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A kosher community fridge in Chicago’s Jewish suburbs arrives amid rising food insecurity
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
SKOKIE, Illinois — Just off East Prairie Road in this suburb of Chicago is a sign that says, “Welcome to Hersh’s Fridge.” At the bottom is a line in Aramaic, quoting the Passover Haggadah: “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
It may not look like much, but the sign points to a pioneering project: an outdoor kosher community fridge that offers free, fresh foods and prepared meals that anyone can take anonymously. The food, provided by volunteers and local kosher restaurants, is available at any time of day or night.
The effort is aimed at providing food support for strapped kosher-observant households in the heavily Jewish neighborhood northwest of Chicago. In the week since it opened, the fridge has been heavily used, said Rabbi Hody Nemes of Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Synagogue. As one of the organizers, he had already received several letters of gratitude from people who have visited.
While the initiative has been in the planning stage for a year, it has opened at a time of particular need. Tens of millions of Americans who depend on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to feed their households, are expected to lose SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, leading to long lines at food banks across the United States. At the same time, disruptive immigration enforcement raids by federal agents in Chicago — including, last weekend, in Skokie and adjacent Evanston — are putting additional pressure on needy families.
“A lot of our neighbors are feeling vulnerable right now, particularly with uncertainty around SNAP benefits,” Nemes said. “We want our neighbors to feel safe and well fed. We see the fridge as part of making sure that everyone, whoever they are, whatever their politics or their background, feels taken care of and welcome to take food, including people who are not part of the kosher-keeping community.”
The fridge is supported by a volunteer army of local teenagers. After witnessing years of food waste at Shabbat kiddush lunches, including at his own bar mitzvah, Avi Rubin, 17, a senior at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie, volunteered to join the project, which he said reflects the tenets of Judaism he has been taught in school. “Not wasting food is a Jewish value rooted in the halachic principle of Bal Tashchit, which prohibits senseless waste or destruction,” Rubin said.
Anabelle Ashman, 13, an eighth-grader at Hillel Torah Day School, said she got involved after meeting a woman in need while restocking another public fridge. “She explained to us that she was living in a house with three families,” Ashman said. “It was a really happy moment for me, because I realized that I could help the community like that.”
The project is named in honor of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Israeli-American kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and subsequently murdered by Hamas. Hersh’s parents, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, are originally from the Chicago area and met while attending Ida Crown.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin speak about their son Hersh at the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2025, in Chicago. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images); A sign advertises Hersh’s Fridge, a kosher food pantry in the Chicago suburbs. (Courtesy Hody Nemes)
The initiative is led by Solu, a local Orthodox Jewish organization that regularly partners with non-Jewish groups to address social issues. Solu, which has been working on food insecurity since the COVID pandemic, came up with the idea of a kosher fridge last year in response to spiking kosher food prices. After Hersh was murdered, they decided to name the initiative in his honor.
“Hersh was about doing good work, bringing people together, bridging divides,” said Rabbi Ari Hart, Solu’s co-founder and CEO. “We hope this fridge will be an engine for that in the community.”
Hart said the fridge offers a space for volunteers of all backgrounds to come together, including from a local mosque and church, to package kosher meals for neighbors in need.
The Jewish community and heavily Jewish neighborhoods such as Skokie and West Rogers Park are affected by poverty and food insecurity despite misconceptions to the contrary, said Nemes.
“All it can take is a job loss, or a major medical incident,” he said. “We’re blessed that we have strong social networks in the Jewish community, but even so, people can fall through the cracks.”
Jewish hunger advocates and nonprofits across the country have sprung into action as uncertainty has mounted about the future of SNAP payments. Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger and the Jewish Federations of North America are both pressing Congress to ensure SNAP benefits continue through the shutdown. Local Jewish federations, meanwhile, have begun distributing emergency grants, with the New York federation saying that 74,000 Jewish families in New York alone were at risk of losing their food benefits.
Jewish families in Chicago and its suburbs are also struggling, according to Nemes, who estimates that one-fifth of Jews in the near north suburbs are financially insecure.
The urgent need was highlighted for Nemes when a community member contacted him after the fridge was announced. “Someone said, ‘When will the fridge be up?’ I, foolishly, said, ‘Thank you for wanting to donate, it will be up this fall,’” he recalled. “They said, ‘I don’t want to donate, I need the food.’”
Nemes said the teenage volunteers are critical to the effort. “Kids and teens have already begun to play a deep role in servicing the fridge,” he said. “We hope that role only grows because we believe that to be a Jewish adult means to be a giver, and the best way to learn how is to start young.”
