It was a huge success last year! Many, many people benefited. So Temple Beth-El of Great Neck will hold its second annual Mitzvah Day on Sunday, March 29.

Mitzvah '98 once again invites the entire congregation, as well as friends and neighbors, to participate in over 60 projects designed to help the needy both in this community and beyond. Young and old alike, everyone is invited to choose a project, working with the needy, the elderly, the homeless, children and adults who are ill, those who are mentally or developmentally challenged. Last year 540 volunteers donated their time and their efforts.

Several new projects this year are especially for families with young children. Little ones and their families can decorate small flowerpots and fill them with plants. These will be gifts to nursing homes. Five hundred small bags are waiting to be filled with candy and tied with a ribbon for distribution at the soup kitchen and homeless shelters of the Interfaith Nutrition Network (INN).

Also new this year is a request for volunteers to work at local ACLD homes for people with learning/developmental disabilities. Volunteers are needed for a dance and sing-along, and those with lap top computers can help with computer training and computer games with the residents of these houses.

Volunteers are also needed to accompany special needs children and teens from the Little Village House in Port Washington to the Long Island Children's Museum.

Other new projects include painting classrooms at Beth-El as well as once again painting at three local agencies---CLASP, the Great Neck Senior Center, and COPAY. And this year volunteers are also invited to join Miriam's Project Mazuzot, making mazuzot from beads made by the elderly in Israel and delivering these mazuzot to local nursing homes.

Those choosing to help teens can help sort and deliver prom dresses, tuxedos and accessories, through the Junior League, to provide prom clothes to Roosevelt School District students. Along the same lines, another new project is to sort and deliver men's and women's clothing for interviews and new jobs, and children's clothing up to age 12, for the National Center for Disabilities job training and for the social service agency FEGS.

Volunteers will also be asked to participate in the first international project, to sort school supplies for the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry for the after school program for Ethiopian Jewish children in Israel.

For local children, this year's Mitzvah Day Carnival at Temple Beth-El will include children from North Shore University Hospital and Schneider Children's Hospital as well as children from the Association for Children with Down Syndrome and the Manhasset-Great Neck Head Start Program.

Many successful first year projects are returning this year. A supermarket food drive will see volunteers handing out needed items to shoppers at local supermarkets. The items will be collected as the shoppers leave the store.

And the highly successful Yachad Good sports program run by the National Jewish Council on the Disabled once again needs volunteers to play sports and lunch with disabled children.

Last year over $30,000 in pharmaceuticals and medications was collected from physicians, dentists, and pharmacists. The goal is to surpass that amount this year, working with ROTACARE, a medical program run by the INN.

Religious school classes at Beth-El are adopting agencies to collect the items needed. The Nursery School is collecting Passover foods for DOROT.

The following items are needed and can be dropped off at Temple Beth-El, 5 Old Mill Road, any day up to Sunday, March 29:

* prom dresses and accessories

Library Wrestles With Policy Issue business clothes for men and women

Library Wrestles With Policy Issue clothing and items for infants and young children

* household cleaning items and kitchen utensils for homeless moving into apartments

* Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games

* lullaby tapes and books for pre-readers to third grade

* educational toys for pre-school to second grade

* school supplies like backpacks, pens and pencils, magic markers, protractors, compasses, and scotch and masking tape

* individually wrapped chocolates and candies

* non-perishable Passover and regular foods

* left-over yarn, needlepoint canvases, knitting, crocheting, needlepoint and assorted craft supplies

* personal care items for men and women

This year, in conjunction with Mitzvah Day, Temple Beth-El is also holding a blood/bone marrow drive sponsored by The Brian Eisenberg Leukemia Fund. Donors can donate blood and have their blood tested so they can be listed on the National Marrow Donor Registry. To be tested for the Registry, donors must be between the ages of 18 and 60 and be in good health. To donate blood a donor must be between 17 and 70. For further information, call Barbara Eisenberg at 466-2480.

Everyone is invited to join Mitzvah Day '98. ''Bring a friend, share the joy,'' says Honey Heller, who co-chairs the event along with Keith Heller and help from Debra Sadowsky.

For further information, to donate, or to volunteer, call Honey Heller at 466-2396 or call Temple Beth-El at 487-0900.