TORONTO — The six synagogues that form the Bayview Corridor Group are planning their first joint mitzvah day on April 6. To gear up for the project – and as organizers put it, to whet participants’ appetites for it – a Mitzvah Day Kickoff Event is planned for next week.

The first event, to be held March 6 at 8 p.m. at Beth Tikvah Synagogue, will feature Amir Gissin, Israel’s consul general in Toronto, as well as entertainment by the Beth Tikvah Choir and Yitzhak Argaman. Other speakers will include Rabbi David Eligberg of Beit Rayim Synagogue; Dan Mendelsohn Aviv, director of the Centre for Jewish Living and Learning at Temple Emanu-El; cancer coach Isa Nevsky; and educator Channa Sargon.

In addition to Beth Tikvah, Beit Rayim and Temple Emanu-El, the Bayview corridor synagogues include Kehillat Shaarei Torah, Temple Har Zion and Shaar Shalom Synagogue, representing a total of about 4,000 families in the northern part of Toronto and southern reaches of Thornhill. The area is a few kilometres east of what is sometimes referred to as the Bathurst Street corridor, home to the majority of Toronto’s Jewish population.

Mitzvah Day Activities will include car washes; writing postcards to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and families of Israeli soldiers who are missing in action; yardwork and painting at the Toronto Community Hostel, which serves homeless people; sorting clothing donations; singing at seniors residences; and building homes for Habitat for Humanity.

The event is the group’s main project for this year, but other joint projects have been “quietly” taking place, sometimes with just a couple of congregations, said spokesperson Seymour Hersh. He mentioned a project of Beth Tikvah and Shaar Shalom that involved knitting for Project Linus, an organization that provides blankets to children who are ill or traumatized.

Such projects do not need formal co-ordinating any more, “because the connections have been made,” he added.

Formal links date back about four years, when the social action committee of Temple Emanu-El contacted the social action group at Beth Tikvah with the idea of joining forces for a blood donor clinic. The idea was promoted at all the area synagogues and took place in October 2004.

It can be difficult for one synagogue to enlist enough volunteers for a “major” program, Hersh noted.

“I think the essential message, and the heart, is for us to be partners with everyone in tikkun olam,” he said, noting that the group, which is run “strictly on a lay level,” spans the Jewish denominational spectrum from Reform to Orthodox.

The group has had inquiries from area churches, and Hersh said participants hope that, over time, all religious institutions in the area “can use the concept as a basis to encourage their communities to go out and do good deeds.

“Our hope is that by starting this, this will… create some ripples and will encourage other people to do this.”

For further information or to register for Mitzvah Day, go online to bayviewcorridor.org.