On Sunday 22 November, we’re planting bulbs that won’t flower until spring, and everyone in Brighton and Hove is invited to help.
There is something quietly hopeful about pushing a bulb into cold November soil. You can’t see the result. You just have to trust that if enough of us do it, the ground will be bright in a few months’ time. Mitzvah Day works the same way. This year BNJC is taking part in Mitzvah Day and everyone is welcome.
So, what is Mitzvah Day?
A mitzvah is a commandment, and in everyday life the word has come to mean a good deed. Mitzvah Day takes that idea and gives it a date: one day each November when people stop talking about the world they’d like to live in and spend a few hours building a little of it.
It began with one woman and one idea. After joining a community day of good deeds at a synagogue in Los Angeles, Laura Marks CBE brought the concept home and launched Mitzvah Day in the UK in 2005. That first event drew around 100 people to a hotel in Belsize Park. By 2022, 45,000 volunteers were taking part across 40 countries. Mitzvah Day describes itself as the UK’s largest faith-led day of social action, and since 2008 it has welcomed people of every faith and none.
It grew because the idea is so simple. Nobody can fix everything. Everybody can do something.
A day for all of Brighton
Brighton has a reputation for open arms and open minds, and Mitzvah Day at BNJC is built in that spirit. You don’t need to be Jewish. You don’t need to be religious, or a regular at BNJC, or to know a single person there. You don’t need to know one end of a bulb from the other.
Come as you are: with your children, your neighbours, your friends, your colleagues, your book club. If you live, work or study in Brighton and Hove, this day is for you. And there is a different kind of energy when a whole city’s worth of people does something good side by side. You find yourself kneeling in the mud next to someone you’ve never met. A teenager shows a grandparent how to get the bulb the right way up. Someone hands you a hot drink and the conversation goes somewhere you didn’t expect.
That’s what we’re hoping for on the 22nd: not a list of good deeds ticked off, but a morning that reminds us who we are when we show up for one another.
In experienced hands
Stuart Diamond, who leads our community engagement team, used to run Mitzvah Day nationwide, so he has seen what makes a day like this work at national scale. Sheerelle Marks has been on the ground at BNJC for the last three years, running our local event and shaping it into what it is today.
Between them, they know how to make a morning like this feel welcoming, well organised and genuinely useful.
Mitzvah Day now has JW3, our friends in London, as its national home, and we’re proud to be taking part alongside them.
Your morning at BNJC
Get your hands dirty
From 10:00 we’ll be planting bulbs outdoors across the campus. It’s simple, satisfying work, and in the spring you’ll be able to point at a patch of colour and say you helped it grow. Children, grandparents and everyone in between are welcome.
It’s November on the south coast, so dress for the weather. Wellies and garden gloves are your friends. If the rain comes, we have a backup plan: biodegradable pot packs, so the planting carries on regardless.
Don’t just meet the charities. Do something for them.
At 11:00 our charity fair opens, with organisations that do vital work all year round:
- Shoresh
- Helping Hands
- MDA
- Jewish Care
- Grief Encounter
And we’re adding to this list as more charities join us.
This isn’t a fair where you collect a leaflet and drift on. You’ll find out what each charity does, and then you’ll be able to do something for them, there and then. You’ll leave having helped, not just heard about it, and perhaps with a cause that becomes part of your year, not just your Sunday.
Warm up, on us
There’ll be a coffee and soup station running through the morning, completely free. Nobody should volunteer on an empty stomach, and a warm bowl of soup is the best way we know to turn a crowd of helpers into a community.
The plan for the day
10:00 — Campus opens, bulb planting begins
11:00 — Charity fair opens
13:00 — Everything wraps up
Come and make the day count
Bring your family. Bring a friend. Bring someone who has never set foot in BNJC and doesn’t know what to expect. Come for an hour or stay for the whole morning. Leave with muddy knees, a full stomach and the quiet satisfaction of knowing that, come spring, something you did is going to bloom all over Brighton.
See you on the 22nd.
Register for Mitzvah Day
It’s free. Please let us know you’re coming, and who you’re bringing, so there are enough bulbs, coffee and soup to go round.
Background on Mitzvah Day’s history and growth from mitzvahday.org.uk.