Rubin and fellow Ida Crown student, junior Hillel Lennon, 16, started a club at their school to promote teen involvement in the project. The pair were thrilled when close to half of the student body signed up to clean, check and restock the fridge, including purchasing food from local kosher grocery stores as well as picking up leftovers from nearby kosher restaurants such as Emma’s Cafe and Tacos Gingi, as well as local synagogues. Rubin ended up building the cabinet for the project’s dry-goods pantry.
Lennon said he was excited to be involved in a social effort that reached beyond Jewish institutions to the wider world. “As Jews, it’s very important to help our community and the people in need that live here,” he said.
The community fridge movement has surged in recent years amid a shift toward mutual aid in some communities and activist movements. While Hersh’s Fridge serves kosher-keeping households on Chicagoland’s north side, in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side, Congregation Rodfei Zedek operates its own public fridge as part of The Love Fridge Chicago, which has 17 locations across the city.
Volunteers construct Hersh’s Fridge, a kosher community fridge in the suburbs of Chicago. (Courtesy Hody Nemes)
Ezra Skol, 15, a sophomore at Kenwood Academy, is one of the teen volunteers at the Rodfei fridge. Skol said he enjoys seeing the direct impact of his service. “On many occasions, while we’ve been stocking the fridge, the people who are taking the food will come up and thank us for the work that we’re doing,” he said. “When I see these people, there’s a personal connection, I can actually see who I’m helping out.”
Skol has encouraged his friends to volunteer at the fridge. He emphasized how the project goes beyond simply providing food, strengthening the sense of community. “Ultimately, we’re all living in the same neighborhood and we’re sharing the same spaces. There’s a responsibility there, and that’s exactly what the Love Fridge is doing, it’s looking out for one another.”
For Hersh’s Fridge, organizers bought two full-size fridge-freezers as well as building the pantry, creating more capacity than pre-existing public fridges.
For Rubin, one of the most special aspects of the project is its anonymous nature.
“The Torah says you should give back to the poor,” he said. “But this is also discreet. People will just be able to come and pick up food. This fridge will bring an awareness to the issue because people will see that even in the Jewish community, there are still people in need.”
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ADL launches ‘Mamdani monitor’ as Jewish groups retool for post-election advocacy
As New York City woke up to a new mayor-elect on Wednesday, Jewish groups that spurned Zohran Mamdani faced a decision — how to react to a leader whose staunch criticism of Israel flew in the face of their core beliefs.
Their first responses ranged from despondent to optimistic, with aims from seeking unity to staging a battlefield.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League chief who railed against Mamdani throughout the race, convened a briefing on Wednesday to discuss grappling with the new administration. He announced a “Mamdani Monitor,” a public tracker of Mamdani’s policies and personnel appointments that the ADL viewed as threatening Jewish security.
“We’re deeply concerned about what the next four years could augur for Jewish New Yorkers — the antisemitic language that he has promoted, the antisemitic policies that he’s championed, the antisemitic extremists who he’s known to affiliate with,” Greenblatt said.
Greenblatt cited Mamdani’s support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and past rhetoric about the Israeli army as evidence that “this mayor will not have our backs.” Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has narrowed its civil rights mission to focus on combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Mamdani crested to victory as the city’s first Muslim mayor without a majority of Jewish voters, who have split over his staunch criticism of Israel. Early exit polls from CNN indicate that he won just over 50% of voters but only 33% of Jewish voters, while his pro-Israel opponent Andrew Cuomo won nearly twice as many, at 63%.
Greenblatt said the ADL was closely watching Mamdani with a list of demands. Those included no appointments of people with records of antisemitism, NYPD protection for synagogues and Jewish day schools, and “factual, unbiased education about the Middle East” in schools. He also said it was “very important” to maintain NYPD partnerships with Israeli counterintelligence and counterterrorism efforts.
Hindy Poupko, the chief strategy officer at UJA-Federation of New York, also said her organization was preparing to combat potential Mamdani policies that aligned with BDS. She said that UJA hoped to lobby for broadening a state-level anti-BDS order, passed by Cuomo as governor, so that it would apply to New York City.
“We need to expand that Cuomo executive order to cover City Hall, because it would be devastating on many fronts — not to mention economically devastating for New Yorkers — if the Mamdani administration engaged in any kind of BDS activity,” said Poupko.
Asked if they would meet with Mamdani, both Greenblatt and Poupko gave qualified answers.
“I will not meet him on my own,” said Greenblatt. “I think we have a responsibility to our fellowship as Jews. I’m not going to do that meeting without UJA. I’m not going to do that meeting without some spiritual leadership as well.”
Poupko said, “The ball’s in his court.” If Mamdani took actions to “put Jewish New Yorkers at ease,” then she said UJA leaders would meet him.
Mamdani was asked about Greenblatt’s proposed “Mamdani Monitor” in a press conference on Wednesday.
