What Your Family Will Actually Do at the Mitzvah Fair

A Morning That Feels Different

Let me tell you what a Spring Mitzvah Fair morning looks like. Not the philosophical version. The practical, on-the-ground version.

You arrive at SOS Children’s Village in Coconut Creek. The campus feels like a neighborhood: houses, yards, basketball courts, green space. The kids who live there have been told someone is coming today, and you can feel the energy of that anticipation.

And then it begins.

Sports Activities

Part of the morning is structured around sports. Our families and students lead and participate alongside SOS kids in soccer, basketball, and other games that need no explanation: just a ball, some energy, and the willingness to play.

What happens in those games is not complicated, but it is not nothing either. A Neshamah kid and an SOS kid are on the same team, working toward the same thing, competing and laughing and high-fiving. The categories, foster kid, synagogue kid, kid from Boca, kid from Coconut Creek, dissolve faster than you expect.

Kids are remarkably good at this. They don’t need to process what is happening. They just play.

Craft Activities

The other part of the morning involves hands-on crafts: projects that our families help lead and do alongside the SOS children. The crafts are chosen to be inclusive, engaging, and genuinely fun. Not ‘here is a thing we made for you’ but ‘let’s make something together.’

There is something about making something with your hands alongside someone else that creates connection faster than almost anything else. You’re focused on the same thing. You’re asking each other questions. Is this right? What color should we use? Those questions become conversation, and conversation becomes relationship, even in a single morning.

Our students and families often say the craft portion is where they feel closest to the SOS kids. Where the initial nervousness fully melts away.

What Makes This Different From Other Service Days

A lot of service experiences are parallel: you do something for someone while they watch or receive. You pack food boxes. You sort donations. You clean a space. All of those things matter.

The Mitzvah Fair is different because it is mutual. Our kids and the SOS kids are doing the same things, side by side. There is no benefactor-and-recipient dynamic. There is just: we are all here, playing and making things together, and by the end of the morning something will have passed between us.

That mutuality is the point. It is how we teach the difference between charity and justice. Charity happens at a distance. Justice happens when you are in the same room, and you see each other clearly, and you do something together.

Who Should Come

Who Should Come

All Neshamah families and students are welcome. This is not only for B’nai Mitzvah-age children, though it is a wonderful service experience for students at that stage of preparation.

Younger children can participate alongside parents. Older students often step into informal leadership roles, helping guide activities, connecting one-on-one with SOS kids, modeling the behavior we are trying to teach.

And adults? Adults often find this day surprisingly moving. There is something about watching your own child choose to be kind, genuinely and without prompting, that stays with you.

What to Bring

• Comfortable, activity-appropriate clothing (sports and crafts; dress to move)
• Closed-toe shoes or sneakers
• Water bottle
• Sunscreen and a hat if you run warm
• Your whole self, fully present

Questions? Reach us at info@niboca.org or call 561-368-1199. Rabbi Amy and the Neshamah team are always happy to talk.