Dear friends,

Thank you to everyone who supported the Christmas Dinner Program!

With the cooking of meals, the donation of groceries and supermarket gift cards to our recipients, we were able to feed approximately 3,736+ people. That may be a conservative number. In addition to feeding those people we also donated around 1000 pounds of food to the Community Center of Northern Westchester Pantry.

Through the many financial contributions, we also were able to provide a lovely donation to one of our local partners in order to provide boots and winter coats for nearly 50 people.

As at Thanksgiving, the list of recipients is too long to mention but please know that you fed the working poor, men and women in various necessary shelters, veterans, the elderly, the shut-ins, the disabled, and on and on.

We must thank our local retailers including ACME Markets Foundation who led the way with a donation of 250 chickens, Zaro's Family Bakery, Key Food, Wegmans, A & S Marketplace Mount Kisco, Direct Source Marketing, The White Plains Bake Shoppe. Chappaqua Village Market, Oldstone Trattoria, Exit 4 Food Hall, Gerardo's Pizzeria, Mags Deli, Super Foodtown, Basso 56 Restaurant (about to open in Chappaqua), King/New Castle Cleaners, Scotts Corner Market and Interstate Foods.

Thanks to all of the local volunteers, friends, neighbors and to our Shaaray Tefila congregants who were able to participate in person or with financial donations. It was a multi pronged effort by people of all races, genders, religions and ethnicities. Thanks also to Temple Beth El for allowing us to use their great kitchen to store hundreds of pounds of food in their walk in refrigerator!

A huge thank you to Temple Shaaray Tefila and its staff including Ajim Formasi and family, Ruben Serrano, Jill Berkowitz and the office staff, Leslie Lichter, Alli West, Rabbi David Wilfond, Rabbi David Greenberg, Amanda Weiss, Patty Goldstick, Stephanie Ben Simon, Michaela Freitas, Beth Kerner, Mona Halter and her staff, Sharon and Rod Feldman and the Board for hosting this marathon over the last seven days. Forgive me if I have forgotten someone and please tell me if I did.

Of course, a huge shout out to our amazing team of organizers including Gary Cohn, Stacey Simensky, Wendi Silverman, Gayle Wasserman and the chefs- Jim Evans, Andy Cheung and Beth Turi.

Thank you all for helping to Repair the World to the extent we can.

Next stop is resettling a family of five from Afghanistan!

FYI, with several other temples and churches and secular folks we created ReSet Westchester, to do just this, resettle immigrants from Afghanistan. A few weeks ago we resettled a single man from Afghanistan very successfully. If you want to get more involved please reach out to Gary Cohn at opportunitytohelp@gmail.com or me at socialaction@templest.org.

We wish you a very happy , safe and healthy New Year. Thank you all!

Tikkun Olam Baby!

Sincerely,

Rich Leroy

Social Action Chair