My dear friends, I am amazed, impressed, thankful, and absolutely blown away by your response to this year’s Yom Kippur Food Drive! Twenty-three years ago, on our first attempt to collect food for the hungry in our community, “little” Aaron Webber, then only an adolescent, helped me weigh the food we collected. Repeatedly stepping on and off my bathroom scale, we calculated that we collected nearly a ton (just under 2000 pounds) of food. We were thrilled with the results and thanked you all for your generosity. Fast forward and skip ahead to this year. As you all know, the food we collected was divided into two piles and donated to the food pantries of both the Jewish Family Service and the Town of Orange. JFS continues to weigh the food donated by local congregations and recently informed us that we gave them 1,752 pounds of food that translated into 1,348 meals for the needy. They further told us that we donated more food than any other participating congregation! How about that! But that’s only half the story. Knowing that we donated an equivalent amount of food to Orange means that this year you donated more than 3,500 pounds. That ‘s 1,500 pounds more than our first year. Almost double. Did I say I’m blown away by your overwhelming generosity? Now while that’s a pretty high bar to jump over next year, I have every confidence. Thank you so very much for your response to this important tzedakah project.
Will Sherman