For many college students, the Sept. 11 terror attacks that rocked the world in 2001 are barely a memory. Incoming freshmen were just 2 or 3 years old when the World Trade Center and U.S. Pentagon were hit.
That’s just one reason that student leaders from the Lubavitch Chabad Jewish Student Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville spent Friday asking their fellow students, faculty, friends and staff to pledge to do a good deed in memory of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.
“I think this is incredibly important,” said 21-year-old Julie Bailes, a University of Florida senior who recalls watching the towers burning on TV while sitting in her first-grade classroom. “A lot of people younger than me don’t have any memories of it; it has no personal connection for them. And that kind of demeans the day and what happened. I think it’s a great idea to turn that around and help make something beautiful from that horrible day.”
The goal of the “Good Deeds Mitzvah Marathon,” according to Rabbi Berl Goldman, executive director of the Tabacinic Lubavitch Chabad Jewish Student Center, which organized and sponsored the event, is to “honor and remember the victims, and turn darkness, negativity and evil into light, goodness and holiness.”
Noting that the “Good Deeds” table was set up in the middle of Turlington Square, a central point on campus that was filled with other groups promoting other events, Goldman said: “There are so many people vying for the students’ attention that for them to stop and spend a few minutes to contemplate what 9/11 was, and then choosing to do a mitzvah” is quite amazing.
Arik Ben-Levy, 20, doesn’t hold memories of that day, but says that’s why it’s even more important that he commits to doing a good deed. “I think in a sense that’s the most important thing—that’s why we are out here. So people don’t forget; so we can remind them that those who lost their lives didn’t lose them in vain, and we can do these kinds of deeds to remember them.”
Among the good deeds students have been choosing are some that are uniquely part of the college experience, including helping a fellow student prepare for an exam, volunteering on campus and calling home more often. Other pledges focused on giving charity, supporting a friend and greater involvement with Jewish life.
‘Random Acts of Kindness’
Chabad at UF, Gainesville, has been hosting the marathon as a way to honor the victims of Sept. 11 for a number of years now. And they are not the only Chabad on Campus to do so. Similar mitzvah events are being hosted by the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University; Chabad at Arizona State University; and the Rohr Chabad House at California State University, Northridge.
Because the message is universal and nondenominational, the event appeals to many people. As Goldman said: “It’s an all-inclusive, universal message of random acts of kindness that everyone is being encouraged to participate in.”
UF sophomore Andrea Murciano added that “it only takes 30 seconds. You write down your name and then the good deed that you will do or have done today, and then put that message on a foam board,” which was hung between a model of the Twin Towers.
Murciano found that once a person pledged their good deed, he or she tended to bring over their friends to sign up for mitzvah as well.
“Even if I wasn’t part of Chabad, I would still come by because it’s 30 seconds to reflect and think,” she said, “and then do good deeds.”
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