At the heels of the Maryland Hillel’s massive “Shabbat 1,000” dinner last month, a group of students took advantage of the over 100 pounds of leftover food, packaging it for families in need.
The initiative was organized by the fledgling charity organization Jackie’s Kitchen, which aims to combat food insecurity and reduce waste by packaging and donating food to families in need.
A year ago, University of Maryland alumna Emanuelle Hutman founded Jackie’s Kitchen with the goal of helping local Jewish families in the DC metropolitan area.
Hutman named the initiative for her late grandmother, hoping to honor her memory with its mission of working to eliminate food insecurity.
“The program was created in honor of my late grandmother, Jacqueline Kalchman Hutman z”l, who grew up in a rabbinical family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her experiences during the Great Depression instilled a deep respect for food and a commitment to reducing waste,” Hutman said. “Valuing family, humility, modesty, and open-mindedness, she inspired everyone around her.”
Jackie’s Kitchen has a partnership with the DMV-based charity organization Yad Yehuda. Together, the two groups provide food donations to families in need, keeping their charity anonymous in order to maintain respect for the recipients.
The group also provides kosher meals, allowing low-income, religious, Jewish families to have access to food without sacrificing their religious observance.
Their leadership board works with the Hillel kitchen staff and campus student groups to send kosher supervisors and volunteers to campus events, where large amounts of kosher food are served. Students then package and collect the food, which Yad Yehuda delivers directly to kosher-observant families.
After hearing from three volunteers at the DMV-based charity organization Yad Yehuda in September, the students at the event packaged over 115lb of food recovered from a recent Hillel event.
“There is a lot of food that goes to waste everyday, but hopefully in the future, Jackie’s kitchen will be able to recover even more than we are now,” said Hannah Munk, a volunteer coordinator for the organization.
The event proved meaningful for Daniel Hutman, the current student president of Jackie’s Kitchen and brother of Emanuelle, who was overjoyed to see new volunteers getting involved in the family-run organization.
In March 2023, Jackie’s Kitchen got its start with its first general body event, which followed the National Hillel Basketball Tournament.
Students recovered and donated 230Ib of food, which would have gone to waste, to Yad Yehuda, who in turn donated it to families in need. Since then, Jackie’s Kitchen has successfully recovered over 1,000Ib of kosher food.
After many successful recoveries and donations, Daniel hopes for continuous growth in the program and “to expand to kosher dinning halls at college campuses across the US.”
