Steve Weinzimmer would like nothing better than to do away with Mitzvah Day, an annual project of Temple Isaiah in Lafayette. As chair of the Reform synagogue’s social action committee, Weinzimmer has organized and overseen the event for several years.
Sunday’s Mitzvah Day, he said, will focus on local projects that have the potential to engage people for the long term.
“We’re trying to create continual volunteer opportunities with these charitable agencies,” said Weinzimmer, who attends Isaiah with his wife and three children. “In fact, we’d like to make Mitzvah Day obsolete, and replace it with monthly or weekly events.”
Isaiah has been holding annual Mitzvah Days since 1995, with projects ranging from cleaning Oakland’s Knowland Park Zoo to doing maintenance tasks at social-service agencies.
This year’s event will also differ from those in the past because it’s taking place following the recent terrorist attacks. Acknowledging the loss of life on the East Coast, Weinzimmer said, “Most of our brains went elsewhere for a couple of weeks, given the events of Sept. 11.”
Even given the enormity of the losses, Weinzimmer is focusing his efforts on activities that have the potential for continued involvement. “This year we’re trying to choose more activities that have an impact on needy folk, and less of an impact as ‘people absorbers,'” he said.
People absorbers? When asked to explain, Weinzimmer gave the example of cleaning Lafayette’s reservoir, a project in which congregants scour the water for trash. “It’s a good deed, and gives people an opportunity to go out on a rowboat and get some exercise, but ultimately, people pick up a few pieces of trash, and then they’re done for the year. This year, I’d like to get away from that.”
To that end, he has chosen programs such as the Xenophon organization, which takes developmentally disabled children horseback riding in order to instill trust and improve their motor skills. Isaiah congregants will help paint the organization’s horse corrals and do some general landscaping.
While he expects the blood drive to be popular this year for obvious reasons, Weinzimmer is also trying to coax congregants into leaving their “comfort spheres,” a task that he readily admits is difficult for people under most circumstances. But the Moraga resident wryly noted that charitable opportunities don’t really abound in the generally affluent suburbs of Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda. That’s one of the main reasons Temple Isaiah congregants are being urged to help do maintenance work at Richmond’s Coronado Elementary School, for example.
“Inner-city schools are kind of a tough sell, and people are much more comfortable helping out in their area than they are with going through a tunnel into an area with a different socioeconomic profile. It can make people very nervous.”
With the Mitzvah Day turnout expected to exceed 500 people, Weinzimmer is hoping that at least a handful — and hopefully many more — will venture beyond their comfort zones.
“There’s great difficulty with a project like this, and you hope to get 20 people, but you settle for seven,” he said, referring to projects such as the one in Richmond, where the school is in dire need of a paint job and painting equipment. “It’s easy to throw your hands up in the air, and say that it’s too much of a hard sell. I don’t really know how to change people’s world views, but I think the easiest way is doing it brick by brick –literally.”
Referring to pop culture artist Andy Warhol’s theory that everyone will have 15 minutes of fame at some point in time, Weinzimmer planned to use the two minutes allotted him during Yom Kippur services to rally support for his projects.
“I’m not trying to get on a soapbox, but doing mitzvahs really helps create a connection with God,” he said.
“And with what’s been going on the past couple of weeks, there ís no better way of trying to make that connection than by helping out locally. We needed each other’s help even before the sky fell.”