On a typical flight from Denver to St. Louis, passengers barely have enough time to digest the Wall Street Journal or finish perusing the latest copy of Vanity Fair.
Add the excited chatter of 61 Colorado youths traveling to NFTY’s regional winter chavurah, and time itself accelerates out of existence.
But on Jan. 15, NFTYites from Temples Sinai and Emanuel put aside frivolity to focus on victims of the catastrophic earthquake that leveled Haiti a mere three days earlier.
By the time they landed in St. Louis, they had raised hundreds of dollars for Haitian relief — from every passenger on that plane.
A few days prior to the trip, Sinai youth groupers Sarah Korn and Ana Dodson called Sinai youth director Kara Lampe with a social action project to raise funds for Haiti.
“They were interested in doing a mini-social action project with Colorado NFTYites at the check-in area at DIA,” Lampe says. “They hoped that the teens would give whatever change they had in their pockets.”
When that setting proved too chaotic, Sarah and Ana decided to wait until all the kids had boarded the plane, which carried 130 passengers.
Once the seatbelt lights went off, the young women stood up and encouraged the Jewish teens to donate money to Haiti at 33,000 feet.
Flight attendants who overheard the conversation obtained permission for Sarah and Ana to use the loudspeaker to address the entire plane.
Passengers unhooked their iPods, laptops and assorted distractions to learn about NIFTY, Judaism, social action and tikkun olam.
Sarah and Ada explained “how lucky they were to be attending a wonderful weekend with friends, but that they could not forget what was happening in Haiti,” Lampe says.
Then they walked up and down the aisle asking people to donate whatever they could afford.
Instead of turning away, passengers opened their purses and wallets.
Within five minutes, Sarah and Ana had collected $311 –– from teens, passengers, even flight attendants.
Lampe submitted the donations to the Union of Reform Judaism’s online website for Haitian relief.
“The generosity of those passengers was amazing,” Sarah says. “They didn’t have to give a couple of strange teenagers as much money as they did. But they respected what we were trying to do.”
While tikkun olam is a fundamental Jewish value, Sarah feels that there’s “something special when young people stand up and act on it.”