COURTESY OF YIS
OUR COMMUNITY
Good Neighbors
Volunteers distribute food.
Rabbi Morris and his 8-year-old son Moshe restock the food pantry.
“The Little Shul that Could” helps school next door. BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
M
embers of Young Israel of Southfield have always helped their own, reaching out to homebound seniors and others who need help. In the past two years, they’ve also developed a special relationship with the school next door. Young Israel is a small congregation — only 140 families — but its members feel very connected to the neighborhood, where almost all of them live so they can be within walking distance of the Modern Orthodox synagogue. Most of the congregation’s children go to Jewish day schools, but the congregation feels connected to Stevenson Elementary School, their closest neighbor. The K-5 school has 400 students, includ-
ing one Jewish family. Congregants were helping the school community before the COVID shutdowns by funding food packages for low-income families through the Blessings in a Backpack program, headquartered in Rochester Hills. The program aids students who receive in-school meals on weekdays by providing food boxes to help their families through the weekends. The congregation underwrote the cost of packages for families that included 50 Stevenson children. Research has shown that as many as 5 million American children have food insecurity — meaning they are often hungry, said congregation member Andrea Gruber. “Hungry kids just pull at my
heartstrings,” she said. The congregation was planning to expand its support to two additional schools when COVID hit in early 2020. Blessings in a Backpack went on hiatus. At the start of the current school year, Young Israel of Southfield decided to provide its own food boxes. Contributions poured in as soon as the food drive was announced. “My basement looked like a Meijer warehouse!” said Gruber, who coordinated the drive. Through September and October, synagogue members prepared food boxes that they placed in cars as the families drove up to the school. Then they decided a food pantry would be more efficient. They’d already been doing something similar internally. Many synagogue famcontinued on page 28
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MARCH 25 • 2021
