Restaurants all over the country are offering free meals to soldiers in uniform, in a move that would warm any Jewish mother’s heart.
“We felt we had to do something, and this was the minimum we could do,” Avi Sinclair, co-owner of La Piedra, which has two branches in Jerusalem and just opened a food truck in Har Hotzvim, told The Jerusalem Post. “Our country is in a state of war. We wanted to go back to doing what we do, which is to serve food.”
Anyone wearing a uniform, including policemen and MDA and United Hatzalah volunteers, can get free pizza at La Piedra. It’s not just any pizza that they’re getting. La Piedra is the first and only Israeli pizzeria to make it into the Top 50 Pizza Guide, an Italian ranking which lists the best pizza all over the world.
Sinclair said he hasn’t kept track of how many meals he has donated but estimates that it is about 1,000 meals at NIS 50 each.
“We will continue to cover the costs as long as we can,” he said.
Some eateries were giving soldiers food even before the war
Some restaurants were giving food to soldiers even before the war and have only stepped up their efforts since then. At Muffin Boutique any soldier in uniform can get a free muffin and coffee, or sandwich and coffee, once a month.
Co-owner Shmarya Richler said the owners have given away almost 5,500 meals since they opened their first branch on Ben-Yehuda Street. That was in 2014 when Israel was embroiled in another war with Hamas in Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. Now in 2023, just a few weeks before the war began, they opened a branch on Daniel Yanovsky Street in north Talpiot.
“I’m never opening a third branch,” Richler joked to the Post. “It’s just too dangerous.”
Richler said the soldiers are always appreciative of free food.
“They tell me that it makes them feel like a million bucks,” he said. “We even had one guy who called me to cater his son’s brit and he told me he chose us because he used to get free meals from us.”
Piccolino in downtown Jerusalem has long offered lone soldiers free entrance to its well-known Friday buffet. When the war started, the owners shut down the restaurant like so many others did and turned it into a collection point for everything from thermal underwear to baby formula for families of the more than 200,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from their homes. Orit Dahan said that US donors, all customers of the restaurant, had been looking for ways to donate to the war effort and Piccolino was happy to help connect them. She estimated they have distributed goods worth well over NIS 1 million since the war began.
“I have always had a special place in my heart for lone soldiers,” Dahan, who owns Piccolino with her sister Anat Yazdi, told the Post. “These soldiers don’t have a mother waiting for them with pots simmering on the stove, so we invite them to come to the restaurant on Fridays.”
Since the war she has brought a lot of food to the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center, as well as to the shivas of at least 10 soldiers killed in Gaza.
The Aroma chain has also spent a lot of time and money catering for soldiers. At Aroma Beit Kama, one of the staging points for soldiers on their way in or out of Gaza, soldiers eat free. Every day at Aroma Beit Shemesh, volunteers make hundreds of sandwiches that are delivered to soldiers all over the country.
There are also restaurants that became kosher in order to be able to provide meals to soldiers including those who keep kosher. As reported in the Post, one restaurant called Noor in the Druze village of Julis in northern Israel has become kosher in order to provide food to soldiers.
Dozens of private initiatives for baked goods and sweets
THERE ARE also dozens of private initiatives around the question of food. One is Hamal Hamatok (the sweet war room), which delivers home-baked goods to soldiers all over Israel. The Jerusalem Branch is called the Baking Battalion and is run by Hedy Rashba, who has several children fighting in the war right now.
She organizes bakers all over Jerusalem who bring their challot and cakes, along with handwritten notes or drawings, to a central collection point in Jerusalem. From there they go to Ramat Gan, where they are distributed to units around the country. Often the baker will leave his or her phone number, and sometimes the recipients call or send a video.
In one sweet video that Rashba shared, a little girl sent a model of a tank made from toilet paper rolls painted green to a tank battalion in Gaza.
“Avigayil, thanks so much for the gift. It really looks like our tank,” one of the reservists said on the video. “But yours is even better than the real one.”
Rashba partners with Nadia Levene, who founded BubbiesRBaking, which you don’t have to be a grandmother, or even a woman, to join, Levene assured the Post.
“BubbiesRBaking gives everyone who can bake in their own kitchen the opportunity of doing a mitzvah by feeding our armed troops,” Levene said. “We find that the older generation in particular feel very connected to this war effort, and often baking gets them through these difficult weeks.”
It is taken to the same place that the goods from the Bake Battalion go, where it is then packed and taken to some 4,000 soldiers all over Israel and in Gaza.
Levene says that a friend’s son-in-law got a quick leave of just 10 hours from Gaza and asked for 1,200 cookies.
“I said, don’t worry! You’re talking to the right person!” Levene said. “I then gave our baking bubbies a hakpatza (emergency call-up), and he returned to Gaza with a van full of baked goods.”•