“I think that anyone is free to catalog the actions of our administration,” he answered. “I have some doubts in Jonathan’s ability to do so honestly, given that he previously said I had not visited any synagogues, only to have to correct himself.”
Greenblatt incorrectly stated that Mamdani had not visited “a single synagogue” during a CNBC interview in August. He later said he meant that Mamdani had not visited any synagogues since the June primary.
The ADL and UJA were not alone in mourning Mamdani’s victory. The New York Board of Rabbis and other leading Jewish institutions in the city said in a joint statement, “We cannot ignore that the Mayor-elect holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community’s deepest convictions and most cherished values.” They added that they would continue to work with every level of government.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and backed Cuomo, said he planned to establish the first Jewish day school in the Hamptons as a haven for “thousands of Jewish families” fleeing “the antisemitic climate of Mamdani’s New York City.”
Meanwhile, the Republican Jewish Coalition called Mamdani’s victory “a deeply distressing result for New Yorkers, particularly Jewish New Yorkers,” and accused his entire party of condoning antisemitism. “There is only ONE party in this country fighting antisemitism and supporting Israel, and it is the Republican Party,” said the coalition.
Other past critics of Mamdani seemed ready to put the election behind them. The pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman, whose prolific and protracted attacks on Mamdani during the campaign often predicted an apocalyptic city under his leadership, appeared to offer an olive branch just hours after predicting Cuomo would prevail.
“Congrats on the win,” Ackman said to Mamdani on X. “Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
Some voices emphasized mending the divisions that roiled Jewish communities throughout the race. The Union for Reform Judaism, which urged its rabbis not to endorse candidates despite intense pressure from congregants, pressed Jews to “help lower the temperature, listen generously, and take steps to promote healing” in the aftermath of the election.
“Reasonable people across the political spectrum — and across the Jewish community — must aspire to respectfully disagree, and we will do our part to bring people together without erasing real differences,” the group said. They added that they welcomed cooperation with Mamdani and would hold him accountable to “his commitments to protect Jewish communities and all New Yorkers.”
Noting that City Hall does not have a foreign policy, the organization said it would “not hesitate to push back if anti-Israel policies or rhetoric make Jewish New Yorkers who are deeply attached to Israel more anxious and less safe.”
Other Jewish leaders are looking toward a future under Mamdani not with dismay or caution, but with jubilation. Activists from left-wing groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which have bolstered Mamdani’s rise to power, celebrated the victory at his watch party on Tuesday night. Several people there told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency they would finally have an ally in City Hall who aligned with their views on issues from income inequality to Palestinian rights.
Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, who leads the SAJ synagogue on the Upper West Side, urged congregants with wide-ranging reactions to the election to keep in mind their shared hopes for the well-being of all Jews and New Yorkers.
She quoted the prophet Jeremiah, writing, “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God on its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.”
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Heritage Foundation staff confront president over antisemitism, defense of Tucker Carlson
The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, apologized to his staff on Wednesday for his refusal to condemn Tucker Carlson after the right-wing broadcaster aired a friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
During a tense, two-hour all-hands meetings, staff members challenged Roberts’ leadership, questioned Heritage’s credibility, and warned that his stance had gravely damaged the foundation’s relationships with Jewish partners and donors
“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full stop,” Roberts said.
He specifically apologized for a previous comment defending Carlson in which he decried a “venomous coalition” attacking the commentator. The phrase, he said, was “a terrible choice of words, especially for our Jewish colleagues and friends.”
The meeting, audio and video of which were leaked online, laid bare deep divisions inside America’s most influential conservative think tank, torn between Roberts’ attempt to mend fences and a staff revolt from within its senior ranks.
Several Heritage employees, including longtime fellows and legal scholars, told Roberts they no longer had confidence in his leadership. Others said his refusal to draw moral lines between Carlson and antisemites like Fuentes had caused lasting reputational harm.
“I made the mess, I want to clean it up,” Roberts told employees, adding that he had offered his resignation to the board but felt a “moral obligation” to stay and repair the damage.
Several staffers demanded that Roberts publicly repudiate Carlson. Two called for him to resign.
“You have shown a stunning lack of both courage and judgment,” said Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow who has worked at Heritage for eight years. “I stand here today with no ability to say I have confidence in your leadership.”
“It has become increasingly difficult to continue to defend the Heritage Foundation,” added Rachel Greszler, another senior fellow. “I do not believe that you are the right person to lead.”
The confrontation followed days of turmoil triggered by Roberts’ decision to post a video in which he said Heritage would not “distance” itself from Carlson despite his friendly interview with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has praised Adolf Hitler. Roberts framed his position as a defense of “grace” and “free speech,” saying the right should avoid “canceling” its own.
