Gourmet Cooking and Good Deeds in Manhattan’s Chelsea Neighborhood

by Karen Schwartz – chabad.org

Guy Rejwan spent a recent Wednesday night taking in cooking tips and learning from a renowned chef how to make delicious salmon and mashed potatoes as part of the Chelsea Shul’s “Cooking for a Cause” program. It was the inaugural event for the New York City-based series, which meets again under the guidance of a well known chef on Tuesday, July 24, when it will continue to prepare kosher food for those in need.

Some 40 Jewish professionals, retirees and students pitched in to make 150 meals that were distributed in New York’s Chelsea and Gramercy Park neighborhoods. The three-hour event included time to socialize, cook and pack food, which was distributed the next day by the synagogue’s Rabbi Chezky Wolff to area residents.

“ ‘Cooking for a Cause’ helps build the community by bringing people together, and it gives back to the community by distributing meals to the homebound,” says Rejwan, who was on the host committee along with Jeffrey Galusha, Elena Sapir and Rabbi Chezky and Perry Wolff, co-directors of the Chabad-Lubavitch Chelsea Shul and Rohr Center for JGrads. “The communal aspect of bringing people together over the dining table and through food is inspiring to me.”

Rejwan helped recruit executive chef Nadav Greenberg, who he grew up with in Jerusalem, to lead the session, and participated alongside friends, neighbors and colleagues. “They were all excited to bring joy and nourishment to the homebound in our community,” says Greenberg, adding that he’s eager to participate in more of these events in the future and to be with a community that’s “united by compassion and the joy of cooking.”

The event, set to take place monthly, is backed by Project Yad Eliyahu, a local charity, in honor of the third yahrzeit (anniversary of passing) of Elliot Sturman. Sturman was active in the Los Angeles Jewish community, and helping the elderly and people with disabilities in his honor made sense, explains his sister, Deborah Sturman. “The point of it is to make a community to help people in the community,” she says.

The synagogue has been providing food for homebound community members since the coronavirus pandemic began, starting with holidays and moving to a more consistent basis with volunteer help, says Wolff.

Its efforts are modeled after Our Big Kitchen in Sydney, Australia, which has hundreds of volunteers cooking in a commercial kitchen and distributing food, he says.

“It’s a great way to socialize, and it’s becoming more and more popular as a way of volunteering,” Wolff says of the cooking events. “It’s fun because it’s a new dish you never knew how to make before. There’s a good vibe and it’s truly chesed.”

Miami- and New York-based Henry Stimler says he was drawn to ‘Cooking for a Cause’ because of his grandmother, who was a big influence in his life. She was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944 and used extra food she was able to access to feed others. After the war, she did the same thing.

“She was always cooking for other people; that’s my kinship to this initiative,” says Stimler, one of the project’s benefactors.

He says he’s amazed to see the initiatives that Rabbi Chezky and Perry Wolff have been able to implement in the area, including getting meals to Holocaust survivors and the elderly during covid. “These are unreal things; this is explosive growth. It’s amazing to be a part of it and amazing to watch,” he says.

Wolff would like to see the initiative grow to be a weekly (and eventually more than weekly) basis, and to include locals and tourists alike. “It’s an opportunity,” he says.” Beyond wining and dining and shopping.”

The event was executed by Esty Rapoport, a New York City-based event producer, and took place in the 3,400-square-foot event space at the Chelsea Shul.