Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a gathering of Chabad rabbis from far-flung communities, and feature an op-ed from Robert Lichtman. Also in this newsletter: Doug Emhoff, Deborah S. Meyer and Jonathan Shmidt Chapman. We’ll start with a profile of a Los Angeles-based organization working with the city’s homeless population.
The White House is facing pressure from left-wing groups to avoid including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliancedefinition of antisemitism in its forthcoming national antisemitism strategy.
Since it began 10 years ago, Worthy of Love has put on parties and events for over 10,000 children experiencing homelessness and their families in Los Angeles. It is now looking to expand to not only offer its participants a one-time experience but also to help lift them out of poverty permanently, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther Kustanowitz.
“When you close your eyes and you say ‘homeless,’ I think of a man on the street. But now that I’ve done this work for 10 years, I don’t just see a man, I see a mom and three kids whose dad died and they have nowhere to go. Or their mom has cancer,” Mary “Mandie” Davis, founder of Worthy of Love, told eJP.
Davis started WoL in 2013 with then-boyfriend (now-husband) Ari Kadin when she was both volunteering in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles and in the process of converting to Judaism. She said she felt a calling to braid those two life experiences together, to represent Judaism while helping out in shelters and on the street. Her plan was to throw monthly birthday parties for unhoused children who were living on Skid Row. At the events, kids with birthdays in the same month received gifts, cake, a dance party and activities with themes ranging from science to superheroes.
Actor and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, a WoL board member and one of its 2,400 volunteers, donned a sloth mascot’s costume at last August’s party, and circulated among the kids, watching as their faces lit up with joy, she told eJP. “The parties are an experience many of them will never [otherwise] get to have, to be in that kind of environment, with a mascot that’s there to hug them and high-five them, and it was incredible to be able to do that somewhat anonymously,” said Bialik, whose own children regularly accompany her to WoL parties.
Davis expanded WoL in 2022, adding another program, Mama’s Challahs, to enable families experiencing homelessness to bake bread together, and leave with a loaf of fresh bread and a recipe booklet, “to bake the world a better place,” as Davis put it. So far, 14 Mama’s Challahs sessions have taken place across three greater L.A. locations — OBKLA, Hope Gardens in Sylmar and Salvation Army in Westwood.
The next goal is to open a brick-and-mortar bakery as a social enterprise where Davis can hire women who live in poverty and give them the opportunity to make their own livelihood. Davis said she is now working on raising the funds needed to both rent a suitable location and hire the necessary personnel, including a head baker.
“I do personally see Worthy of Love through a deeply Jewish context,” Anne Hromadka Greenwald, of AMH Advisory, who consulted with the organization on its strategic plan. The process of giving work to women who need it, she added, has its roots in the rungs of the ladder of tzedakah as articulated by Maimonides, particularly “the idea that one of the greatest things you could do is actually give someone a job, and not just a job, but a skill set that they can then use way beyond you.”
Read the full story here.
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