Pupils Take Up Good Deeds After Mumbai

ORANGE, CT — The terrorist killings in Mumbai, India, over the Thanksgiving weekend brought out the best in students at the Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy.

The loss of more than 100 people, including six Jews, two of them a rabbi and his pregnant wife there to spread the message of the Chabad movement, struck the children hard.

But the image of the couple’s 2-year-old son, Moshe, crying for his mom after he had been rescued by a nanny left the most indelible impression.

“It was a miracle that he was saved,” said Dasi Sessel, 10, a fifth-grader. “We want him to know we care about him.”

Bracha Hecht, 11, also a fifth-grader, added, “He’s a special boy. He’s kind of famous, and we want him to know we really care.”

So rather than just mourn, students at the school in pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade launched a campaign of helping others in an effort to combat the evil with good and the darkness with light, in keeping with the message of Hanukkah, a holiday just weeks away when the attacks occurred.

“They felt by increasing the light, they could help, and that’s what the Hanukkah candle symbolizes: the victory of freedom over oppression and the victory of the light over darkness,” said Susha Alperowitz, the school’s Judaic studies principal. “The emissaries were giving and led a life of goodness and kindness and the kids wanted to emulate that.”

The result of what they’ve turned into an ongoing campaign, far beyond Hanukkah, has so far yielded $300 for the Mumbai Children’s Relief Fund; 80 toys for Chai Lifeline, an organization that serves seriously ill children; and 120 cans of food for Jewish Family Services’ food bank. Other good deeds in the works include a collection of toiletries for Hospice; Pennies for Patients, to benefit children with leukemia and other blood-related disorders; books for children at Yale-New Haven Hospital; making gifts and visiting the Jewish Home for the Aged.

As part of what they call the Share A Smile program, a giving program resurrected this year after a hiatus and intensified because of the terrorist attacks, the students have also stepped up their in-house goodness.

In addition to each grade taking responsibility for an outside charity, each has launched an everyday niceness to one another campaign, including giving a daily compliment for every classmate; working together harmoniously in a group; giving a good morning and afternoon greeting to everyone; and increasing good deeds.

Casey Epstein, 9, a fourth-grader from Fairfield, said he “took on” the Fairfield County area for the toy drive and sent out e-mails soliciting for donations.

“It’s nice to feel you’re making people less fortunate feel better,” Casey said. “It really changes their lives because they can occupy themselves.”

One student had a birthday party and asked for toy donations in lieu of gifts, collecting 22 toy items.

Rabbi Sheya Hecht, director of the school, said all the giving spirit and caring for people in need are part of what the school endeavors to instill in children. Hecht said helping is good for both those who give and receive.

School Student Council president Aaron Rabinowitz, an eighth-grader from Bethany, said when students returned from Thanksgiving weekend, Hecht gave a talk about the tragedy in Mumbai and it inspired students to rally around the cause, putting extra effort into the Share A Smile project.

“It’s something in Judaism; a love of Israel, the love among all Jewish people,” Rabinowitz said, referring to the killings of the emissaries and their guests. He said there’s so much enthusiasm, they’re going to try to keep the positive program going all year round and making it “better and better.”

The gunmen attacked multiple high-profile sites in Mumbai, killing more than 100 people and taking many more hundreds hostage. The terrorists, later identified as Muslim fanatics, targeted landmarks such as Mumbai’s Taj Mahal and Oberoi/Trident hotels, a Jewish center, as well as Mumbai’s main train station, a hospital and a popular restaurant. They killed indiscriminately with machine guns and grenades, then took hostages, especially looking for Americans or Britons.

Six Jews died when gunmen struck Chabad House, Mumbai headquarters for the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch. Among the dead were Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivka, 28, who was six months pregnant. The two were outreach envoys dispatched to Mumbai as part of the Chabad movement’s attempt to bring its brand of Judaism to Jews across the world. They ran an open house mainly for Jewish travelers and merchants. The Holtzbergs, parents of the surviving 2-year-old, Moshe, were cousins of a parent of a student at Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy.

Alperowitz said the collections were truly from the children’s own charity. They emptied their pockets daily, rather than letting adults give big donations.

“It was a beautiful thing to see,” she said. “We try to instill in them that their good deeds affect the world around us.”