Burgers for Israel: How One Student Turned Heartache into Action

These past two weeks have been extremely emotional times for the Jewish community worldwide. Everyone has had different ways of dealing with their feelings, from attending rallies and vigils to talking with others. For one CSUN senior, that wasn’t enough. Anna Rappaport felt like she needed to take a more active role in helping out Israel during this time of crisis.

Anna couldn’t sit still and wait to hear what was happening in the Middle East, so she approached us asking if she could plan a fundraiser to support Israel. And not just with Hillel, a fundraiser to unite the entire CSUN Jewish community, working with Hillel 818, Chabad at CSUN, Students Supporting Israel at CSUN, CSUN AEPi fraternity, and CSUN SAEPi sorority to raise money to help those in Israel who need it most right now. She said, “It was important for me to do the fundraiser because I felt very useless and wanted to do something to help. I felt like a sitting duck and just kept doom scrolling on social media, seeing the atrocities unwind every hour. My family and friends are there and I’ve never felt more anxious and nauseous than seeing the news. I thought of this idea and immediately reached out to Meg, the Hillel 818 Assistant Director, to get the go ahead.”

She felt this was most appropriate since food is such a core element of being Jewish. She told us, “I was very anxious and thinking of something I can do to help and then I thought about how food brings a community together, especially in Judaism and wanted the CSUN Jewish community to work together on this. It is amazing to see the CSUN Jewish community unify itself within the last couple weeks. At the end of the day, we’re all Jewish and in times like this we need our community around us.”