JFS Delivers Thanksgiving Meals to Over 900 Senior Clients

This Thanksgiving, 920 of our Senior Nutrition Services clients will receive a delicious Thanksgiving meal and the delight of a handmade Thanksgiving card, thanks to the hard work of JFS staff and volunteers. The meal consists of roasted turkey, corn bread stuffing, honey pineapple yam, green bean almondine, mandarin salad with poppyseed dressing, whole wheat rolls, and pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving delivery service this year came with a fair share of challenges, but JFS staff and volunteers were ready to take them on. The JFS Hirsh Kosher Kitchen, where the meals were made, had been closed for months undergoing renovations. The JFS Senior Nutrition Services kitchen team recently returned and worked double time to prepare meals for our Home Delivery and Grab N’ Go clients. Because JFS will be closed for Thanksgiving, two delivery days were lost, meaning we had to triple our output on Wednesday to ensure our Thursday and Friday clients would still have their meals delivered.

JFS staff and volunteers rose to the occasion, working together and stepping outside their normal lanes and workload to meet the demand, including JFS CEO Eli Veitzer and his wife Diane Faber, who will be delivering meals to homebound clients along with an army of volunteer before Thanksgiving.

Clients will also be receiving Thanksgiving cards handmade by students from Adat Mitzvah at Adat Ari El synagogue, Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles Troops #4496 and #2906 and their family members, BBYO D’vash #956 Youth Group, Cleveland High School’s Jewish Student Union, and students from all three schools at Temple Israel of Hollywood.

The past years have been full of challenges – a global pandemic, new service models, and relocation to a new building. Yet, despite it all, JFS has continued to deliver quality services to our clients because of the strength, power, and resilience of the JFS community. Thanksgiving this year is an example of that.

“Although we are not yet able to open our meal sites and see our clients in person, we are glad that we can extend the love and care from our program to their home so they can enjoy their Thanksgiving meal until we can see them again,” said Siri Perlman, JFS Director of Senior Nutrition Services.

To learn more about our Senior Nutrition Services, click here.