Children in ‘Mitzvathon’ Learn the Art of Doing Good

To the list of telethons and marathons and walkathons, add another:

“Mitzvathon.”

On Saturday, 9-year-old Danny Benjamini and 10-year-old Eric Stern weren’t just making greeting cards for the sick and potting plants for the elderly; they were learning the meaning of Mitzva--doing good deeds.

“It’s about helping people,” Eric offered. “You write letters and visit people in the hospital.”

“You give money and food to the homeless. You do what you can to help,” Danny piped in.

The boys were among hundreds of children in mid-Wilshire, Santa Monica, the South Bay and the San Fernando Valley taking part Sunday in the Mitzvathon, a festival put on by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

While the children were making T-shirts, quilts and get-well cards, the adults were holding the council’s 19th annual Super Sunday phone-a-thon, the organization’s main fund-raiser in which 5,000 volunteers solicit phone contributions in a one-day effort to raise $5 million to support the United Jewish Fund.

For the 11-hour event on Sunday, about 120 volunteers with the San Fernando Valley Alliance worked the phones, calling members for pledges.

At the West Valley Jewish Community Center, Laura Klein, 10, a North Hollywood Girl Scout, was one of the children assembling pieces of a quilt for a group that cares for babies with AIDS, and making shalach manot baskets of food as gifts for recent Russian immigrants for the Jewish holiday Purim, early next month.

Helping someone else, Laura was finding, is “a lot of fun.”