To become a bat mitzvah means becoming a responsible young adult. The process of preparing to become a bat mitzvah has made me feel more responsible for my community. I plan to do mitzvot all through my life. When I complete a mitzvah I feel like I am making the world a better place. Even though my acts are small they have a significant impact. I believe if we all share our passions with our community the world would be a better place. I plan on being a madricha, a teaching assistant, in religious school when I am in the eighth grade. I hope to also be a part of LIBERTY, our teenage youth group.

To be Jewish means being part of a community and helping that community. As my way of helping our community I chose, for my mitzvah project to collect books for Promising Pages. Promising Pages is a local nonprofit that has made a commitment to offer all kids a fair shot at life by giving them the tools they need to succeed at an early ago. In addition, I am reading to the elderly who are blind or who have poor eye sight. I have always loved to read and when I learned that some people don’t have the same opportunities that I do, I was sad and I wanted to do something about it. I fulfilled the mitzvot of helping the elderly and those with disabilities and teaching children.

Anya is the daughter of Talli and John. She is the granddaughter of Esther Pollock of Beer Sheva, Joshua and Michal Aizenman of Los Angeles, and Mary Dippold of Bow, New Hampshire. She is the sister of Sasha and Ethan.

Words of Mazel Tov can be sent to Tdippold@gmail.com.