LA JOLLA, California — Imagine your Shabbat table. Homemade challah. Warm soup. Fresh fruits and vegetables. As Jews, we are comforted by food. It’s our culture. Our love language. And meals?
Meals are as special as love letters.
4IDF writes love letters to our IDF soldiers every day. “Two proteins, two carbohydrates—besides the challah and cakes—and some veggies,” founder Hannahlee Kaplan Arusy explains, “we send them a big Shabbos meal, everything homemade.
“If we get to eat our comforting Shabbat dinner at home, then our soldiers—who are fighting for the ONLY Jewish state in the world—should be sharing in that meal. Wherever they are.”
Arusy, an American-Israeli mother in Ra’anana, Israel, shares that 4IDF began on October 8th. Previously, she had worked with her cousin providing desserts and vegetarian options to accompany BBQ meals for the IDF. She says “the day after October 7th, I knew this was something we needed to do every day. This is our duty.”
4IDF provides mehadrin-kosher (the highest kashrut level) meals. Every meal is home-cooked by mothers and other volunteers in Ra’anana, who often pay for the ingredients themselves. And every day, Arusy says yes to meals, no matter what. “I can’t say no. For most of the week, our soldiers eat processed and packaged ‘TV meals.’
“For Shabbat, we want to send them our love and support. I want to make sure that for Shabbos, Sunday, and Monday, our soldiers can eat food that’s made with kindness and prayers. It’s our love letter to them.”
It truly is. When everyone arrives at Arusy’s house on Friday morning to deliver their cooked portion of the meal (“some do sides… some do proteins… some do desserts…”), they stand over the food to bless it. They bless the food, bless the soldiers, bless the state of Israel. “If you stand in my house for 30 minutes,” Arusy reveals, “you feel uplifted.”
Gipsman holds a personal connection to Ra’anana: her son, Ethan, and his family live there. Gipsman herself lives there for half the year. She says, “When Ethan joined the IDF again after serving as a lone-soldier, I needed to do something. Anything. I needed to help fight for our country.”
She found out about 4IDF and hasn’t stopped helping since then. “I see the soldiers as my own sons, my own children,” she admits, “like Ethan.”
4IDF gives Gipsman purpose. And it gives others’ purpose, too. “Everywhere you go, you feel like you’re walking into your family’s home. Everyone wants to help. The love is palpable.
“One woman, bless her heart, brought a hot pan with salmon in it. She told me she ‘wanted the soldiers to have it fresh.’ I had to explain that it would be many hours until they would eat this food. But that moment, her kindness… it stayed with me.”
The soldiers feel the love, often sending back videos expressing their gratitude. Arusy recounts some stories:
“There was a commander in Gaza who reached out to me. He said his soldiers were barely surviving on rations, and that they needed food. So, I said yes, we will send food. He asked me what I would send them. I responded, ‘schnitzel, some chicken, rice…’ and I heard a noise on the other end of the phone. He was crying. He hadn’t eaten chicken in weeks.”
Another:
“Another commander called to thank me for the food. He told me it was the first time he could eat real food because he was mehadrin kosher. From then on, I knew that we would always cook mehadrin kosher meals. No one gets left out of a Shabbos meal.”
And another, a translated letter from a sergeant: “Thank you very much. You are our back and our security. You are the reason why we are doing this here.”
4IDF makes sure they are supporting people, “body and soul.” And we need to make sure we support them. Am Yisrael Chai.
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Kayla Swartzberg is a young Jewish writer from San Diego. She enjoys spending time with friends and family, reading good books, running, and (no surprise here) writing!
Kayla, thank you for writing this sensitive and beautiful piece, reminding us of yet another, very meaningful way we can support our people. Delighted to see you are published.