Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Gift Baskets Offer Multiple Mitzvahs

Get a triple mitzvah out of your Hanukkah gifting with treat baskets that delight the recipient, support the work of a non-profit and employ special needs individuals. When you purchase through Yachad Gifts, a project of the Orthodox Union, you enhance vocational opportunities for Yachad members.

More Gourmet Gift Ideas

Yachad works with special needs individuals, schools and vocational schools. It offers multiple Shabbat retreat experiences. As manager Stuart Gourdji explained, Yachad’s goal is to move people into mainstream society. At Yachad Gifts, they learn how to stock shelves and check inventory, assessing with a job coach suitable tasks, depending on what they want to achieve.

Yachad Gifts started as a web business and just recently opened a retail shop at 1545 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. Graduates work at box stores and shipping warehouses. All food items in the baskets, including plenty of chocolate, are strictly kosher and reflect several certifiers. There are about 50 Hanukkah options — and baskets designed for many other occasions as well.

Rabbi Deborah R. Prinz speaks about chocolate and Jews around the world. The second edition of her book, “On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao,” was recently released. Prinz is co-curator of the exhibit “Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate,” on view at the Bernard Museum of Temple Emanu-el in New York City (through February of 2018). Her blog is onthechocolatetrail.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.