Torah Study > Chapter 1: The Call to Action > Case Studies

Case Studies

"Light up the Night"

Your local college Hillel wants to run a “Light up the Night” Hanukkah
fundraising campaign to help provide children with meaningful, quality
education. The fundraising committee has asked for suggestions of
schools that should receive the grants.

These are the suggested schools:

• KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a local charter middle school
that serves needy children who otherwise would go to sub-standard
neighborhood public schools.

• St. Thomas is a private Catholic school that serves children in an
impoverished farming village in Chile, providing them with both a
quality secular education and a Catholic upbringing.

• Rabin School is a local Jewish community day school that provides
Jewish children with quality general and Jewish education. The gift
would go to the scholarship fund.

• Gramercy is a local non-sectarian private school for special needs
children.

• Beit Yeladim is a kindergarten in the Israeli city of Ashkelon that
primarily serves Ethiopian refugees, helping to weave them into
Israeli society.

• Public School #23 is a high school located on an Indian reservation
in Utah. This school needs assistance with its academic programs and
requires support for its alcohol and drug abuse programs.

Discuss the merits of giving to each proposed school. How would you
apportion the $5,000 if each gift had to be [no less than] $1,000?

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Winter Break Travels

You have never been to Israel and a friend asks you to accompany her
on the winter break trip. You haven’t been inside a synagogue since your
Bar-Mitzvah and you are ambivalent and somewhat embarrassed about
Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. You aren’t sure just how much your
Judaism means to you but would welcome fun ways to find out. And this
trip is free!

Meanwhile, you see an ad asking for volunteers to go for a week during
winter break to help rebuild homes with Habitat for Humanity. You and
your friends regreted not doing something significant after recent natural
disasters. This trip has presented you with an opportunity to make up for
that. You have to pay for this trip.

The week-long Habitat for Humanity program coincides with the trip to
Israel so you must choose one or the other. Where do you go? Why?

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