First Hand Stories from the Trenches

Bread for Israel currently has 300 + distribution locations around Israel. Each location is run by a dedicated volunteer distribution manager. Our managers are regular people who selflessly give of their time and energy, year round, rain and shine to make sure that the bread is available for the families who are coming. 

As distribution managers they occasionally have interactions that remind them, why they signed up for this, why they added to their already busy life (aren’t we all busy ?), this extra project. 

Recently we reached out to our pool of incredible volunteer coordinators and asked them to share some of their more powerful interactions.

The following is a small sampling of the stories sent in.

A father described how his child began to develop B”H thanks to bread. He explained that in the past he would be skimpy with bread, limiting the amount of slices each family member got, because bread was expensive. 

A child came to get bread and sweetly explained that his mother had been waiting anxiously for the day of the distribution, since they hadn’t had bread at home for days already. 

One manager shared that a Rebbe in the local Talmud Torah thanked him for the bread. He explained that there is a family in the school that has financial difficulties, and since they started receiving free bread from the distribution, the children are fuller, calmer and performing much better in school.

A family was so poor they would feed their children leftover food from a local Yeshiva’s Kitchen. The kids didn’t like it very much and hardly ate. Once they received bread from the Chalukah they started to eat more!!

Shockingly, a family didn’t have Challah for Shabbos, instead they ate the bread from the Chaluka!

There is a  Yungerman from a very Chashuva family, who is physically disabled. He was going to be out of town during one of the bread chalukahs. He called up to have someone save him bread. The distribution manager assured him he would put bread aside for him and  asked him why it was so important. The man replied that he has no money, but at least if he gets the bread he knows his 10 children have something to eat!

There is someone who needed a yeshuah, and wanted to donate to a needy family but he himself had no money to donate!  The man decided that each time bread is distributed in their neighborhood, he would take 5 loaves for his family and then another 5 loaves of bread for a single-parent family with nine children,  who can use the bread, but it's hard for the mother to come to the distribution. Soon after, the man shared that he saw a very great yeshuah, and he is sure that it is in the zechus of delivering the bread to the needy family!

A family once told us that they were having a hard time managing their household finances and were ashamed to ask for help, and for a period of time he used the bread from the distribution as the main source of food for the family, and that really helped them during that difficult time. 

There was a mother who was seriously ill and the father was running the house alone and juggling major medical expenses. But one thing he could count on, the bread from the local bread distribution was there to ensure he had what to feed his family, free of charge.

Stories of real families experiencing real poverty happen all across Israel. Bread for Israel already has 300 + distribution stations across Israel delivering fresh and tasty  bread to families in need. With your help we can open even more distribution stations and reach even more families.