Largest Network Of Free Soup Kitchens

The road to a persons heart is through their stomach. As stated in Ethics of Our Fathers, "where there is no flour (food), there is no Torah. Simply put, on an empty stomach, people are not interested in hearing about anything, and most certainly, not to hear about religion in a country where religion itself was prohibited for the past 70 years!

GJARN was from the first international Jewish organizations coming to help the re-emerging Jewish communities across the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to open free soup kitchens to feed the needy.

In fact, many Synagogues in the early 1990's were only able to hold daily prayers thanks to the soup kitchens established by GJARN which provided warm breakfasts after the morning prayers and a warm lunch a bit later after a short Torah study program offered by the local Rabbis. Some even provided a third meal in the evening so that they were able to hold evening prayers with a Minyan.

The first three soup kitchens were established in 1992 in Kharkiv and Dnpropetrovsk, Ukraine and also in Riga, Latvia. Based on requests and as funding was available, GJARN funded the establishment of additional kitchens.

To date, GJARN has established Soup Kitchens in

Russia:  Ekaterinburg, Moscow, S. Petersburg, and Samara

Ukraine: Dnepropetrovsk, Marioupol, Kharkiv and Kiev

Latvia;  Riga