Hello! I am Jack Schatten, and as part of Social Action, I run the sandwich making program here at Temple Beth El. In this issue of The Buzz, we wanted to share some of our sandwich story.
First, a little about me. I’ve been a member of TBE for almost 20 years (I did start Hebrew school when I was 7, but still). My volunteering journey started when I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah. I volunteered every week here at the temple for H.I.H.I. (Huntington Interfaith Homeless Initiative), and monthly at St. Hugh’s Church for Project H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Eat). Even after fulfilling my Bar Mitzvah community service hours, I continued to find ways to get involved, leaning in where I could, and continuing with the Sunday Suppers. Then COVID hit and all the programs hit pause.
That brings us to the sandwiches. In the summer of 2021, we partnered with Tri-CYA (Tri Community and Youth Agency) in Huntington. We hit the ground running, making 60 sandwiches a week that we then delivered for the children who attend Tri-CYA programs on Fridays and Saturdays. Our wonderful regular volunteers Aleta, Harlee, Lori, Myra, and Sherry are often assisted by B’nei Mitzvah students, doing their community service. Without this group’s participation and their help shopping for, making, and delivering the sandwiches, we would not have so successfully maintained the program over the past two years. And it’s getting even better! Due to some generous donations, on top of the incredible generosity of the grant administered by the family of Mina & Irving Klein, in October, we will be able to expand our sandwich program to twice weekly, including Sundays. As part of this expansion, we would love to bring on new volunteers to help with our existing Thursday time slot (4:30 to 5:10-ish), and/or the new Sunday morning time slot (exact time TBD).
If you are interested, please contact me at jackms@bu.edu and include “TBE Sandwiches” in the subject line. We would love to have you help out, and if you have children in the Religious School, they are of course welcome to help out as well! Your generosity and interest is greatly appreciated. We look forward to having more people to help people in the Huntington community, the people that we live with and interact with every day.
I want to close with another big THANK YOU to the volunteers who have made this possible so far; a preemptive thank you to anyone who helps out in the future, and a special thank you to Sue Seiler, Carol Werblin and the dozens of others involved in Social Action who, throughout the years, have allowed me to give back and enable others to give back to our community.