by Jodi Bodner DuBow

It is a cold wet day in mid-winter, but the smiles on the faces of the seventh-grade girls at Hebrew Academy of Long Beach (HALB) belie the chill. With every word of praise Yenty Frost showers upon them, their smiles grow a little bigger and they sit up a bit straighter. They are happy because they’re feeling good about a chessed project that has brought cheer to ailing boys and girls.

“I’ve distributed all your fun booklets,” says Yenty. She is referring to homemade activity books that the girls had created and given to hospitalized kids. Armed with just the first name, sex, and age of the recipients, the girls had designed mazes, puzzles, connect-the-dots, and other activities. These were bound in colorful folders and sent to young patients.

“You took away their pain,” Yenty continues, “and I’m very proud of you.”

While the HALB students do not know the specific recipients of their handiwork, they do know that this is a chessed project to which they relate. Student Allie Wallin says: “It was great working on this project, because you know someone is going to like it.” Adds her teacher, Rachel Roseman, “The students could have simply bought activity booklets in a store to send to the hospital, but this was a labor of love.”

Girls visit a patient in Boston Children’s Hospital. The visit was just what she needed. The nurse could not get over the great mood the patient was in.

The indomitable Yenty, a resident of Monsey, New York, was a teacher when she began linking sick children with healthy ones, in 1993. “I had met a woman running a support group for parents whose children were seriously ill. My question to her was, ‘Who supports the children?’ It turned out to be a question that changed my life.”

Recalls Yenty: “I found five parents of seriously ill children and with their permission researched each of the illnesses. Then I taught my students how to write a letter to someone who is in the hospital, and when the appropriate time to send a gift is. I had learned this by befriending the families of the ill children and finding out everything I could about them.

“Two-year-olds taught me what it means to appreciate life and how to be a good friend. I give that over to the students.”

Publicity about Yenty’s project, Hands On for Children, led to requests from schools in the Monsey area asking her to introduce the program to their students as well. “I got so busy,” she says, “that I stopped teaching and started doing this full-time.”

Hands On for Children is different in that kids are helping kids. Says Yenty, “These kids [in the hospitals] need other kids to help maintain normalcy in their lives, something they don’t get with adult doctors and nurses and social workers.”

Yenty’s goals are twofold. First, she tries to ensure that the sick children do not become outcasts and are able to blend back into life. Second, she seeks to do the chessed in such a way that the recipient maintains his or her dignity.

Last year, the seventh-grade boys at Politz Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia hooked up with a young man who had leukemia. They corresponded frequently, and even met him twice. (Unfortunately, the boy didn’t make it.)

“Yenty taught them to be more sensitive and knowledgeable,” says the school’s principal, Besie Katz. “The kids in our school have a great capacity for chessed, but she refined their ability.”

A short while later, one of the students in the school was diagnosed with cancer. “The boys really knew how to help him through it,” says Mrs. Katz.

Today Yenty Frost is back at HALB to take the chessed project to stage two: bringing students and patients closer together.

She tells the girls about a particular child she had recently visited in the hospital. “Her name is Tali. Let’s brainstorm and think of ways we can help this little girl live a life.”

Each project unfolds at a deliberate tempo. “The children in the hospitals need to get to know the kids first before they can trust them,” Yenty insists.

Boys at a Monsey, NY, yeshivah preparing a personalized, autographed pillowcase.

Besie Katz agrees. “The slow pace is essential, especially because the sick child is being bombarded by doctors and tests and social workers. Another onslaught of people would be too much. By going slowly, you whet the child’s appetite for friendships instead of assailing her.”

By now the seventh-graders at HALB are chafing at the bit, hands excitedly in the air, bursting with ways to correspond with six-year-old Tali.

“Let’s make a video of ourselves,” shouts out one girl.

“I think we should make a photo album with pictures and bios of ourselves,” yells another.

Yenty demonstrates why an album would be the preferred first step. “A video is a great idea, but it can take a while to perfect. An album can be done right away. Put down lots of information about yourselves, so that she gets to know you. Use markers and colors. Make pictures; be creative. Believe me, when Tali gets the album, her face will light up. If for five minutes she’s forgotten her pain, you will have accomplished your chessed.”

In the future may come the video, then perhaps an audio tape with a corresponding storybook. There will be gifts for Tali and her siblings, phone calls, possibly even visits. She will get mail, but not too much at a time, since she’s only six.

Yenty teaches a skill that even many adults haven’t mastered: what to write and what not to write. “These sick kids are smart,” she says. “They know they’re not in school, and they know things are going on outside their four walls. If you leave out the fun parts because you think it will only make them feel worse, they’ll know you’re cropping the picture. They don’t want to be different, and they don’t want your pity; they want to feel part of things. Treat them normally.”

One mother can attest to the difference Hands On for Children has made in her daughter’s life. Residents of Israel, the family came to Boston a year ago so their ill seven-year-old could receive treatment. “She and her siblings knew no one,” says the mother, who prefers to remain anonymous, “but Yenty put a class of kids in touch with us immediately. They made us feel welcome, and they started to send lots of mail and packages with stuff for all three of my kids. Whenever something comes for my children, they can’t wait to open it.”

The girl recently had surgery. “She was really down when she came home. I had alerted the teacher in the school that she was undergoing an operation, and she made sure that the kids sent something. When my daughter saw all the cards and gifts, she was a different child. She hung the cards all over her room. It makes her feel so good to know how many people are thinking of her.”

Yenty’s mitzvah tentacles seem to be stretching. “My daughter appreciates how much these kids have done for her,” says the mother. “Whenever a new child is admitted to the hospital, she does the same for them.”

Says Yenty Frost: “Kids can give you the world; they just need to be guided. I’m so proud of all of them. The enthusiasm for what they’re doing, their achdut (unity) and camaraderie are amazing. Anyone who has anything bad to say about this generation — see me first.”

For further information, Yenty Frost can be reached at (914) 352-2753.

Jodi Bodner DuBow’s writing has appeared in The Forward, The Jewish Week, Big Apple Parents Paper, and other Jewish and general publications. She lives in Woodmere, NY.