Fall 2004 Edition          

Collecting Hats for Kids With Cancer   Earlier in the year, you might have seen this message: My name is Eric Pass and I am 12 years old. I love sports and I wear a baseball cap all the time. For a charity project for my Bar Mitzvah, I am collecting new baseball hats to donate to children who are battling cancer. I am calling my project Caps For Caring. My goal is to collect 1,800 baseball caps by the time of my Bar Mitzvah. I chose this number because in Hebrew, 18 is chai and chai translates to the word life. My wish is that all of the children with cancer live a long life. I will donate the hats to three worthy charities: Tomorrow's Children Oncology Center at Hackensack (NJ) Hospital, Chai Lifeline, and the Hadassah Hospital Mother and Child Pavilion in Israel. I need your help. Please join me and donate any amount of baseball hats to help my charity project. Adjustable or children's sizes would be the most helpful. Although, many of Eric's friends and relatives donated some caps, Eric was a bit anxious that he'd ever be able to get 1,800 hats. Fortunately, he had some help.  Eric and his mom (Andrea Pass) prepared letters and a press release and then started contacting people.  Eric's request for caps was covered on Fox News, Hadassah Magazine and in several papers owned by the North Jersey Media Company (including the Record, Shopper, and Parent Paper). Then, the hats started coming in from all over the country.  Little and big ones.  Blue, pink, yellow and brown hats.  Hats with sports logos, company names and even one with a propeller on top.  Ringling Brothers sent him 100 circus hats and lots of people sent him New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup hats.  By the time of his bar mitzvah, there were 4,137 hats at the Pass house on Prospect Avenue. Now, the hats are leaving Fair Lawn.  In the past few months, they have been making their way to hospitals from Hackensack to Haifa.  Thousands of cancer stricken children will be receiving hats collected by Eric.  After going on a tour of Hackensack Hospital and meeting some children who had chemotherapy treatments, Eric said "I just feel great about helping others". Recently, Andrea and Scott Pass asked Eric what he wanted most for his bar mitzvah?  At first, he couldn't really think of anything he needed.   But, after a bit of thought, he asked his parents for something that Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams already have -- a custom fitted, brand new, blue and white, Yankees cap. Rabbi Henry Glazer (left) of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center took a hundred of Eric's caps to Hadassah Hospital in Israel.  Rabbi Glazer was able to meet the children and personally give them caps from Eric.  Here's what he told Fair Lawn News after he returned: "In all the years of my rabbinate, I have not come across this kind of mitzvah undertaken with such devotion and sincerity.  Eric is a regular kid -- loves sports, has friends, and a wonderful sense of humor.  Yet, he has a very sensitive soul and a deep compassion for the underprivileged.  In other words he's a terrific kid!! I thank him for the opportunity of doing a most important mitzvah when I traveled to Israel for a Rabbinical Assembly convention.   Of the many children I gave hats to, most were non-Jewish.  There were Arabs, Armenians, Ethiopians, Ashkenazic Jews and Sephardic Jews. They all shared the same human condition and need.  They were all stricken with cancer, they were all children and they all needed love and reassurance and a moment of distraction and joy in the midst of their fear, pain and weakness.  The hats, the care, the constant presence of parents and family, the cheerful ambience, the teachers who held 'normal school' classes for the children, the incredible doctors and medical staff, all represented to me angels of God who brought life and hope to these precious children.   Eric indeed fulfilled the most sacred and special of godly acts.  We are all proud of him and hope that he will inspire others to follow in his footsteps."