2026 Award Recipient
DanielleBoodman
Project Tzedek League
Project Tzedek League
Danielle is the co-founder and leader of Tzedek League, a community service program that empowers Jewish teens to design and lead volunteer initiatives for younger students preparing for their B’nai Mitzvah.
Danielle’s inspiration came from a visit to Dachau concentration camp in Southern Germany, where she was struck by the proximity of an ordinary neighborhood to a death camp—and haunted by the question of why so many who witnessed the atrocities did nothing. That experience sharpened her conviction that Jewish values must be lived, not just held. When she noticed that the B’nai Mitzvah tradition of meaningful service projects had nearly vanished from her synagogue in the years following COVID, she set out to change it.
Tzedek League operates through a network of high school Initiative Leaders, each of whom designs and runs volunteer programs for middle schoolers—from serving meals at a local nonprofit called Father Joe’s Villages, to financing and building an outdoor playhouse for the child of a U.S. veteran.
What began as a single program at Congregation Beth Israel has expanded into a model replicated at synagogues across Southern California. Tzedek League has run more than 30 volunteer programs, engaged hundreds of youth volunteers, and logged over 1,000 collective service hours, touching thousands of lives in the process.
A teen-led community service program that empowers Jewish high schoolers to design and lead their own volunteer initiatives for younger students preparing for B’nai Mitzvah.
