‘Offer your compassion’: Rabbis fundraise for World Central Kitchen after fatal airstrike
People gather around the damaged car used by U.S.-based aid group World Central Kitchen that was hit by an Israeli strike. Photo by AFP via Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe April 5, 2024
A New Jersey rabbi felt “heartbroken” after an Israeli airstrike killed seven workers from World Central Kitchen this week.
“On one of the worst days,” Debra Orenstein said she thought, “what can I do that will increase my hope and help for other people?”
Orenstein, the spiritual leader of B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue near New York City, went to the aid organization’s website, noticed you could create your own fundraiser for the group, and on Tuesday made one called “Rabbis for World Central Kitchen.”
She set a goal of $18,000, a multiple of the number associated with chai, or living, and added a quote from the Prophet Isaiah: “When you offer your compassion to the hungry and satisfy souls who are famished, then your light will shine in darkness.”
The donations came pouring in — so fast that she upped the goal to $54,000 and then to $72,000. More than 250 rabbis have so far contributed, for a total of more than $60,000.
Among them is Rabbi Jack Moline, retired leader of the Interfaith Alliance.
“Of all the people doing good in this world, José Andrés is sort of at the top of my list,” said Moline, referring to the chef who founded World Central Kitchen. “His quiet devotion to making sure that, whatever else is going on in the world, people have food in their belly is something that’s worth supporting in and of itself.”
“But especially after this tragedy, involving his aid workers in Gaza, I felt a special responsibility to make it clear how much I appreciated the work that he does in impossible situations.”
The killings of the World Central Kitchen workers Monday drew global condemnation, and marked a turning point in U.S.-Israeli relations over the conflict in Gaza, which began nearly six months ago.
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike an unintentional tragedy and apologized, President Joe Biden in the days after the aid workers’ deaths issued his most strident warning to the Israeli leader to date. In a Thursday call, he demanded an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and raised the possibility that the U.S. would condition aid to Israel if it did not take steps to protect the vulnerable in the enclave.
Orenstein said she was inspired to start the fundraiser in part because she is in the midst of teaching a class about hope through the Good People Fund. “I followed my own curriculum,” she said.
She hopes that the fundraiser, to which she has also invited non-rabbis to contribute, may appeal to what she said she believes is the majority of American Jews: Zionists who care about Israel, but also “care about the world of suffering in Gaza.”
Rabbi Fred Sherlinder Dobb, of Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist congregation north of Washington, D.C., saw the link to the fundraiser spread on rabbinical listservs.
“Scores of us quickly added our donations because it felt like a concrete, meaningful way of almost atoning for that tragedy,” he said.
Because Israel’s government has been “barely apologetic,” he continued, progressive supporters of Israel like himself “must publicly embrace WCK and its brave staff, acknowledge their holy work, and lament their dead alongside so many others.”
Correction: The original version of this article misstated the host of the class Rabbi Debra Orenstein is teaching about hope. It is the Good People Fund, not the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
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