organizations with funds from the SGF is the most obvious effect of this program. But those who experience it know that its benefits do not stop there. The Seventh Graders do not just learn about peace and human relations, the necessity of defending the weak, and defense of human and civil rights. They study in-depth, real life cases of desperate need- and they heed the call to action in the framework of a highly organized and well-planned Jewish structure.
Seventh Graders most often complete this program with a new set of Jewish values and priorities that puts paramount importance on Tikkun Olam. They will wake up every morning of every day knowing there is something they can do to help. We have set up a small but powerful force for good, whose ripple effect has positively impacted thousands over the years- and saved an unknowable number of lives.
In 2002, an organization that assists children who had been attacked by roving governmental gangs that often used violent physical intimidation, pled with the SGF Board of Directors for financial assistance to carry out crucial work with those communities. The organization’s director stood face-to-face with our Seventh Graders, and stated bluntly that his appeal was a matter of life and death. One student later wrote:
“Our top choice for the Seventh Grade Fund this year is the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities. It was unlike any other. Like a sudden, shrill scream, this organization projected a desperate cry for help. Most people today think that the worst problems are being taken care of with donations, volunteer work, and military and political help. However, the worst problems are those that few or no people know about other than the victims and the perpetrators… The desperate cry has finally been answered.”
The Seventh Grade Fund has become an institution at Temple Isaiah, and at present, we plan to continue the program indefinitely- as long as consecutive 7 th grade families continue to vote the Fund into existence and support the program.
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