Our Story
I am present.
I have come to My garden.
The name
Adsum is Latin for "I am present." It carries the spirit of Abraham's response — Hineni: "Here I am." Present, willing, and able to be necessary to you. To be needed by you — not by me. That is what Hineni means.
The campaign
LeGani is Hebrew for "to My garden" — and it names our campaign. The LeGani Campaign is a $7,000,000 capital effort to give the garden a home: a permanent headquarters in S.Cruz, from which the outreach, the education, and the prison re-entry work can all grow.
From needy to needed
Rabbi Manis Friedman offers the shift that organizes everything here: "You are not here because you are needy. You are here because you are needed." That single turn reframes a life. It moves the prisoner from a problem to be solved into a person with a part to play. It moves the donor from charity to partnership. It moves all of us from waiting to tending.
Who tends the garden
Rabbi Yochanan Friedman leads Chabad by the Sea and Choices for Life in S.Cruz, California. He carries his father's teaching — that we are needed, not needy — into the prisons, the re-entry work that follows men home, and the ground where a permanent home for it all will stand.
The ambassadors
We do not trade in "success stories." The men who move through Choices for Life and return to the world are co-gardeners and teachers — ambassadors of the shift from needy to needed, carrying it back to the men still inside.
Ambassador film — coming soon
Ambassador film — coming soon
"We show up. We plant. We stay."