Delivering Joy

by Yvette Deane

The bell rings at 1:17 p.m. on early Fridays in winter months at the Yeshivah of Flatbush. Many kids are excited to get home and finally relax, but many students, like my friends and me, take the train and the bus down to the Sephardic Community Center in Gravesend.

Every Friday students from Jewish schools across Brooklyn gather at the center to participate in a program called Challot. There are anywhere from 30 to 70 volunteers each week. In Challot I am able to meet up with friends from other Jewish schools and immerse in chesed.

Once I arrive at the center, I find my friends and take boxes of challot to residents of the Ahi Ezer senior citizen homes in Gravesend.

/>“What I really love about Challot is the feeling you get after you just delivered a challah to a person who really needs it,” said program organizer Ezra Barry, 17, a senior at Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in Manhattan. “It’s not just a feeling of contempt or satisfaction, but rather an indescribable positive feeling that you experience every time you know you helped someone in need.”

Ezra Barry is in charge of ordering the bread the night before and assigning groups of four to six volunteers to a floor. Two-thirds of the challot are donated by an anonymous donor. The other third is paid for by Sephardic Bikur Holim (SBH). My friends and I usually walk to a building on Kings Highway and then deliver challot to each resident.

This act of kindness is not time consuming but it does give a sense of fulfillment. It is a mitzvah, making sure that as many people as possible will be able to have a challah for Shabbat. “Though Challot may seem like a simple doing it brings joy to not only the kids who help deliver the challot, but is meaningful to those who are visited weekly,” said Renna Ades, a sophomore at the Yeshivah of Flatbush. “It’s one of the most fulfilling mitzvot anyone can do.”

Many of the senior citizens are overwhelmed to see so many young faces. They are delighted to see that people care about them. Some volunteers ask if they can return to a floor or an apartment the next week because they enjoy the company of a specific person.

Some of my friends have met people who give them as much or even more joy than the residents receive from the Challot visit. “After we deliver the challot we visit the old and the wise, Jack Sutton. He is the most popularly visited and tells stories of his past that overwhelm the room with laughter,” says Brenda Schindler, a sophomore in the Yeshivah of Flatbush.

It’s great being able to do a mitzvah right before Shabbat. It makes me feel closer to Hashem. What better way to start Shabbat, then to help others start theirs.

For those who want to get involved in a chesed project contact SBH at
(718) 787-1100 or go to sbhonline.org.

Yvette Deane is a sophomore at the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn.

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