Putting The Pushka Into Perspective

Meet a man with ideas, Zvi
Hermann Schapira. He was a rabbi
and a teacher of mathematics.
Because he was a rabbi, he loved
Eretz Yisrael very much, and
because he was a teacher of
mathematics, he was very good with
figures. He said to himself: "I will
go to a tinsmith and have him make
a little box for me, with an opening
on the top. Every day I will drop a
coin into the box. At the end of the
year I will have . .." you guessed it
. . . 365 coins.

Rabbi Schapira did not only
talk, he acted. He went to a tinsmith
and showed him his design for the
box. It was a little box, painted blue
and white. Do you know why Rabbi
Schapira picked these colors? Just

like this. If he will put even only one
penny each day into the box, we
will buy land in Eretz Yisrael we will
plant trees —" "Zvi" interrupted his
friends, "what a wonderful idea. Let
us make more boxes, we too will
put one in our home."

look at the flag of Israel for the
answer!

Once the box was finished,
Rabbi Schapira placed it on his
table and invited his friends to his
home. When they arrived, they
spoke about Eretz Yisrael, about
people who had left recently, and
those who were about to leave,
those who had managed to get
enough money together for the
journey to Eretz Yisrael, and those
who did not.

Rabbi Schapira raised his little
tin box, and spoke with excitement
in his voice: "Friends, I have found
a way out, we can raise all the
money we need, if everyone is
willing to help. Just imagine, every
Jew, rich and poor, will have a box

And so, in the year 1884,
Schapira sent a telegram to an
important meeting where Eretz
Yisrael was discussed, and
explained about his plans for a
"Jewish National Fund — Keren
Kayemet Leisrael," which would
collect all the pennies, from all the
boxes, from all the Jews, all over
the world, to ... you guessed it —
to buy land, drain swamps, bring
water to dry land, plant trees, create
parks and camping grounds, build

roads, and provide work and homes
for many.
Everyone loved the little box
and what it stood for. But it took
until 1901 before the blue and white
box started on its march around the
world.
People, no matter what language
they spoke, Yiddish, English, Polish,
Russian, German or French, all of
them understood the message of
the little box.

Family Activity

Cut out the diagram below to
make your own pushka. Or, contact
the Jewish National Fund, Lubavitch
Organization, Torah Fund or other
Jewish agencies to get a pushka for
your home.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

MY PUSHRA

MY HEBREW NAME

.A4

CLIP HERE

The More Mitzvahs, The Less Teen-Age Unhappiness

By DANNY SIEGEL

How much is hormones and
how much is culture?
How come the Talmud never
had a word for "teen-ager"?
I'm not about to say 16-year-
olds don't drool naturally over some
hunk, but is so much rebellion-and-
moods in their make-up and genes?
Come now, someone has to
believe a good life of mitzvahs can
ease those years of growing up
without so much craziness.
I am not a certified expert by
the Board of Teen-Age
Understanders, but it appears to me
from loose but vigilant observation

that a good afternoon once a week
at the hospital, or packaging and
cooking food for the forgotten can
eliminate anywhere from 27 percent
to 93 percent of the muck and
tension in a kid's mind.
I've said it in my lectures again
and again: the more mitzvahs, the
less teen-age suicides. And certainly
the more mitzvahs, the less
depression and confusion and
downright, bald unhappiness.
I would sincerely invite those
skilled in studies and statistics to
find control groups of our kinderlach
to watch them at their mitzvah work.
I would predict the findings: more

and more kids you just want to hug,
more and more of them less
obsessed with the idolatry of good
grades, less alcoholism, less drugs,
less joy rides and break-ins, and
even a lowered rate of sibling
screaming and tears, and less visits
to psychologists and counselors.
Here is the challenge:
Follow a youth group in a year's
span that's learning sign language
and drawing the Jewish hearing-
impaired closer to the synagogue,
Jewish study and Shabbat.
Observe a bunch of teen-agers
who work with the local
meals-on-wheels.

Check out the 17-and-18-year-
olds who perform the mitzvah of
Shemirat HaMet, sitting up at night
with dead bodies for the local
Chevra Kaddisha-Burial Society the
night•before a funeral.
Make pilot programs and write
articles. Publish results. Give us
graphs and formal findings, bell
curves and stats.
You'll see — Kids aren't just
kids.

Reprinted by permission from "Gym Shoes
and Irises" (Personalized Tzedakah) Book
Two, Danny Siegel, Town House, 1987

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

L-3