Each year for the last seven years, members of TBI’s Religious School and Congregational community have joined forces to provide holiday gifts for the students at The Herzl School of Excellence in North Lawndale.  

As a bit of history, we were connected to this school through a Canadian philanthropist who also happens to be the largest private collector of Herzl memorabilia in the world. For those who would like to know more about Theodore Herzl, click here. This school is the only public school in the world named for the father of modern Zionism, and when founded in the 1930s was populated by primarily Jewish students. Over time, Herzl and the Lawndale neighborhood have become almost exclusively African-American and the school supports a community of those living below the poverty line.

Prior to the pandemic, not only did we provide these gifts, we connected our older students to the Herzl 7th and 8th graders and did tours together of the Lawndale neighborhood, took a tour of The Holocaust Museum, and hosted the Herzl friends here at TBI for a Superdawg lunch. We hope to continue this piece of the partnership again this year sometime in the spring.

At this time, I am reaching out to you and asking for your help in purchasing holiday gifts for our Herzl students. We have made it easy for you by providing both Target and Amazon links that will ship directly to TBI. There is no need to have anything wrapped. If you would like to take your children shopping, which I understand is a way of embedding the notion of giving to others less fortunate, you are encouraged to do that as well. We do ask that if this is the route you are taking, that you please deliver items to TBI as soon as possible (no later than December 4) as we will need to tally what we still need based on what is “in house”. The online platforms will do this for us.

Below you will find both links. I want to thank you all in advance for your support of this project. We will be speaking to the students about this in class as well and giving them special tzedakah boxes this Sunday that will further embed the idea of giving to even our youngest students.

Here are the lists, which have been specially curated for each grade level and classroom:

Check out my Target list

Check out my list on Amazon

We also need to purchase almost 200 gift cards for the older students and, for this, monetary donations are very much appreciated. Donations of money or items can be brought to the TBI Religious School Office between now and December 4th or by completing the form below.

Thank you in advance for your generosity.