T

SHELLI DORFMAN
Editorial Assistant

he shortest distance between two
points is a straight line.
So if point "A" is a snowy parking
lot outside Oak Park's Yad Ezra ware-
house, and point "B" is a distribution site inside
the building, several turns and paperwork sta-
tions away, and the line is 1,100 Yad Ezra clients
long, more than a simple geometric equation is
necessary.
For the past seven years, the kosher food
pantry Yad Ezra has joined forces with the Moies
Chetim organization of Detroit, which raises
money to help the less fortunate during Passover.
Yad Ezra faced the problem of how to issue near-
ly the same amount of food that normally takes a

Organization and volunteers galore make Yad Ezra's Passover food distribution a smooth run.

Clockwise from top:
Jennifer Gonik, 14,
of West Bloomfield, helps organize
bags for distribution.

Volunteers Addie Levine of
Farmington Hills,
Pauline Markman
and Irene Fox,
both of West Bloomfield,
get ready to work.

Joanna Abramson
and son Jonathan, 6,
of West Bloomfield,
help sort food.

Joshua Abramson, 13,
of West Bloomfield,
unpacks cartons of eggs.

month to distribute, in just 11 hours, during an
additional holiday distribution on March 21-22.
For this math problem, Lea Luger, Yad Ezra
development director, knew volunteers work
much better than calculations. With 60 of them
joining the regular staff and board members from
both organizations, each client was accompanied
through the maze to the food pickup area. The
volunteers helped fill shopping carts with pre-
packaged bags and boxes containing necessary
seder items, including chicken, matzah and grape
juice, as well as Haggadot and guides printed in
Russian. Then, everything was taken to the
clients' cars.
At end of the day and a half, some 30,000
pounds of food had been distributed at Yad Ezra.
"Volunteers go home feeling they touched
people's lives," Luger said. And as far as the
clients, she noted that a Passover food package
went home with everyone who needed one, in
spite of the "strange shape of our building." El

a

:

a se M Ft a &I kk,`

The Passover holiday intensifies
community outreach
for this kosher food pantry.

4/2

1999

Detroit Jewish News

31