| Tzedek @ MIT / Community Service |
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Introduction
Alternative Spring Break Trips
Interfaith Project Team
Elderly Project Team
Hunger Project Team
Generations Project Team
Literacy Project Team
Introduction
Framed by the Jewish imperatives of tzedakah (justice), gemilut chasadim (acts of loving kindness), and tikkun olam (repair of the world), the MIT Tzedek Initiative organizes students to engage in meaningful public service around social justice issues.
You are not required to complete the work, yet you are not allowed to desist from it.
-Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:2
Alternative Spring Break
Trips to New Orleans 2007
MIT Hillel will sponsors opportunities for MIT students to spend their
Spring Break engaged in tikkun olam (healing the world) The trips are a combination
of work projects to help the local community combined with reflection and lessons
based on Jewish learning, as well as Shabbat celebrations.
Past MIT Hillel Alternative Spring Break opportunities have included:
2007: New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina assistance
2006: Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina assistance
2005: Uruguay with International Hillel
2004: El Salvador
The subsidized trip costs are paid for by the students. Students often raise
these funds their family, hometown synagogue and Jewish Federation, MIT's Public
Service Center.
If you are interested in participating, please download and fill out the latest
application form (PDF or Word) and return it to:
Program Director, MIT Hillel
phone: 617-252-1521 | fax: 617-253-3260
40 Massachusetts Avenue, MIT Bldg. W11
Interfaith Project Team
MIT Hillel & MIT Muslim Student Association volunteer at the Greater Boston
Food Bank. Help sort and package supermarket-donated food for local hunger-relief
agencies. By bringing Jews and Muslims together in volunteerism, we hope
to build bonds between our communities.
Sign up at: http://www.mit.edu/~gremio/gbfb/
Interfaith Project Chair: Gremio Martin, ‘G, gremio@mit.edu
Elderly Project Team
The elderly project team makes informal visits to a local Jewish nursing home.
Over the course of an afternoon, small groups of Hillel students cover the
7 floors of the Center, interacting with patients, giving them presents and
playing classic games like Bingo. Talking to senior citizens is a great chance
to meet really interesting people who have amazing life stories that they love
to share. It’s a fun to hang out with old friends from Hillel and possibly
make some new ones. Come join us one Sunday a month and help bring a smile
to a senior citizen’s face, and quite possibly your own.
Elderly Project Chair:
Hunger Project Team
The hunger project works to alleviate hunger. By cultivating donations of food
in visible locations on campus, the team educates the broader community about
hunger . Annual events include a canned goods collection at Kol Nidre services,
PBJ booths each semester (making peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the
CASPAR shelter), a Thanksgiving food drive, and more.
Hunger Project Chair:
Generations Project Team
Generations is an outreach program designed to bring MIT students and active
Jewish residents of a local elderly housing facility together for social, cultural,
and educational sharing. Based on the idea that learning each other’s
stories will mutually enrich residents and volunteers, we plan activities that
encourage interaction. Many of the elderly residents are from the former Soviet
Union so both Russian and English speaking students are encouraged to participate.
Generations Project Chair:
Literacy Project Team
The Greater Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy is an effort off over 60 Jewish
organizations in the Boston area to enable children to read by the third grade.
Volunteers from a given “literacy team” tutor at the same school.
Literacy Project Chair:
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