As a community steeped in chessed, who among us hasn’t cooked a Shabbos dish for a family dealing with a medical emergency or a mother after birth? Who hasn’t been on the receiving end of such kindness? But as with all things in life, you can do this chessed well, and you can do it even better. Family First brings you a plethora of helpful guidelines so you can optimize your Shabbos food giving.
And the neighbors no doubt all thought they were being enormously helpful.
“We were having a medical crisis with one of our children and were released from the hospital on Thursday” recalls Chana Pick. “I struggled to pull together a simple Shabbos. One hour before Shabbos when I’d finally succeeded a neighbor brought over a container of frozen chicken soup. Eight hours before it would have been a lifesaver; at this point it was too late to be much of a help.”
Make no mistakes: All food is appreciated and even if it’s is not useful at the moment it will come in handy during the following week. But since we’d all like our edible offerings to be instantly and perfectly helpful Family First spoke with women from London and Lakewood Brooklyn and Baltimore Chicago South Africa Israel and Australia to discover how to make our gifts of food even more powerful and helpful.
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