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Julie amid some of the books she has collected. "While the book drive was extremely successful, we still needed to raise the money to ship all those books. So far we have held lemonade and book sales. I've been selling books that were donated but that, during the screening process, were found not to be of the quality, content, or levels suitable to send to Israeli public schools libraries. The books will be ready to ship soon and I plan to hold more book drives after that! Right before our first fundraiser lemonade and book sale to raise money to mail the books, I was contacted by some very nice people from the local press. An article about my book drive was featured on the front page of my local newspaper, The Ambler Gazette. At the end of August, another article came out in the Jewish Exponent." (see links below on this page)		In the 2002-2003 school term, Julie Zauzmer of Dresher, Philadelphia, established a Books for Israel drive as her Bat-Mitzvah project. Throughout the school year, Julie has been very determined to collect high quality, second hand books that would significantly help kids in Israel improve English language learning and literacy. Her amazing drive has thus far collected over 3,000 books -- and, unfazed, Julie is determined to keep going!! Julie tells her own story, below, and, at the bottom of this page, provides links to an article run about her book drive in the local press: "I first found out about the Books for Israel Project by chance when I was surfing the Internet one day. I'd known for ages that I wanted to do something that had to do with books for my Bat Mitzvah because I love to read. I e-mailed Books for Israel book drive coordinator Rena Cohen in the United States and also Jade and Ilan Bar-Shalom, who coordinate the project in Israel to get more information and learn what was involved in running a drive. I chose to adopt a flagship of schools in an area that really needed help. "Soon I was organizing my own book drive. I set up a box for book collections at my synagogue and gave out flyers. Soon the collection box was overflowing with books almost every time I checked it -- and I would take home the donated books for processing at least a few times a week! "I also found out about a local library that was having a book sale and called them. They agreed to give me some of the books left over from their sale. They were kind enough to do the same thing at the next of their tri-yearly sales. All together, we were amassing quite a lot of really great books that would really make English language learning and reading fun! "Soon it was time to sort the books. With the help of friends and family, the books were screened for quality and content that would be suitable for public school libraries and use by English language learners. At the end, some 3,000 books were sorted, screened, labeled, packed, and sitting in my basement awaiting shipment!


Standing Tall: Julie in front of some of the boxes of books after the long process of screening, sorting, labeling, and packing. Julie is still engaged in fundraising to send all these book packages to schools in Israel. And if this were not enough for a busy young woman full of school and social commitments, Julie plans to run more book drives in the future! Thank you Julie, you are a blessing to all of us!		Take Five! Julie Zauzmer, 12 (right), with her brother Benny, 10, and sister Emily, 7, atop boxes containing some of the almost 3,000 books Julie has collected for the Books for Israel Project during the 2002-2003 school semester. As you can see from the labels on the boxes, Julie was determined to make the division of books amongst Israeli schools in her adopted community easier by pre-screening them for reading levels

Some Favorites
Emily, Julie, and Benny Zauzmer
hold up some of the amazingly beautiful books that were
collected through Julie's bat-mitzvah book drive.
The school children in Israel who will get to read these titles and others
will certainly be able to count themselves as lucky!