Mitzvah Chefs Take a Bite Out of Volunteering

Each month, a couple dozen mitzvah makers gather in the kitchen of (PTS) and prepare meals for community members in need. Mitzvah is Hebrew for commandment but has taken on the meaning of charitable act or good deed.

Doing good is the idea behind Mitzvah Chefs, a program hosted at PTS for children in first through eighth grade and their parents, during which they prepare and deliver meals to many North Peninsula residents.

“When kids get together and they start working towards this common goal, [they] and their parents really light up,” said PTS Youth Director Yael Zaken.

Mitzvah Chefs is run through the Jewish Family and Children's Services and began at PTS last year. The organization sends PTS a list of people or families in need of meals. Zaken said recipients range from those without enough food to ill individuals living alone to people who recently lost a loved one.

Each month, parents and students from one grade level gather and make meals, decorate packages and write notes for the food recipients before going door to door to drop off the kosher-style delicacies (no mixing meat and dairy and no pork or shell fish). Zaken said they normally get about 14 child-parent pairs of participants from each grade.

Before they begin making food, Zaken said she and the students have a discussion about the idea of tikkun olam—helping the world—and the best ways to mend the earth.

“It’s really important to start within your own community,” Zaken said. “And [we teach them] for it to be not only the people of your religion or ethnicity or race. We make sure we have a discussion about the best ways to make the world a better place.”

Through the discussion, kids have their voices heard and reach a better understanding of the process they’re going through. They explore the idea of giving and the idea of hunger, a more tangible feeling they can hone in on to better comprehend those they’re helping.

When Zaken was tasked with finding an activity for kids involving giving back while keeping them engaged, she landed on cooking. She said it’s gender-friendly, allows kids to be creative and changes month to month based on the menu.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to get them excited about doing something outside of themselves,” Zaken said. “It was difficult finding a project that the kids would enjoy doing and understand the importance of it.”

Each participating family is asked for a non-mandatory $15 donation for ingredients, which are picked up by a parent captain and Zaken. Any additional funds needed come out of the youth activity budget.

“It’s really interesting to see their little faces; you really notice that they suddenly have this understanding of what it means to not have or what it means to not have that much,” Zaken said. “That is what has kept Mitzvah Chefs going.”

Related Topics: Jewish Family and Children's Services, Mitzvah Chefs, and Peninsula Temple Shalom