About this resource
What Will You Do? was inspired by the book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, which explores the traditional Jewish values that teach us the responsibility we have for our fellow human beings, in the hope of encouraging more acts of charity and kindness.
What Will You Do? is packed with ready-to-go ideas of real things you can do to make a difference: what to do, who to talk to, and how to contact them, across a range of innovative ways to improve the lives of others.
As well as a number of original ways of giving money, it describes many more ways of giving time. Or rather, taking time. Taking time to consider, before you throw something out, whether it might be of use to someone far away. Taking time to visit someone who may be in need of human contact. Taking time to examine what you have and how you could use it to help others.
Some of these ideas take a few minutes, a phone call or a mouse-click is all that’s needed. Some take a little longer. And some, like ‘adopting’ a family or going on a mission abroad, are more serious time commitments. Every one of them is worth doing.
The ideas take advantage of the many facets of daily life:
- Use your body, by giving blood, by donating hair, or, if you are a nursing mother, by expressing extra milk and donating it.
- Turn a special occasion into an opportunity to help people in difficult circumstances: twin a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, donate birthday presents, or give away your wedding dress.
- Share your Jewish traditions with others to bring them closer together: light candles in a residential home, make up a minyan at a funeral, or distribute challahs.
- Support people in poverty, victims of terror, people who are infirm or in hospital, people suffering other hardships, people who are lonely: people who need something you may be able to provide.
- Stretch your help around the globe: from the people in your shul community to those who are homeless on the streets of your city; from Jews in Israel and Eastern Europe to non-Jews in the UK and in Africa.
So when asked, ‘what will you do?’, you can say: ‘this is what I do, and this is what I will continue to do.’
Andrew Wolfin, February 2006 (Shevat 5766)
This latest version has been produced in 2024 by Nicky Goldman of JVN and Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum of LSJS.
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It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to waste the opportunity.
Ethics of the Fathers 2:21
An old man was walking on the beach at dawn when he noticed a young man picking up starfish stranded by the retreating tide and throwing them back in the sea one by one. He went up to him and asked him why he was doing this. The young man replied that the starfish would die if left exposed to the morning sun.
‘But the beach goes on for miles, and there are thousands of starfish. You will not be able to save them all. How can your effort make a difference?’
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. ‘To this one,’ he said, ‘it makes a difference.’
Retold from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley
We do not have to redeem the world all together in one go. We do it one day at a time, one person at a time, one act at a time. A single life, said the sages, is like a universe. Save a life and you save the world. Change a life and you begin to change the world.
To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Sacks (p.72)
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How to make the most of this ideas bank
Each of the 40 ideas on this page can be done by yourself, in a small group, or as part of an organisation or community.
- Form a social action group in your synagogue, school, community or workplace and use this ideas bank to choose which projects you want to get involved with. By helping and caring for each other and others, your community will be strengthened.
- Bring your family closer by picking some of these things to do together, or alternatively, each family member can choose a different idea.
- A youth movement can incorporate some of the ideas into a social action or chesed (lovingkindness) committee.
- A school can use this ideas bank to plan and launch their charity or social action initiatives for the year.
- Help to create or enhance a Bnei Mitzvah programme. Ask the young people to choose 12 or 13 ideas and challenge them to do them all in the run-up to their Bar or Bat Mitzvah.
- A Jewish society at a mainstream school could choose an idea to learn about and do, and be an example to the rest of the school.
- Challenge yourself: choose the ideas you like most, or that you can do most easily, and start doing them.
The final challenge is to do something regularly. A one-off event is wonderful, but just think how much more you could achieve by making a regular commitment. Whether it is weekly, monthly or annually, turning what you do into a lifetime habit will make the greatest difference.
Each idea links to one or more charities on JVN’s website working in that field, so you can turn the idea into action straight away.
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