You Can Ring My Bell...

What's a good Jewish mother to do over the holidays? This one brought her daughters out in the cold to ring bells at The Salvation Army's red kettle today.

I know. Intensely strange considering my pro-choice, liberal stances on, well, pretty much everything.

But while the "Army"'s foundation is evangelical and sometimes offensive in nature (I've had more than one friend talk of their antisemitic reputation), the reality of the organization is this: the charitable nature of an average neighbor gives a ton of money to those less fortunate, resulting in day care, health care, disaster relief and many other services that our federal dollars increasingly aren't able to meet.

The lesson to my girls is a good one, and my oldest understood it pretty well. We do our part because we can, and hopefully someone who needs help will be able to get it with the money we helped raise.