Tel Aviv Chef Prepares 900 Meals Daily for Holocaust Survivors and Disabled in Israel's South

TEL AVIV — Erez Pinchas is a chef and restaurateur at one of Israel’s premier culinary institutes. And at the moment, he’s also a lifeline for hundreds of people stranded in Israel’s southern cities.

Pinchas and the Asif Culinary Institute of Israel, together with volunteers from the Aliyah Foundation, are feeding elderly Holocaust survivors and people with disabilities who cannot be evacuated from their homes, and cannot leave the “safe rooms” in their homes to reach bomb shelters during rocket attacks.

Last Friday, the project delivered 860 meals to cities like Ashkelon and Ashdod — beautiful coastal towns that have been all but abandoned since Palestinian terrorists from Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,200 people.

With a ground war in Gaza looming, and rocket barrages several times a day, many residents have left, and the government has evacuated others. But some remain because they simply cannot leave, or because it is too difficult to accommodation that meets their needs.

That is where Erez, culinary director Guy Ben Baruch, and other volunteers come in. On a Sunday morning, Breitbart News observed restaurant workers busily chopping vegetables, preparing loaves of pita bread, and placing condiments into containers.

It was a rare scene of frenetic activity in a city whose normal bustle has gone quiet since the war began and 360,000 reservists — among them the country’s most economically active people — headed to the front to defend their country from terrorism.

Volunteers come in around lunchtime to help — and to escape news of the war. One told Israel21c: “It’s almost like therapy.”

Like many restaurant kitchens in secular Tel Aviv, Asif is not kosher — but it has hired a rabbinical supervisor to convert the kitchen to conform to religious Jewish dietary laws, so that religious recipients of the meals can enjoy them in good conscience.

Drivers from the Aliyah Foundation then take the risky trip south — braving air raid sirens — to reach stranded residents.

They are brining more than meals. They are bringing a reminder to Israel’s most vulnerable and isolated people — now in the direct line of terrorist rocket fire — that they are not alone, and that the whole nation is on the front line with them.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.