Bat mitzvah girls demonstrate Israeli moral strength with hair donations - opinion

Think of a 12-year-old girl. What does she want? What is her world made up of? A 12-year-old girl dreams about who she might be when she grows up – big, innocent, and unlimited dreams. She dreams of having fun with her friends; celebrating her bat-mitzvah, perhaps with a big party; maybe she dreams of having beautiful clothes. 

For the past decade, as it turns out, what 12-year-old girls in Israel think about is donating their hair to make wigs for cancer patients.

Over the past 10 years, thousands upon thousands of 12-year-old girls have donated 30-cm. lengths, and more, of their hair. In fact, for the past three years, the most common age group for those donating hair to Zichron Menachem through our Power of Braid project is made up of bat-mitzvah girls. They make sure to grow their hair long in advance of their celebration in order to cut it and donate it on their big day in front of their family and friends, many of whom then also decide to donate their hair, there and then, having been inspired by one amazing 12-year-old girl and her dream. 

Just a few months ago a group of four 12-year-old girls came to Zichron Menachem and donated a total of 1.5 meters of healthy, strong hair to be made into beautiful wigs in our salon. I met them and challenged them by asking if they weren’t a little sad at walking around with such short hair? They answered me, with full pride and confidence, that in their class it was rather the girls with long hair who were sad – they were just waiting for the day that they could donate theirs too.

Holding onto the positive things

In these difficult dark days that we’re experiencing in Israel, we have to grab onto the positive things that we see people around us doing all the time. There is solidarity in our society, people coming together to do good, and for me, it’s represented by these young girls, who, just at the age when they’re becoming young women, are willingly donating 30 cm. of their precious hair for the benefit of other young girls whom they’ve never even met. 

I feel it’s significant to note that this is the 12th year of the Power of Braid project which we’ve been proudly carrying out together with the hair brand Pantene. During these years the number of hair donations has increased over a thousand-fold and during that time we have been able to make a new, natural wig for every single cancer patient who has requested one, from all over the country, from two years of age and all the way up to the oldest recipient so far, who has celebrated her 91st birthday!

As this project reaches its own bat-mitzvah, we treasure the mitzvot that we have been able to do and, even more, those that we have given others the opportunity to do. Tens of thousands of people have opened their hearts and donated their own “power of braid.” They encourage us and fill us with hope.

We had dreamt of having a big bat-mitzvah party, but we’ve chosen to wait with our celebration while we hope for better times for Am Yisrael. 

Perhaps this too, is symbolic. The big celebration is on hold, but the acts of kindness continue on. At the end of the day, it’s these little kindnesses that make the biggest difference in the world. A 12-year-old girl can have her big party but what she’ll take with her into her future are the small acts of kindness she does for others, acts that spotlight the greatness of Am Yisrael throughout the darkness of our history.

The writer is founder and chairman of Zichron Menachem. To learn more about donating hair, please reach out to: zichron.org/en/client/tzvi