Saving, Giving, Spending

With the Jewish HighHoly Days approaching, I have started to think about ways to make them meaningful for the kids. Tonight at dinner we discussed the concept of mitzvah. We decided to do a mitzvah project during the High Holidays. We made a list of possible options and took a vote. The winning idea was one Noah suggested "bring food to people in jail" (he was inspired by this movie last night). Not quite sure how we will work out the details of this mitzvah, but so proud of Noah for coming up with several ideas on his own(his other ideas included sending water to military people and stopping people from killing animals). We have done mitzvah projects in the past (orphanage donations, food pantry donations, holiday gifts for foster children, etc),but this is the first time Noah has been so active in creating a project. Makes me happy to see my children starting to understand and embrace the idea of helping others. I am hopeful that with the start of this new Jewish Year our little family can continue to do at least one mitzvah project a month.

In addition to deciding on our mitzvah project for the High Holy Days, we also created a new set of money jars. We had a similar set at home but needed one for our current stay in Louisiana. I read about this idea several years ago and it has really worked well for us. It is very simple...basically three jars for saving, giving, and spending. We made ours a little more specific to our family needs. Noah wrote the labels for our jars tonight: "Turkey", "Tzedakah" and "To Spend". The Turkey jar is for "saving" for our trip to Turkey. The Tzedakah jar is for "giving". And the "to spend" jar is self-explanatory. I started the jars off tonight with some cash ($1 for the spend and Turkey jars, $5 for the Tzedacha jar). Any lost change goes into the jars and once a week I try to give the kids money to put in the jars.