That message sparked outrage across the political spectrum. Prominent Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, denounced Fuentes as a “Nazi.” Jewish organizations that had partnered with Heritage on its antisemitism initiative, Project Esther, cut ties. Conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro blasted Roberts for embracing a “no enemies to the right” ethos.
One of the most emotional moments at the meeting came during comments from Daniel Flesch, a Jewish staffer with Heritage’s Allison Center for National Security, who oversees Project Esther. He described being unable to defend Heritage to Jewish allies and friends.
“It has been six days… where as an organization we have been unable to utter the words…‘Tucker’s an antisemite, and we as Heritage do not want to associate with him,’” Daniel said. “We are bleeding trust, reputation, perhaps donors.”
Robert Rector, a Heritage veteran of 47 years, invoked conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., who in the 1960s sought to expel antisemitic and racist elements from the conservative movement.
“Buckley’s view was that we have to expunge all antisemitism from the movement and expel the lunatics,” Rector said. “This is what built the conservative movement. We are now reversing that.”
Hans von Spakovsky, another senior Heritage figure, warned Roberts that the think tank’s credibility could not be salvaged without a clean break from Carlson.
“The damage done to the reputation of Heritage is the worst I have ever seen,” von Spakovsky said. “If the Heritage Foundation and you do not dump Tucker Carlson publicly, we are not going to repair that damage.”
The meeting also exposed generational and ideological divides on the right. One young staffer argued that Heritage should not prioritize defending Israel and accused the leadership of promoting “Christian Zionism” — a comment that drew audible gasps.
Roberts and his deputies reaffirmed the foundation’s pro-Israel stance, but the exchange underscored how some younger conservatives, animated by online populism and isolationism, are challenging traditional right-wing support for Israel.
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As Mamdani’s victory reverberates beyond NYC, Jews must choose solidarity over shock
The ascendance of Zohran Mamdani stunned many Jewish New Yorkers, and now that he has been elected, many Jews in New York and across the country feel fear and foreboding. The city that long stood as the beating heart of American Jewish life, creative, intellectual, and spiritual, has elected a man who denies the Jewish right to national self-determination, traffics in rhetoric that isolates our community, and aligns with movements hostile to Jewish safety and dignity.
This moment strikes a community already reeling from the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the wave of antisemitism that followed. Mamdani was the encampment candidate, lifted by the same forces that turned American campuses into arenas of cruelty and open hatred of Jews. For many, the outcome feels like the city we built, enriched and defended turning its back on us.
But panic provides no preparation, and despair offers no strategy. The Jewish people endured darker nights than this one. We never surrendered. We stood together, protected one another, and built stronger than before.
Clarity must guide us now. We reject the divisive and bigoted politics that carried Mamdani to Gracie Mansion. In his brief career he has championed efforts to delegitimize and demonize Israel, entertained defunding New York institutions that support Israelis, leveled baseless accusations of grave abuses, rejected the IHRA definition of antisemitism, opposed ceremonial resolutions honoring the State of Israel, failed to join resolutions commemorating the Holocaust, and — perhaps most galling to many — refused to condemn the call to “globalize the intifada,” a slogan that glorifies violence against Jews.
These actions reveal conviction, and we harbor no illusions about engagement. A few softened remarks before victory cannot erase years of radical rhetoric and targeted hostility. Tactical moderation rarely if ever equals moral transformation.
Events in New York echo beyond the city. When the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora faces rhetorical and political assault, extremists everywhere take notice. The effects reach synagogues, schools, students, and families across the United States. This moment concerns more than one election; it defines the boundaries of decency in public life.
Criticism of Israeli policy belongs in democratic discourse. Demonization of Israel and excuses for violence against Jews do not. That inversion, condemning Israel while minimizing Hamas atrocities, reflects not a pursuit of justice but an obsession with Jews. The Jewish people know this story from centuries of repetition, and we recognize it instantly because we survived it before.
But we also know what needs to come next.
We will fortify our institutions. We will organize for communal safety. We will advocate relentlessly at the municipal, state and federal levels. We will strengthen alliances with leaders who refuse to equivocate about Jewish life. And we will secure resources, philanthropic and governmental, to protect our people and our future in this still-great city.
We proceed without illusions. Leadership demands moral seriousness. When the mayor’s office abandons that duty, others will step forward. Jewish safety, dignity and continuity depend on our resolve, not on the goodwill of any administration.
New York stands as a city of Jewish strength, energy and resilience. That truth will not change. In this difficult hour, we choose solidarity over shock, courage over resignation, and resolve over naïveté. We lift one another up, safeguard our community, and affirm that our story never belonged to those who stand against us.
Let us not mourn, but organize.
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