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For kosher families in need, a new community fridge offers food — and anonymity
When SNAP payments froze during the government shutdown earlier this month, Rabbi Hody Nemes worried about a particularly vulnerable group: kosher families, who already pay 20-50% higher prices for groceries and have fewer food pantries available to them.
Across Chicago, “community fridges” have long offered a lifeline to food insecure families — outdoor refrigerators stocked by volunteers, where anyone can take what they need, no questions asked. But for kosher households, those fridges were effectively off-limits.
Solu, an Orthodox Jewish social services nonprofit, decided to fix that. Last month, it opened the area’s first kosher community fridge in a parking lot in Skokie, a Chicago suburb with a large Orthodox population. With the blessing of the Goldberg-Polin family, Solu named it “Hersh’s Community Fridge” — a tribute to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the slain Gaza hostage whose parents once attended Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie.
At Hersh’s Fridge, the food is divided into three sections: refrigerated groceries bearing a reliable hechsher, or kosher certification; food cooked in kosher homes; and a pantry with kosher-certified shelf-stable goods. Volunteers monitor the fridge for compliance with kosher food standards — not an uncomplicated task for a fridge where anyone can drop off food at any hour of the day. A club of around 100 students at Ida Crown in “Hersh’s Fridge Club” have pitched in, ensuring that each homemade item includes a label attesting, on the honors system, that it was prepared in accordance with Orthodox halacha.
“We have to set a standard so that people can feel confident taking food, and that they won’t open the fridge and discover, like, a box of bacon and Popeyes,” Nemes said.
Demand surpassed expectations, spiking significantly as soon as SNAP benefits paused, said Nemes. Volunteers struggled to keep the fridge stocked fast enough.
That revealed to organizers that there was more need in their community than initially thought.
“Even in our shul community at Skokie Valley, someone approached and said, ‘When is the fridge starting?’ And our assumption was they wanted to get involved. And they were like, ‘No, I need to know, because I need to be able to take,’” Nemes said.
Kosher food is available at pantries like The Ark in Northbrook, about a half-hour away, but the fridge provides two advantages traditional food banks don’t: 24/7 access and anonymity.
Judaism considers anonymous giving the highest form of charity, Nemes noted — a principle Hersh’s Fridge fulfills. Just as important, he added, is anonymous receiving, which allows people to maintain their dignity.
That anonymity matters, said Ilana Horwitz, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and sociology at Tulane University who researches Jewish poverty. Shame and stigma, she said, are among the biggest barriers preventing financially vulnerable Jews from seeking help.
Her research uncovered many such cases, including a Modern Orthodox woman with an advanced degree who appeared financially secure but was quietly overwhelmed by medical bills. Rather than go to the local food bank — where the volunteers were often her fellow congregants — she drove 20 miles to one where she wouldn’t be recognized.
“There is a particular kind of stigma because of this narrative we have in the Jewish community of like, Oh, Jews have been very upwardly mobile. Jews are really successful,” Horwitz said. “Anybody who sort of falls outside of that scope feels like they did something wrong.”
Leah Rubin, a Solu board member, said she experienced her own wake-up call at her day job as a psychotherapist. She routinely offers snacks like chips or candy to the children who come into her office. But one day, a child spotted a can of tuna in her pantry and asked for that instead — explaining she hadn’t eaten all day.
Rubin later learned the family relied on a kosher food bank that offered pickup only a few times a month and felt uncomfortable asking for additional help.
“It became really clear that within the Jewish community in particular, there is a need for an anonymous, easy, grab-and-go” service that enabled people “to feed themselves and their families in a dignified way,” Rubin said.
Nemes emphasized that the fridge doesn’t just serve Jewish families. He said it’s been especially moving to see neighbors of different faiths take food from a fridge named for Hersh, who was involved in interfaith efforts, using soccer to connect Israeli and Palestinian children. Still, he cautioned, the community shouldn’t assume Jewish families don’t also need help.
“We live in a suburban community where a lot of people have said, ‘Is there really need here?’” Nemes said. “We’re seeing that it is needed, based on the response.”
Disclosure: Nemes contributed to the Forward from 2013 to 2015, as a staff reporter for some of that time.
The post For kosher families in need, a new community fridge offers food — and anonymity appeared first on The Forward.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.