With all the worldwide goodwill pouring out towards Eretz Yisroel, three bochurim created a place for people to connect, support, and mainly- do good.
It was the week after Simchas Torah, and as the IDF was rapidly mobilizing, so were shluchim, bochurim, and Jews of all walks of life from around the world. Everyone wanted to do his or her part in joining the efforts in uniting Am Yisroel and ensuring a victorious outcome in Eretz Yisroel. For Jews around the world, this meant doing extra mitzvos, or sponsoring other Yidden’s efforts to increase in Torah and mitzvos.
There was an outpouring of generosity in sponsoring tefillin and mezuzahs, candlesticks, pushkas, and other items. With all of these resources now available, there was a need for someone to connect the funds donated, with the Yidden who were looking to donate, and people willing to receive.
Realizing the tremendous chessed going on around the world, Amitai Coplon set out to create a centralized place to find resources for people willing to start a new mitzvah or people willing to go out and find someone who was.
Together with bochur Shloimy Galperin, he created a central database to connect people to stores where they can buy Judaica items, places they could learn Torah classes, causes they can donate to, and people who can help sponsor them if they need it.
“I looked at the current mivtzoim materials and realized that while many encourage ma’ase bepoel, they lack the actual resources to accomplish that, so we set out to solve the problem” said Coplon, a current Morristown semicha bochur.
A few very late nights later, in time for Friday mivtzoim, they produced a single sided sheet with several QR codes linking to different resources and a few words on each of the mitzvos highlighted.
Taking inspiration from the mivtzoim materials of previous generations, and the canon of Torah insights from Chabad.org, Shloimy got to work developing meaningful and chassidus-infused texts for each featured mitzvah.
A few iterations later, a final brochure version was created. In order to save brochure space and allow a virtual experience, Levik Shmotkin joined the team, developing a clean, beautiful website with pages for each Mivtzah with their respective resources.
Since the website went up and the flyer was designed, over 10,000 brochures have been printed and the website has been used by people around the world, from Singapore to Ireland. One Challah bake in Australia even printed out 1,000 flyers for just their event alone!
Thanks to generous sponsors, there are currently several thousand flyers available in Crown Heights ready for pickup, perfect for Chanukah mivtzoim. The files are also available in letter and A4 for local printing around the world.
Check out the website, access files, and get in touch about pickup or customization options at DoMitzvot.org.
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