When planning a simcha, one of the first items of business is picking out the invitations. Often, these simple cards are the first things a potential guest associates with your big day and they truly set the tone for the occasion.

When Valerie Habif began planning for her son Keith's Bar Mitzvah, she decided that she wanted to put the money she had set aside for invitations to good use. Rather than just buying the invites from a store and helping a salesperson earn a hefty commission, Habif approached the Federation about designing an invitation that would benefit the Israel Emergency Campaign.

"Every parent caught up in the celebration of a B'nai Mitzvah has budgeted funds to cover the cost of the invitation, which can easily be upwards of a thousand dollars. These funds will ordinarily be spent on paper, the ultimate destination for which can only be the waste basket," notes Habif. "With this new effort, families will now have the opportunity to donate these very same funds directly to Israel. No monies are diverted from other charitable causes and the family gets the benefit of a tax deduction as well! Of course, even more importantly, parents now have the opportunity of starting off the celebration of their child's accomplishment with a redirected focus on the true meaning of mitzvot."

Two templates created by Federation may be used for invitations for virtually any occasion – be it a bris, birthday, engagement party or baby naming. Each design features a colorful graphic of the old city of Jerusalem with a quote from Anne Frank on the back that reads, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." The back of the invitation also states that a donation has been given to tFederation in the recipient's honor. Text for the invitations is customized by the sender and funds can be designated to either the Campaign for Community Needs or the Israel Emergency Campaign.

Best of all, with each invitation, families are expressing their commitment to fulfilling the mitzvah of tzedakah.

"This is the chance to communicate something very clearly," says Habif. "This is a meaningful opportunity that really gets to the heart and soul of what a simcha really is."

To order invitations, please contact Nancy Goldstein at Canterbury Press at (770)952-8309 or ngoldstein@caterburypress.net.   For more information, please call Elise Cohen at (404) 870-1628 or contact her at ecohen@jfga.org.