At first glance, the hallway of Brandeis Hillel Day School’s new campus in San Francisco looks like it’s gone Vegas.
Kids and teachers stroll by, occasionally stopping to plunk bright-colored poker chips in one of five goldfish bowls sitting atop turquoise-covered display tables.
Appearances notwithstanding, this is no youthful foray into gambling.
The chips and bowls are nuts-and-bolts tools for a schoolwide lesson in tzedakah.
The recently completed Tamchui project was expected to raise nearly $7,000 for five public-service organizations — and to turn 335 youngsters in grades kindergarten through eight into “lifelong philanthropists.”
The exercise is based on the medieval Jewish tradition of a tamchui or a communal plate that was passed from one home to the next. Poor people took from the plate while the better off gave to it.
“The best way to have children learn about the world is to have them actively engage in it,” said Chaim Heller, the head of campus who brought the idea to Brandeis. “We teach children there’s poverty in the world and they have an obligation to eliminate it.”
This fall, a parent and staff committee researched and selected four agencies they wanted to support. The school’s seventh-graders picked the final recipient, a San Francisco shelter for homeless families called Raphael House.
Donations came from the seventh-grade class, which for several years has annually contributed gift money from students’ b’nai mitzvah to a charitable cause, and from parents and students schoolwide.
“The smallest donation came to me yesterday,” Heller said, proudly displaying an envelope containing $4.25 raised by a weekend lemonade stand staffed by first-graders Shayna Alcheck and Caleb Chertow. The project “became very real,” Heller said. “Every child is talking about it around the dinner table with their family.”
Over a five-day period in December, students, teachers and other staff decided how to allocate their communal funds by placing poker chips in the bowls representing the charities of their choice.
The other groups selected to receive aid are Locks of Love, a national group that provides wigs to children who have lost their hair through chemotherapy or a medical condition called alopecia; WildCare, a Marin-based animal rescue center; Jerusalem Circus, a performing troupe that promotes coexistence between Israeli and Palestinian children; and National Council for the Child, an agency providing counselors to traumatized Israeli youngsters.
“That’s my favorite,” said seventh-grader Todd Albert, pointing to the bowl for the Jerusalem Circus. “They learn to work and cooperate by trapeze.”
Seventh-grader Colleen Lai said she was splitting her chips between Locks of Love and Raphael House. “I like Locks of Love,” said the 12-year-old. “It’s hard to imagine myself with no hair. They really raise the self-confidence of a child.”
Posters and student letters describing each program were posted on the corridor wall. “I put my chip in WildCare because it is good to save animals. And your name is cool,” wrote one student named Eli.
Heller said the daily vote totals were charted and analyzed by students. Some adjusted their donations after the tallies were made.
For instance, after WildCare pulled in a majority of the red chips cast on Monday, students “realized we have to give to people, too” and switched allegiances in the yellow, black, purple and orange chips they deposited over the remaining days of the week.
For seventh-graders, the program is the start of a yearlong social justice curriculum that will include volunteering this winter at the San Francisco Food Bank and other agencies serving the poor.
“Everyone says we should do stuff to have a better world,” said 12-year-old Rachel Ungar. “Finally now we feel we can make that happen by donating to this charity.”
Heller said the project “has made all of us stop, pause and realize that being part of a Jewish organization means working on poverty, working on repairing the world.”
Organizations were selected based on such factors as how appropriate their mission was to young children and how significant the school’s gift would be to the effort.
“A thousand dollars for Raphael House can make a difference,” noted Heller. When the final tallies were made, WildCare received $1,690, Jerusalem Circus, $1,416, Raphael House, $1,380, Locks of Love, $1,076 and National Council, $1,036.
Heller said he was “blown away” when he first learned of the tamchui project at a Jewish educators’ conference this summer. The program was launched by the Rashi School, a Jewish day school in Newton, Mass.
Heller is so enthusiastic about the effort that he will be discussing it at a March conference of the California Association of Independent Schools.
“Our goal is to spread the word,” Heller said.