When most students were sleeping in on Presidents’ Day weekend, a group of young people from Temple Judea’s religious school were up early and in the fields — and proud of it.
Temple Judea religious school students and families spent their day off from religious school gleaning tomatoes at a farm in Delray Beach, with all produce donated directly to the Palm Beach County Food Bank. The hands-on mitzvah project was a powerful reminder that a day without class can still be a day full of learning.
Gleaning — the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after the main harvest — is far from a modern concept. It is rooted in the Torah itself. In Leviticus 19:9-10, God commands the Israelites not to harvest the corners of their fields or gather what falls to the ground, but to leave it for the poor and the stranger. The book of Ruth offers one of the most beloved illustrations of this commandment in action. What Temple Judea’s students did was nothing less than that same ancient tradition, brought to life in the fields of South Florida.
“This is exactly the kind of experience we want our students to have,” said Rabbi Wendy Pein. “It’s one thing to read about tikkun olam in the classroom — it’s another to actually live it. Our students didn’t just learn about gleaning from the Torah, they became part of that story.”
The Palm Beach County Food Bank serves tens of thousands of families across the region, and every tomato picked made a difference.
