For single mothers near Beit Shemesh, the question of how to put Passover on the table is very real. This week, thanks to you, we knocked on their doors with the answer. Our team packed 20 Passover food boxes right here in our office and delivered them by hand to families who had no idea help was coming.
Wine, grape juice, matzah, cooking oil, honey, eggs, chicken. The foods that turn a kitchen into a Passover table. Rick and Patricia Neal, supporters who came in specifically to volunteer, worked alongside our staff to get every box delivered. Your generosity made it happen, and they helped make sure it reached the right hands.
But those 20 boxes are just the beginning of what you’ve made possible.
Here’s why this matters so much right now. Passover is not a holiday you can celebrate with whatever happens to be in the cupboard. The Seder table demands specific foods, specific preparation, specific cost. And in Israel today, that cost is brutal. Food prices run 51% higher than the EU average. Two years of war have pushed them higher still. Construction sites have gone quiet, and fathers who built their families on steady work have watched that work disappear. Nearly 1 in 4 Israeli families now faces food insecurity.
For those families, the Seder table isn’t a celebration. It’s a source of dread.
Passover is the night the Jewish people gather and declare that God keeps His promises. “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11) That verse was written for exactly this kind of moment, when a family sits in the land God promised, unable to afford the meal that celebrates the promise.
That’s what your support changes.
This Thursday, thanks to donors like you, we’re heading to Jerusalem with Chabad of Kiryat Yovel to pack and distribute 1,000 Passover food boxes across the city. Each one carries more than $110 worth of essentials for families who would otherwise face the holiday of freedom with empty shelves. And alongside those boxes, Chabad is hosting a Seder for 300 people who have nowhere else to go.
None of this exists without you. Not the 20 boxes delivered this week. Not the 1,000 going out Thursday. Not the 300 people who will sit at a Seder table because someone cared enough to make sure they could.
“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to God, and He will reward them for what they have done.” (Proverbs 19:17)
Passover is days away. If you haven’t yet given, there’s still time to give and help ensure the people of Israel have food on their table this Passover.