“Shabbat Guest” Project 2024–2025
A story that has been unfolding for several years, now enriched with new faces, emotions, and words of gratitude
Imagine: Friday evening. The air is filled with the aroma of freshly baked challah, and in the hands of a volunteer – along with the challah – comes a piece of home, warmth, and care. This is how the story of the “Shabbat Guest” project begins every week in 14 cities across Ukraine.
From June 1, 2024, to June 1, 2025, 194 volunteers from 15 volunteer centers based in Jewish organizations have been bringing warmth and support to elderly people on a regular basis. During this period, they baked and delivered 3,662 challahs – 946 kilograms of dough kneaded with love, warmth, and sincerity, always thinking of those who are waiting.
Throughout the year, 511 elderly people and 287 others from different categories regularly receive these challahs as part of their Shabbat table and as a sign that they are remembered, that the community is near, and that they are an important part of it. Along with the challahs, volunteers bring support, attention, and the opportunity to preserve traditions and maintain a connection with the community.
Each visit is a conversation, a hug, a shared celebration with the warmth of candlelight, and sometimes silence that speaks louder than words. It is a chance for elderly people to feel part of the community again, reminisce about their youth, share stories, pass down recipes, and most importantly, feel that they are not alone. Volunteers in this project become friends, listeners, carriers of light, warmth, and support.
The “Shabbat Guest” project, without exaggeration, helps change the lives of lonely, elderly, and less mobile people. It is about a community that does not forget its senior members. It is about young people learning compassion, responsibility, and tradition. It is about how a simple action becomes an act of deep human and communal connection. And it is in these connections that the true strength of the community is born.
Over the past year, through this project, we have united generations, built bridges between the community and its less mobile members, brought joy to the daily lives of those who are often alone, provided opportunities to preserve and multiply traditions, and expanded the community’s capacity, weaving these important values into every challah!