TSTI donates cooking oil, light bulbs to food pantry

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — A major part of the Hanukkah story is that one day’s worth of oil burned for eight days. In honor of the holiday, members of Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange collected and donated 135 bottles of cooking oil to the Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges; TSTI is one of four area houses of worship that support the food pantry, which provides supplemental and emergency food to low-income residents of Orange and East Orange.

Sources outside of the TSTI community also donated to the cause, enabling the Reform synagogue to reach its 250-bottle goal, so that each client could take home a bottle during the distribution on Jan. 11. TSTI staffs the food pantry one Wednesday a month, bagging and distributing pantry staples for 250 individuals and families. The Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges — http://orangesfoodpantry.org — is located at the Church of Epiphany & Christ Church in Orange.

“Although cooking oil is one of the most commonly requested grocery items by our food-insecure neighbors, it is not usually supplied by IFPO,” Karyn Boosin Leit, TSTI executive board member and IFPO pantry coordinator, said in a press release. “This donation will enable them to cook hundreds of meals for themselves and their families.”

Given that Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights, TSTI members also ran a Hanukkah light bulb collection; approximately 150 bulbs were distributed on Jan. 18 to pantry clients. Cantor Rebecca Moses of TSTI, who spearheaded the collections, noted that, “Providing light will help make sure that family time, homework time and work time may continue for thousands of hours during the evening for IFPO clients.”

  Hanukkah, Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges, Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel