“What happened now is an unprecedented disaster in the United States. We felt it was important to activate our local members. There was a huge gap because food pantries were seeing a decrease in volunteers, and yet there was huge increase in need for food,” said Seth Davis, executive director of the nongovernmental group IsraAID US.
IsraAID, in partnership with the Merage Institute and Shalom Corps, has been in contact with local community members and requested volunteers to aid in the packing and distribution efforts of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Parents in the area have been coming to Los Angeles public schools to pick up prepared school lunches for their children, with each box containing enough to last a family of four for one week.
IsraAID volunteers have been sorting food and loading boxes directly into the cars of families visiting the food bank.
“We facilitated 30 volunteers and assisted with the distribution of 21,000 boxes, which feeds approximately 58,000 people. It’s expanding very fast,” Davis added. IsraAid also reached out to the Modern Orthodox Pico-Robertson section.
Chair of the Chesed Committee at Modern Orthodox Young Israel of Century City, Flora Glouberman, helped sign up more volunteers than were needed after hearing about the food-distribution efforts from her rabbi, Rabbi Elazar Mushkin.
“I thought it was a real kiddush Hashem [“sanctification of God’s name”]; there’s a real need to help everybody. Whenever there is a crisis, it’s beautiful to see how many are willing to go out and help,” Glouberman said.
IsraAid has also been involved in food-distribution programs in other major cities across California, including San Jose, the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego.
“There will be a high level of trauma that will need to be dealt with, and there has not enough talk about mental-health [issues] that people will endure. It will take years to bounce back, so we are now assessing which partners to work with so we can do this over the next year,” said Davis.