Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester has an annual tradition during the High Holy Days; a large food drive for The Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries. Congregants are given empty bags at Rosh Hashanah services and asked to bring them back to Yom Kippur services, this time full of non-perishable food. Each congregant receives a wish list of the most-needed items, along with a biblical passage about helping people in need.

This year’s drive was extremely successful, with a total of 2,361 lbs collected. Sandy Seidman, a member of the congregation and the owner of Safety Zone, arranged for a large truck to deliver the food to SSKP’s Old Saybrook pantry, where CBSRZ and SSKP volunteers unloaded hundreds of bags of food to be weighed and sorted for distribution.

“This annual food drive is so appreciated, and shows the commitment of CBSRZ to caring for others,” said Patty Dowling, Executive Director of SSKP. “By the end of summer our pantry shelves can get quite depleted, and this will help fill them again. We are so thankful to everyone at Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek.”