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Squirrel Hill Community Food Pantry benefits from High Holiday challahs

The High Holidays will be here before we know it, and when it comes to purchasing traditional holiday food items, these special days of the year can be costly for many who observe, but especially individuals and families who are food-insecure in our community.

This year, we are extremely grateful to volunteers from the Volunteer Center of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh who will make holiday challahs for our clients at the Squirrel Hill Community Food Pantry. Thanks to the efforts of the Jewish Federation and the challah bake volunteers, as well as Deena Ross and Moishe Siebzener from Creative Kosher for their ingredients and time, we can help ensure that each of our clients’ Rosh Hashanah tables includes a fresh, kosher challah.

For those who rely on the Pantry for help, we ensure our clients don’t have to sacrifice family traditions during the holidays when they want to celebrate appropriately, but may not have the means to do so. As the only kosher-serving pantry in Southwestern Pennsylvania, we provide traditional holiday food items at all special times of the year, and our staff helps observant clients maximize their budgets and shopping trips so they only need to minimally supplement additional holiday foods with their food benefits if they choose.

In order to continually provide special holiday food items each year, the Pantry relies on the generosity of volunteers, local synagogues and our community partners, all of whom donate countless food items, volunteer hours and funds to help us ensure Pantry clients are able to appropriately observe and celebrate the holidays with their families.

Each year during the High Holidays, the Pantry benefits from donations collected from congregants of Pittsburgh’s local Jewish Congregations. Last year, the Pantry received more than 6,300lbs of food from Rodef Shalom, Adat Shalom, Temple David, Beth El, Beth Shalom, Temple Sinai and Shaare Torah.

You can help Pantry clients celebrate the upcoming holidays by donating special holiday-specific foods to the Pantry, making a financial gift, organizing a holiday-themed food drive at your workplace or congregation or volunteering your time at the Pantry. We encourage community members to donate kosher holiday food items such as apples, challahs, honey-cake or apple-cake mix and honey, or to consider making a financial gift to help the Pantry purchase kosher chicken for clients.

To learn more about the Squirrel Hill Community Food Pantry, please visit our website at www.sqfoodpantry.org. If you would like to donate food items, organize a holiday food drive or volunteer, please contact SHCFP Coordinator Tanya Bielski-Braham at tbielski-braham@sqfoodpantry.org or by calling 412-421-2708.