Nathan Dashevsky's B'Mitzvah Project

When my son Nathan said he wanted his BMitzvah Project to involve cooking, I questioned whether that was possible and tried to steer him in another direction. Through Tzedek America's Mitzvah Project Central, though, he learned about Lasagna Love, a neighbor-to-neighbor movement that matches lasagna "chefs" with local families in need of a home cooked meal. Perfect - except that he had never made lasagna before! Even more perfect? When we signed him up, we learned that the regional administrator in charge of matching "chefs" and community members in our area just happened to be an Or Ami Partner.

After testing out a couple of different recipes, Nathan was ready to start sharing his lasagna with others. Over the next few months, he made and delivered 12 lasagnas to neighbors who requested them through Lasagna Love’s portal. While the cooking was fun (and the cleaning up was not), delivering the lasagna was the best part of the project. Some recipients were recovering from illness or surgery and couldn't cook for themselves, others had just lost jobs, and some provided no details about their situation at all. It proved more challenging to simply hand a lasagna he had just cooked to a stranger than Nathan thought, but it reinforced for him the importance of community and helping others. We were both incredibly grateful to Mitzvah Project Central for introducing us to this amazing organization for his BMitzvah Project.