Congregation Or Ami Mitzvah Day
Roll up your sleeves! It's time to get messy and do a mitzvah! Join Or Ami for a day of fun community service projects at Or Ami and all around town.
We will kick off our Mitzvah Day with bagels and a pep rally, followed by awesome team mitzvah projects, including: beautifying Or Ami's grounds with flowers, restoring the natural beauty of the James River, bringing joy and companionship to residents at Beth Sholom Home, restoring the beauty of the historic Evegreen Cemetery, making bag lunches for the homeless, and finishing up the mural on one of the classrooms.
After working with our separate mitzvah teams, we will join back together at 11:45 am for a closing ceremony. Rumor has it, there may be some sweet treats to enjoy after doing all of those mitzvot!
More Information on this Year's Mitzvah Day Projects
Beautify the Or Ami Gardens 
- Bring your family and help keep Or Ami's grounds beautiful by planting flowers in the gardens. Bring your garden gloves and tools. Open for all ages.
- Our frontage to Huguenot Road is the first impression that guest have of Or Ami. Bring your family and help keep Or Ami's tradition of being a warm and welcoming community alive. You will be planting succulents around the Or Ami sign near the road. Bring your garden gloves and tools. Open for all ages.
- One wall of our sanctuary is solid glass and offers an amazing connection to nature when we pray or otherwise gather. Bring your Windex and paper towels and clean our sanctuary glass. Open to all ages.
- Help Caleb Reiner and David Goldsmith run a bingo game at Beth Shalom. Volunteers will call out numbers, check cards, and assist memory-impaired residents so they can participate.
- We'll be making a stack of bag lunches to be given out to those in need. We'll also create cards to go into each lunch to show that we repsect and love our fellow citizens.
- From Or Ami we'll carpool to Evergreen Cemetery where we will be clearing brush around tombstones and doing various grounds keeping activities at the historic Evergreen Cemetery. Evergreen Cemetery, established in 1897, is the resting place for our nation's most prominent African American leaders of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Participants should be able to do light to heavy gardening and weeding. We'll meet at Or Ami, car pool to the Evergreen Cemetery. Bring your straight rakes (not leaf racks), clippers, manual hedge trimmers, garden gloves and eye protection. Be a part of this 2 ˝ year effort to beautify the resting place of Maggie Walker. Open to all age 12 or older.
- James River Park is one of Richmond’s most popular destinations. In May, river cleanups are their big focus to prepare the park for its busiest season. Come armed with trash bags, plastic gloves and bug spray to help clean the trails and make it a welcoming destination. We'll meet at Or Ami, and car pool to the river after our kick off event.
- Satisfy your compulsion to clean and organize!
- Last year we started painting a mural in one of our classrooms. This year Joel Moses, Or Ami's artist in residence, will work with a group of Or Amians to complete the mural.