Why Neshamah Partners With SOS Children’s Village for Our Annual Mitzvah Fair

The Kids Are Right Here

When we started planning the Spring Mitzvah Fair, the most important question wasn’t logistical. It was moral.

Who do we show up for? And why?

We could have chosen a cause far away, and there is nothing wrong with serving needs on the other side of the world. Jewish tradition does not draw a circle around the local. But there is also something irreplaceable about looking at someone and recognizing yourself. About realizing that the child who needs you is not somewhere else. They are right here. In our neighborhood. Twenty minutes from our homes. That is why we chose SOS Children’s Village in Coconut Creek.

What SOS Children’s Village Does

SOS Children’s Village is a residential care model for children who cannot safely live with their biological families. At the Coconut Creek campus, children in foster care live in family-style homes with trained house parents who provide stability, routine, and love in what may be the most turbulent chapter of a child’s life.

These children have often experienced trauma, neglect, or loss that most of us cannot fully imagine. They have been removed from the only family they knew. They are navigating a system that, however well-intentioned, cannot always replace what was taken from them.

What SOS provides, and what relatively few child welfare programs manage to provide consistently, is normalcy. Real homes. Real meals together. Consistent caregiving adults. The opportunity to go to school, make friends, play sports, do art, and simply be a kid.

What We Noticed When We First Went

The first time our Neshamah families walked onto the campus, something happened that I did not fully anticipate.

Our kids looked at the SOS kids and saw themselves.

Same age. Same interests. Same nervous energy about meeting someone new. The SOS children were not abstractions, distant recipients of charity from a safe distance. They were kids who wanted to play soccer, who had opinions about which craft project was cooler, who warmed up fast when they realized our families had genuinely come to be with them and not just for them.

That recognition, the moment of seeing yourself in someone else, is one of the most powerful experiences Jewish education can create. It is the lived meaning of the Torah’s teaching: do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt. We know what vulnerability feels like. So we do not look away from it.

Why Foster Care, Specifically

Children in foster care represent one of the most underserved and overlooked populations in our community. Their needs don’t always generate the loudest attention, but they are profound and constant.

In Florida, thousands of children are in foster care at any given time. Many will age out of the system without ever being adopted or reunified with family. The research on outcomes for children who age out without permanent connections is sobering: significantly higher rates of homelessness, unemployment, and instability than their peers.

They need more than resources. They need relationships. They need adults and young people who choose to show up. Repeatedly. Joyfully. Without an agenda other than: today, you matter to us.

That is what we bring to SOS. And that is what our children carry home.

The Neshamah Institute is a dues-free Jewish community serving Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and greater Palm Beach County. Our community programming is guided by the belief that Jewish values must be lived, not only studied.