Teens to bake hamantashen for vulnerable Jews

Toronto’s 20 Diller Teen Fellows are Jewish students from across the city in grades 10 and 11.

TORONTO — Tamara Weiss, a Grade 10 student in Toronto, speaks eloquently about giving back to the Jewish community, an experience that she says is characterized by “unity and selflessness, which are essential to a prosperous community.”

Weiss is one of 20 teenagers taking part in the Toronto Diller Teen Fellows Program, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s 15-month leadership development initiative for Jewish youths in grades 10 and 11. 

On Feb. 1, the fellows, along with university students from various Toronto campuses who are involved with Hillel of Greater Toronto, will meet at the Prosserman JCC to bake 500 hamantashen for 500 mishloach manot packages.

The latter will be delivered to Toronto Jews living below the poverty line before Purim, on March 4. The event will kick off a community-wide tikkun olam initiative in the weeks leading up to the holiday to support and raise awareness for the most vulnerable people in the Jewish community.

The Diller fellows aim to achieve this in collaboration with 11 Jewish poverty relief agencies, which will mobilize volunteers to assemble and deliver the mishloach manot packages to those in need.

The fellows will also spend the afternoon of Feb. 1 brainstorming ideas for a social media campaign they’ll be co-ordinating to raise awareness in the Jewish community about Jews living in poverty. 

“To be involved in a community-wide tikkun olam project focused on poverty awareness is inspiring and humbling at the same time,” Weiss said, adding that “partnering with Hillel… will allow us [fellows] to learn more about leadership opportunities on campus.”

The collaborative tikkun olam venture, which includes groups such as Jewish Family & Child (JF&CS), Ve’ahavta and Circle of Care: Home Care for Seniors, taps into the idea of matanot le’evyonim – giving gifts to the poor – which Raquel Binder, co-ordinator of the Toronto Diller program said, “Purim is based on.” 

Binder said the project was developed in response to the fact some 24,000 Toronto Jews – 13 per cent of the GTA’s Jewish population – live below the poverty line.

“[Our fellows] spend a lot of time learning about tikkun olam, and this project is an incredible opportunity for our young leaders to stand up, take action and connect with the [marginalized people in the] community that they’ve learned so much about,” Binder said.

Now in its third year in Toronto, the Diller Program is sponsored by the Helen Diller Family Foundation, a foundation of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s Jewish Community Endowment Fund. The fellowship operates in 11 North America communities and in South Africa, each partnered with a different Israeli city.

The goal, said Binder, is “to develop future community leaders with a strong Jewish identity and commitment to the Jewish People, respect for pluralism and a love of Israel.”

The Toronto fellows, whose sister region is Eilat-Eilot, will get more information from a JF&CS staffer who will attend the baking event to talk to the teens about Jews in poverty. “The message is simple,” Binder said. “Jewish poverty is not just a problem, it is our problem. We have a responsibility to take care of one another.”

The 500 package recipients include single parents, Holocaust survivors and isolated seniors. Binder said they’ll also feature items such as dried fruit, citrus fruit and canned tuna. Each will additionally contain a list of available Jewish agencies in the city that help the most vulnerable members of the community.