The Background: Since 2015 the JLIC Downtown Community, under the leadership of Rabbi Joe Wolfson, has engaged Jewish students and young professionals in an extraordinary range of social chesed programming and mobilized this community to provide high-impact financial support to a diverse array of recipients.

Since 2021, with the creation of a new position of Director of Chesed Development for Rabbi Wolfson, this work has been formally scaled across the JLIC network in the US, Israel and Canada.

Ingredients Of Success:

• • A population of students and young professionals, numbering several hundred in New York and several thousand across the JLIC network, who are motivated to give of their time and their charitable giving to those who are in need.
  • A language of Jewish and Torah values  that inspires and frames the particular projects, ensuring that benefit is received not only by the recipient but also that participation takes on a wider sense of meaning for the volunteer or donor.
  • A focus on local need – creating meaningful connections to the neighborhood – combined with responding to crises across the globe
  • A nimble approach that is able to powerfully respond to crises be they terror attacks, pandemics, or conflicts, spotting opportunities to make a meaningful difference whilst larger slower-moving organisations are still struggling to formulate a response.
  • The fast-paced local and global approach is facilitated through partnerships with a wide array of organizations – be it inner-city schools and homeless shelters in New York, Jewish communities in Ukraine or local municipalities in Israel – who provide the ‘demand’ whilst we provide the ‘supply’. We think of this as a shadchan or matchmaker model, locating the demand / need and pairing it with the giving supply.
  • A philosophy of financial assistance which focuses on small-scale particular stories which make a world of difference to the recipients – a fridge or a sofa for an impoverished elderly woman living alone, a minibus to transport a group of special needs children across the Ukrainian border, security guards for the Kyiv JCC in the first ten days of the conflict, a vacation for the family of victims of anti-semitic attacks in New Jersey, and regular Shabbat and chagim food for those experiencing food poverty on the Lower East Side.

Volunteer mobilization projects have included:

• • 180,000 free kosher meals distributed during the pandemic.
  • 2,000 breakfasts brought to first responders each year on 9/11.
  • 13 reading groups in NYC public schools helping children from low-income backgrounds overcome the impact of the pandemic upon literacy.
  • 100s of care packages assembled and distributed each Purim to victims of domestic violence and homelessness in NYC.
  • 100s of young people paired with Jewish seniors bridging the generational gap, combating isolation and providing regular food support.
  • 600+ appointments secured for elderly and vulnerable New Yorkers through a vaccine registration program at a time when appointments were exceedingly difficult to come by.

Financial support initiatives have included:

• • $25,000 in the summer of 2021 to help 300 families escape from war in the south of Israel, providing transportation, accommodation and food in the north of Israel.
  • $35,000 in the spring of 2022 to Ukrainian Jewry which included covering the costs of individuals seeking to escape Ukraine including a minivan of Jewish children with special needs
  •  Ongoing support in the way of rent payments, vacations and children’s toys for the families of the Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the 2019 Jersey City anti-semitic terror attack
  • Thousands of dollars of debt of needy Jewish families on the Lower East Side forgiven each Purim and small-scale support in the way of Shabbat food, furniture and medicines to needy Jewish individuals in NYC.

  Support these projects and get involved. 

Thank you to the Jewish Federation of Broward County for their generous support in partnering with Abraham’s House impactful mission.