Tzedakah and Community Service

"Tzedakah is one of the three pillars on which the world rests." (Pirke Avot 1:2)

"It is not what one says, but what one does, that makes all the difference." (Pirke Avot 1:17)

As part of its academic program, HDS fosters responsibility and social commitment through community outreach programs and charitable giving.

• Students visit seniors (see slideshow here).
• The HDS Student Council raised funds to create a special sitting area in the school where seniors and students can mingle, play chess or schmooze.
• Students raise funds for community organizations including the Jewish Federation, Food Gatherers, Alpha House, Jewish Family Service, and other local charities. Students have raised money  for tsunami relief and for victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
• For the past several years, the HDS Student Council has organized food and clothing drives for Ann Arbor homeless shelters.
• Each year on Rainbow Day, children bring in stuffed animals that are subsequently donated to a children's charity.
• HDS has worked with the Black/Jewish Coalition, the Brookhaven Manor Retirement Home, the Hunger Coalition, and many other service organizations.

Our Sages considered tzedakah one of the most important, and perhaps the most important, mitzvah (B. Talmud B. Batra 9a). Graduates leave HDS with a firm foundation in this principle, and with a correspondingly strong sense of their obligation to the local and wider communities of which they are members.