Monday, February 13, 2012

It's Clementine Season - Here are our Tsedakot

We are really thrilled to be sharing our Mishloach Manot tsedakah collective with the whole shul!  Details on contributing will be coming soon, but in the meantime, we have worked with the GJC Social Action Committee and agreed upon five food organizations where we'll be sending the monies collected after subtracting the cost of the mishloach manot baskets, given to all households attending the joint Dorshei Derekh/GJC Charry Megillah reading on Wed, March 7 at 6:30.

Some of the 5 food organizations are old DD favorites and some are new - we will be feeding people near and far:

1. We will once again be supporting a Weavers Way Community PRogram, the community garden at Stenton Family Manor, a homeless shelter in Germantown.  The grant helps a farm educator teach residents how to raise food.  The produce raised is used directly in the kitchen to feed residents.

2. Hazon has carved a niche supporting the new Jewish food movement, Jewish Farm School, CSA's and generally promoting local, healthy, sustainable agriculture. Many GJC members have participated in Hazon's famous bike rides.

3. Philadelphia's own Female Hebrew Benevolent Society distributes $50 supermarket gift certificates to impoverished clients to help them cover Passover food expenses.  This will be the Ma'ot Chitim donation, specifically given to the poor for Passover provisions.

4. We will be contributing to our neighbor Church of the Annunciation (at Lincoln and Carpenter) for their food pantry.

5. Through our emissary Nomi Teutsch, a Tony Blair Interfaith Social Justice fellow at United Sikhs, we will be contributing to the Sikh Food Pantry in Kenya, used to feed the hungry suffering famine conditions in the Horn of Africa.

We are so proud of the work these organizations are doing and that we can support them, filling the mitzvah of feeding the poor.

Please drop your clementine boxes off in the Maslow.