Torah Day School of Houston Responds to Tragedy With Mitzvah Drive: "Hearts to Hokies" campaign
HOUSTON - As the nation began the transition from shock to mourning one day after the deadliest shooting attack in American 
history, the network of more than 100 college campus Chabad Houses declared a "Week of Goodness and Kindness" as a way to honor the memory of the slain. The goal of the effort, according to organizers, is simple: to translate the pain of grief into the healing of positive action.
Torah Day School has joined this effort by handing out the "Hearts to Hokies" pledge cards which was created and will be collected by the New York based Chabad on Campus International Foundation. Students were encouraged to pledge a good deed in the merit of those lost; the collected cards will be presented later to the students of Virginia Tech.
Rebbetzin Chiena Lazaroff, director and Judaic Principal at Torah Day School of Houston, urges the community to join its students to increase in acts of goodness and kindness by visiting www.hearts2hokies.com and pledging a mitzvah.
The project is being headed up locally along with schools across the 
country by Rabbi Yitzchok and Malky Schmukler directors of student and young adult programming at Chabad House at Rice University and Texas Medical Center.
It's terrible and no one should ever have to know such a thing," said Malky Schmukler, "It's okay to mourn, it's okay to be upset, but after crying, we have to channel our grief into positive actions." In the wake of this week's news out of Virginia, "many students are in a state of shock, they don't know what to do," said Schmukler.
All the more reason, said Chana Mayer, co-director of the University of Virginia's Chabad House, to give students a chance to positively affect the world around them. "A little light dispels a lot darkness," said Mayer. "It doesn't have to be something complicated or expensive; simple good deeds are powerful things right at our fingertips."
Chabad on Campus acts as a home-away-from-home, providing educational, social, spiritual and holiday programming for Jewish students at more than 120 campuses worldwide. To learn more about Chabad on Campus, visit www.chabad.edu.
Torah Day School of Houston holds the guiding principle that children can be provided with a comprehensive education in Jewish thought, customs and laws without compromising the quality of general education. To learn more about TDS and a tour of their new state-of-the-art facility under construction visit www.tdshouston.org