Breaking Bread on Broad (Courtesy of Congregation Rodeph Shalom)
Every Wednesday, volunteers from Congregation Rodeph Shalom and members of the community wake up at 5 a.m. to break bread on Broad Street.
The food pantry, named “Breaking Bread on Broad,” first started as a summer program for children in school who weren’t receiving breakfast and lunch while school was out. Then when COVID hit, the program needed to make a change and became a food pantry.
“The threads that run through [Rodeph Shalom] has to do with social service and serving out community,” said Terry Silver, co-leader of the program.
Silver said he became involved with Breaking Bread on Broad shortly after the program started because he was looking to get involved in something meaningful at Rodeph Shalom.
“My wife said one day, ‘well, there’s this food program that [Rodeph Shalom] has, maybe you’d be interested in that.’” And so, I worked a couple times and then I worked a couple times more,” he explained. “Before I knew it, the cane was put around my neck, and I was dragged in.”
The program serves around 200 families from the area, including many from Chinatown.
“Every other week a representative from the [Philadelphia Department of Public Health] comes along with a Chinese interpreter who speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin because the majority of our guests speak Cantonese or Mandarin,” said Ellen Poster, co-leader of the program. “We were able to give them hygiene supplies, masks and other information about vaccines in the language that they speak.”
In addition to fresh fruit, vegetables and shelf stable items, the pantry also provides diapers, feminine hygiene products, and even turkeys for the holidays.
Feminine hygiene products and diapers are partially donated and partially bought directly by the congregation, with donations from individuals and grants from the city.
“No one should have to choose between putting food on the table and having hygiene and dignity for their children,” Poster added. “That’s what we’re all about, is trying to be as welcoming and to provide people with as much respect and dignity as we can.”
The pantry has roughly 25 regular volunteers, some of whom are members of Rodeph Shalom and some of whom are from the community and are not Jewish.
“Some are members of the community. So they started perhaps as recipients and then wanted to give back. And so they come every week. They’re devoted volunteers,” said Poster. “Our congregational members and our community members are working together every week to make the pantry run.”
The pantry partners with a multitude of organizations like Philabundance, a nonprofit food bank in Philadelphia, and Benjamin Franklin High School, located across the street from Rodeph Shalom.
“We’ve established partnerships with a couple of schools. For example, across the street from Rodeph Shalom is the Benjamin Franklin High School, and a teacher there has a program for junior Reserve Officer Training class, ROTC, and part of their program includes community service. One day — he’d been observing us on Wednesday mornings — he came over, he asked us what we were up to, and the conversation kept going,” said Dan Seltzer, co-leader of the program.
“It truly is a partnership. For example, around the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, we seek and get contributions so that we can provide turkeys … and things like that for holiday dinners for our guests. But we don’t always have the refrigerator space,” Silver added. “We’re able to ask and oftentimes get permission to use the walk-in refrigerators and freezers at [Benjamin Franklin High School].”
In addition to the pantry, Breaking Bread on Broad hosts semi-annual drives for the spring and winter. The winter drive, called Bundled Up on Broad, is organized with the help of religious school parents and other parts of the congregation to provide hats, scarves, socks, underwear and anything else to keep people warm during the cold weather. In the spring, it hosts a Budding Up on Broad drive where it collects bilingual books, toys and more for children for the summer.
“There’s no qualifications, there’s no pre-registration, there’s no information they have to provide,” Silver added. “They just come up, they get a number, and they get their milk and their fruit and produce and diapers, etc.”