The Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life and Hillel at Binghamton will sponsor its annual Mitzvah Marathon Fair in remembrance of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks for members of the campus community on Sept. 13.
As in years past, thousands of students, faculty and staff are expected to participate in the daylong event, which is designed to offer opportunities to perform good deeds in memory of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as all victims of terror.
They include contributions to charity, making quilts for underprivileged children, donating food to CHOW, designing New Year’s greeting cards for soldiers on the front or ‘get well’ cards for children in local hospitals, joining a bone-marrow national registry drive and/or a blood drive sponsored by the Red Cross.
Participants will fill out a form documenting their good deed, which will be attached to a picture of a victim of 9/11 and strung along a memory wall erected on campus.
Since this event began at Binghamton University in 2002 as a way to mark the first anniversary of 9/11, campuses including the University of Florida, Carnegie Mellon University, Arizona State University and dozens more across the country have replicated the Mitzvah Marathon.
“With the passage of time, it is increasingly important that we raise awareness concerning this national tragedy,” said Rabbi Levi Slonim, director of programming and development of Chabad at Binghamton. “Most of the incoming students were not even born in 2001; this kind of program and others like it gives them pause to consider the event from an adult vantage point.
“As the Rebbe would always say, ‘A little light dispels a lot of darkness,’ ” said Slonim. “This program is designed to give participants a practical way in which they can mark the memory of those who perished and add more positivity and light to this world.”
