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December 20, 2002/Tevet 15 5763, Vol. 55, No. 17
Pass the turkeyKol Ami gets creative with donations
LEISAH NAMM
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 Students at Temple Kol Ami's religious school take part in Turkey Train Day, helping with the transportation of donated turkeys to St. Vincent de Paul Society. From left are Kennedy Arnold, Jennifer Thorne and Emma Zang-Schwartz. Photo by Susan Frank |
What they witnessed is Turkey Train Day, held Dec. 15 at Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale. Synagogue members dropped off the turkeys in the morning and, after class, religious school students formed a line from the synagogue's kitchen to the parking lot and, one by one, passed the turkeys along the line.
"That's how we get the turkeys from the kitchen, where they're left off that morning, to the trunks of cars," said Rabbi B. Charles Herring. Synagogue members then drove the donated turkeys, in three cars, to St. Vincent de Paul Society. This year's Turkey Train transported 120 turkeys, said Aaron Berg, synagogue member and fifth-grade teacher at the religious school.
Besides the religious school students, volunteers who helped load and unload the turkeys were Helene Rashkow, her sons Cody and Jake, Ben Weitzenkorn and Berg.
Two cases of frozen hot dogs, two cases of shredded potatoes and one giant sack of onions were also donated, Berg said.
Last year, the Turkey Train donated 78 turkeys to St. Vincent de Paul, said Herring. Herring started Turkey Train Day 15 years ago as a group activity for the school's religious school.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is an international nonprofit agency active in Arizona since 1946. The agency has five charity dining rooms in metropolitan Phoenix, as well as an industrial kitchen that prepares an average of 2,300 hot meals daily for its dining rooms and up to 25 other nonprofit agencies, according to its Web site.
"It's great to see the faces of the people who work at St. Vincent de Paul (when we pulled up with three cars of turkeys)," Berg says. "A lot of people get to eat."