A quarter of a million students of Israel’s public-religious school network took part in “Good Deeds Day.” MK Shlomo Mola, of Ethiopian descent, takes the opportunity to pay debt of gratitude to the religious school system.
It was not uncommon this week to see, all over the country, school children cleaning public parks and playgrounds, collecting food for the needy, or running after the elderly offering help in carrying their bags.
In Ofakim, children went to the local market to help the elderly - and asked them in return to tell them stories of their lives. In Kfar Saba, 9th-grade girls cleaned a local food distribution center and helped prepare the food. In Ashdod’s Maalot school for the mentally retarded, some children set out to the local park and left it sparkling clean, while others danced and sang for the elderly.
In many other schools, pupils went to supermarkets and asked buyers to donate one item for the needy for the upcoming Passover holiday.
MK Mola
Shlomo Mola, a Kadima-party Knesset Member of Ethiopian descent who generally does not toe a nationalist-religious line, said the Ethiopian community “owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the religious-educational network – a debt that Israeli society is not aware of.”
Mola made the remarks at a special Knesset Education Committee session this week at which the achievements and challenges for religious education were discussed.
Dr. Avraham Lifshitz, head of the Education Ministry’s Religious Education Administration, summed up the activities with satisfaction: “We showed that education is not only comprised of marks and tests, and we are not measured only by our cognitive skills. Every student, no matter who, can excel in helping others, and thus improve his own self-image.”
He added that the response of both parents and children “was very exciting for me, and we hope and believe that these acts of kindness will not be a one-day affair, but rather an ongoing event for the benefit of all of Israel.”
The event was the climax of Religious Education Week commemorating the objectives and accomplishments of the public religious educational network.
More Mola: Where His Daughter Goes to School
“Though I am not formally religious today,” MK Mola said, “I owe a personal debt to the religious education network that took me in when I came to Israel in 1984 after an arduous journey through Sudan. I remember fondly the yeshiva high school in Be’er Sheva in which I studied… The religious education network is the only one that accepted all Ethiopians during the various waves of immigration, without questions.”
After this emotional speech, Mola continued to surprise the participants by saying that his 12-year-old daughter currently studies in a public religious school. “I chose to send her there out of appreciation, as I mentioned, and also because I see an important value in the Jewish character of the State of Israel.”