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Michael Schulman of
Reisterstown, Maryland,
eleven years old at the time of this posting,
is a serious contributor to the Books for Israel Project.
For over a year, since he was a fifth grader at The Krieger Schechter Middle
School in Baltimore, Maryland, Michael has been busy carrying out his mitzvah
work. With serious help
from his mom, Bobbi, Michael has collected, sorted, and fundraised to send
books to schools in the area of Misgav,
in the central Galilee area. Michael chose a flagship
representing religious and secular Jewish populations, Druze children, and
children from the Israeli Muslim sector. His work involved not only
collecting, sorting, processing, and
packaging the books, but a labored effort in fundraising as well. Michael
raised the bulk of funds to mail 1,400 books to Israel
by selling bookmarks that he created himself.
Michael will become a Bar Mitzvah December 9, 2006.
He finds it amusing that he has received e-mail messages
and letters of thanks from students and teachers in Israel that congratulate
him on his Bar Mitzvah -- already!
But Michael, and his hard-working, irrepressibly positive mom, Bobbie, decided
that the need for books in Israel was too great to wait until his Bar Mitzvah
year. Therefore he started early and -- almost a year later -- his books have
started up and enriched
libraries at elementary school, junior high, and senior high
school levels!
Michael generously sent in a letter that he recently wrote for his synagogue
congregation that explains about his project. We
are so proud of Michael and grateful to him and his mother,
and we gladly share this with our readers. See below! |
Michael
Schulman begins sorting
and boxing up books that will become
part of the English language libraries
of public schools in the area of Misgav,
in the central Galilee area of Israel.
Schools in the Misgav flagship
include Jewish schools serving religious
and secular populations, Druze schools,
Muslim schools, and mixed population
schools as well.
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The Mitzvah of Gemilut Hasadim –
Acts of Loving-Kindness
Helping Children in Israel
by Michael Schulman
I have participated in the
Books for
Israel Project.
I chose this mitzvah
because I thought the children in
Israel
needed to have books so they could learn English and lots of other facts
from the books. I love books and cannot imagine not having books in school
to use. It would be really hard to learn Hebrew without any Hebrew books
and the kids in Israel were trying to learn English without any English
books. Also, many of the Israeli kids are from poor families and don’t have
breakfast a lot of the time. A good book can make a kid forget how hungry
he is.
My involvement in the Books for Israel Project has had a big influence on
hundreds of children in Israel. The books will be
able to be used for many more years so hundreds and hundreds
of other children will also be able to read these great books because of my
mitzvah.
I thought I would share the story of all the
work involved
in making this project successful.
At the beginning of 5th grade, I
made and sold hundreds of bookmarks to raise money for this project. I
raised $600.00.
I then had several book drives and called many friends to see if they had
books in their houses they could donate. The books
had to be either nearly new or only a little bit used.
I went through tons of books to pick out the ones that would
be just right and in good shape for the school children in Israel.
Afterwards, I placed individual labels, saying Books for Israel,
my name, and my grade, in each book. This took a lot of time
and I did this with my mom’s help over the summer.
My mom and I then packed the books in boxes. Altogether,
there were 24 big boxes of books.
We then put the boxes into big M-Bags. These M-bags are
one type of mailing bag used by the post office to mail things
to a foreign country. Since it is the cheapest way to mail these things, it
takes weeks to get there.
After all of this, my mom and I loaded the car and took some
of the bags to the post office to get mailed to Israel. It took
three trips to the post office to do this. We had to separate the
trips by several days because we were told that the customs
authorities in Israel would be very annoyed if too many
M-bags came at once. We mailed the books around Rosh Hashanah. Even though
we used M-bags, the books were very expensive to
ship to Israel. It cost $630.00 altogether. I used the $ 600.000 that
I had raised from the bookmark sales to pay for the shipping. My mom then
paid the extra $30.00.
It took several weeks for the books to get to Har Shechania, which is the
elementary school serving as the flagship center for schools
in the Misgav area. I picked this flagship of schools because it has
religious and non-religious Jews, together with children who are
Muslims and Druze. Many of the kids’ parents have lost their jobs because
tourism was so bad and several children had been victims
of terrorism. The schools could not afford to buy English books
and the kids’ parents could not afford to buy their kids English books for
home either.
The books I sent were the first English books the kids in the elementary
school ever had. Books that were too hard for the elementary school kids to
read got sent to other schools in the area. One school was the Jewish-Arab
high school.
I was very excited to get over a hundred
letters from the kids telling me how much they appreciated the books. One
of the
favorite books was a Harry Potter one. It was funny because the kids were
congratulating me on my Bar Mitzvah and, at the moment,
I am only 11.
This project involved an enormous amount of
work and it took me over a year to complete. I got a lot of help from my
mom!
The work was really worth it and I know the kids are using the books every
day and enjoying them. The teachers sent e-mails thanking me and they said
they were able to start English libraries
in several schools as the result of my sending these books to Israel.
By the way, I sent exactly 1,400 books.
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Boxes, boxes, and more boxes!
Michael's mom, Bobbie, was very patient
and kind as the project gradually took over
the family living room for
a couple of months!
Here, the one thousand, four hundred
books, screened, sorted, and labeled,
are packaged into shipping boxes,
ready for mailing!
Michael Schulman spent a great deal of the summer vacation pasting
labels inside the final collection of books. Here Michael sits again
for a couple of hours to work, while Sophie,
one of his dogs, watches with interest.
Michael worked hard to fundraise the
shipping of those books. Here he is,
at his bookmark stand, raising the bulk
of funds needed to send all those
packages to Israel!
A great picture detailing some of the books
in those many boxes that Michael sent off
to Israel! |
