PHOTOS: A non-Frum employee at Eastern Union yesterday attempting to raise $1,000 for a Rutgers Kiruv program in exchange of him beginning to wear a Yarmuka at work, ended up putting on Tzitzis too after the shocking results of the seemingly-weird offer.

The story begins Erev Purim, when Eastern Union President Ira Zlotowitz made a conference call at his office to stress the importance of giving Tzedakah on Purim. Matt Matilsky, a Rutgers University student was one of those on the conference call, and on Purim made his first-ever Tzedaka donations totaling $140.

So when Rabbi Lewis, who runs the Rutgers Jewish Experience together with Rabbi Goldberg from Lakewood set out to make a series of large Shabbaton dinners on campus, Matt, motivated to do his own Tzedakah, decided he would do his Tzedaka by trying to cover at least one such Shabbaton, priced at about $1,000-$1,500.

Ira Zlotowitz, Matt’s employer, offered to match up to $500 to donations of Matt’s $1,000 goal.

Matt set out to reach that goal, with a twist, and sent out the following email:

“You help someone who helped me.

Rabbi Lewis runs a program called the Rutgers Jewish Experience (RJX), designed to place non-observant lost souls into a religious setting on campus. He happens to be good at it. I promise you that pitching Judaism to people like me all day is not an easy task, but he’s tolerated years’ worth of grief, mostly from me, seemingly unphased.

Anyway, right now he’s gearing up for a series of huge Shabbos dinners on campus. Picture a room full of 100 of confused college kids with off-colored kipahs which were handed them at the door, all assuring each other they never do this kind of thing at the same time. The way it works is roughly one in 10 of these kids will become more observant. Almost all of them will find themselves in Israel in the near future through RJX programming.

Rabbi Lewis estimates a price tag of $1000-$1500 for each dinner. Ira offered to match every dollar donated by Eastern employees up to $500. If we hit that($1000) by tomorrow night I’ll wear the funny hat on my head from now on at the office.

You can donate online at http://www.rutgersjx.com/home/partner-with-rjx, or just make a check out to RJX and hand it to me. If you opt-in, let me know the amount so I can organize numbers for Ira and thank you in advance.

Also huge thank you to Ira.”

About 25 minutes after this email was sent out, Matt had already collected a whopping $5,000 – five times the amount he was expecting to raise.

“Within the first five minutes, about 35 people had responded with donations to the email,” Ira Zlotowitz confirms to TLS.

The shocking success of the campaign however, prompted Matt to make yet another unusual offer.

Matt announced, that if he hit $10,000, he would commit to wear Tzitzis to work as well.

Needless to say, the goal was reached in no time.

“I was not expecting this,” Matt tells TLS Exclusively. “I thought I’d get a few laughs and raise maybe a couple hundred bucks – I underestimated  the support system within the company and the Jewish Community in general,” Matt said. “I was touched.”

So yesterday afternoon, Ira, Matt and some other employees made their way to the Judaica store to pick up several Yarmuas and pairs of Tzitzis for Matt.

Mi K’amcha Yisroel. [TLS]

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