PHOTOS BY BILL HANSEN

Scattering Blessings

Adam Milgrom's bar mitzvah. party was pretty corny.

JULIE EDGAR SENIOR WRITER

A

dam Milgrom knew it would be fun, but he
had no idea if his friends would think so.
At least they were curious: Very few
turned down his bar mitzvah party invita-

tion.
Last Saturday, 55 friends, plus a smattering of
parents, boarded a rented bus and headed for
Gleaners Community Food Bank in Detroit, where
they sorted and packaged corn and other foodstuffs
that will be distributed to some of the more than
300 agencies the food bank serves in the Detroit
area.
After they organized themselves in assembly
line order, the teens seemed to really like the work,
said Adam's mother, Susie Sills Milgrom.
"They were very pumped up. I didn't see one kid
who did not get into it," she said.
After a few hours at Gleaners, the group re-
boarded the bus and headed for Camp Tamarack
in Ortonville for a daylong adventure that includ-
ed a ropes course and other skills-sharpening ex-
ercises. Dinner, Havdalah and dancing followed.
The guests got home around midnight.
Adam, whose bar mitzvah was held March 8
at Congregation Shaarey Zedek B'nai Israel Cen-
ter, said his mom gave him the idea for the vol-
unteer party. The entire family — Adam's mom,
three sisters and father Steven — had worked at
Gleaners through Volunteer Impact, a private ser-

vice corps that provides volunteers to several hun-
dred agencies in the metro area.
"I had a lot of fun then," said Adam, a seventh-
grader at the Birmingham Covington School. "Then
my mom mentioned to us that it might be a good
idea. I thought it would bring out more of the mean-
ing of being a bar mitzvah than reading your stuff
and having a party."
Steve Milgrom said when he and his wife took
their family to Gleaners the first time, the children
were surprised by the amount of surplus food that
would be wasted without food banks like Glean-
ers. Then they saw people picking out even bad
surplus food from a Dumpster.
"It was really an eye-opener for them," Mr. Mil-
grom said.
Volunteer Impact founder Elizabeth Kanter
Groskind said her organization is beginning to tap
into the rich vein of potential volunteers among
the young and reaching out to synagogues that may
be interested in a different kind of mitzvah pro-
gram.
"Our whole push for the last year or so has been
for families to volunteer together and get the kids
involved," she said. "It's clear if we don't get kids
involved in the community mindset early on, we
never will." El

Bar mitzvah boy Adam Milgrom packs corn.

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