Walking the streets near her home in New York City, Shifra Mincer frequently saw homeless people in their ripped and tattered clothes, and the girl would shudder, thinking how different they were from her. Then one day when she was in sixth grade, her teacher invited students to help serve food at a soup kitchen in the basement of Hebrew Union College. As Shifra lined up to serve dinner, someone asked a simple question that changed her life: Does anyone know how to sew?

Shifra loved sewing ever since she was a third-grader, but was nervous about speaking up. Besides, she thought, "I can sew, but how is that going to help anyone?" Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and whispered softly, "I can sew." No one heard her, so she forced herself to say it again, louder and with more confidence. Shifra was handed a sewing kit, given a chair, and before she knew it, a group of homeless people huddled around her and handed her coats, blouses, and pants that needed mending.

"It was very intimidating," says Shifra. "People were handing me their clothing and some of it smelled or was dirty." A few people even glared at her disapprovingly, saying that she wasn't doing the job right- making her more nervous. But Shifra sensed that she was making a difference. "I had so much to sew that first day that I couldn't finish it all," she remembers. "That was a wake-up call to me that these people needed my help." Shifra promised to return the next week- and she did. In fact, she's been coming back nearly every Monday afternoon for the past six years.

Once Shifra learned to look past the dirty clothes, she saw that the homeless people weren't so different from her. "Some of them became like family," she says. "There was an older man who became like my grandfather." Shifra fixed the man's jacket time and again, and once she completely remade his pockets, using new material. When he caught pneumonia one winter and died, Shifra felt devastated, but was comforted by knowing she had helped improve his life.

"I realized how special it was to fix something for someone," says Shifra, who is now 16. "Now they could put something in a pocket that they couldn't before, or now their glove was warm again. It's like I'm sewing these people's lives back together."

Shifra no longer lets her fears hold her back from being the best person she can be. Last year she even started a sewing club at her school- New York City's Ramaz Jewish day school- in which she leads her classmates in sewing heart-shaped pillows for ill children and nursing-home residents. "I'm definitely a lot less timid now," Shifra says, pointing out that when she visited a nursing home recently to deliver pillows, she wasn't afraid to approach the residents and strike up conversations. "Being nervous is inevitable, but the more you help other people, the more you get over it," she says, "and then it just feels amazing."

Jewishful Thinking
Each time Shifra sat in the soup kitchen with her needle and thread, patching the tattered clothes of the homeless, she was also mending herself. Stitch by delicate stitch, she recreated herself, becoming less shy and more confident, less distant from the needs of others and more like the person God wants us to be. What does God desire from us? The Haftarah that we read on Yom Kippur morning explains: “It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him or her, and not to ignore your own kin.” (Isaiah 58:7)