Rabbi Chaim Wilhelm wanted to do something different for his 40th birthday.
“I wanted to do something for the whole community,” he said.
So, he threw a party. About 70 people came. There was music, sushi, dessert, even a gift for Rabbi Wilhelm.
But what made this party special was that there weren’t the usual party games. Instead, kitchen equipment came out, and the guests – ranging in age from preschool to elders – started peeling and chopping vegetables for stir fry. Because this was still a Thursday night at Chabad of Northeast Portland, which means the deliveries needed to be prepared; the deliveries that have gone out each week since the Chesed Connection program was launched in 2020.
Now volunteers, like the partygoers, can have a bigger role in preparing the food that goes into those deliveries as Chabad’s international Kitchen of Kindness program expands to Portland.
“Getting people to come make food, that part of the joy, we’ve been trying to get more into that aspect of it,” Rabbi Wilhelm explained.
There was plenty of joy to go around as three long tables turned bowls of carrots and bell peppers into the makings of chicken stir fry. Away the vegetables went, and out came bowls of chocolate chip cookie dough, sheet pans and scoops.
One of the people helping coordinate the exercise was Susanne Wendrow, who’s been delivering food for Chesed Connection nearly since its inception and is helping administer the Kitchen of Kindness program, which is growing thanks in large part to a grant from the Robison Foundation for Jewish Elders.
“I think what drew me in originally was that, as a busy mom of four and someone who’s working, it was a nice way for me to be able to do something that was outside of my own world,” she said. “To do something for the greater community at large.”
What better thing to do for Jewish community than to help foster it, one interaction at a time? That’s been Chesed Connection’s goal from the start – Rabbi Wilhelm discussed epidemic loneliness when The Jewish Review visited Chesed Connection in late 2023 (See “Forging connection through food,” Nov. 15, 2023, page 5) and how the simple act of delivering food before Shabbat can help. Now, with Kitchen of Kindness, the connections between the people preparing that food are similarly fostered.
“[We’re] creating something that’s a little bit more streamlined that can actually grow the volunteer portion of the program, because I think that’s the root,” Wendrow said. “I think it’s less about the food and more about the connections that people make.”
As the cookies headed to the oven, paper bags and sheets of stickers came out, the latter to be applied to the former. As that was finished, freshly baked cookies were loaded into paper pouches (though a few naturally made their way into the mouths of the youngest volunteers), tubs of rice were topped with now-cooked vegetables and chicken and the whole lot were assembled into the sticker-clad bags – 50 in total – to head out before the candles were lit the next evening.
Laureen Zisa, who was among the celebrants-turned-chefs, has been delivering food packages since before Chesed Connection began, bringing holiday nosh to those in need on Rosh Hashana and Pesach.
“it’s always been the highlight of my week,” she said of her deliveries. “It’s a way to connect, and it’s just us being mishpachah, family.”
Kitchen of Kindness is helping the circle of that connection grow just a little broader.
“People want to feel viscerally like they’re doing something. They’re chopping that carrot for somebody else. It’s just a good feeling. And it’s all part of the concept of tzedakah,” Rabbi Wilhelm said, using the Hebrew word that literally translates to “justice” but is often used in reference to charitable giving. “If you look in the Torah, many of the mitzvot (commandments) around tzedakah are food based. They’re agriculturally based. The idea of tithing is food.”
For more information about the Kitchen of Kindness program, email Rabbi Wilhelm at [email protected].
PHOTO: Rockne Roll/The Jewish Review