Jerusalem hotels, restaurants, attractions, tours & events. Helping since 2008

Looking to leave more of a footprint than just a charge card receipt behind when you visit Jerusalem? Make a more lasting impression by exploiting some of the city's many opportunities to volunteer.

"You get to do something that has added value beyond being on vacation," says marketing director Mickey Marienfeld of Leket, an organization that gleans, prepares (pictured) and delivers food to the poor. From refurbishing wheelchairs to serving in a soup kitchen, roll up your sleeves and do a mitzvah.

Choose from a morning of volunteering to several months. The Yad Sarah community service organization - which lends out medical equipment and provides other essential aid to those in need - offers tours of its Herzl Blvd. headquarters, where the visitors "spend anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour working on refurbishing wheelchairs," says Miriam Baris, Volunteer Recruitment Coordinator. Volunteers staying longer can visit the home-bound or offer other assistance; Yad Sarah handles the necessary paperwork. For information, call 02-644-4697.

Jerusalem soup kitchens need help, but none offers as moving a story as the Hazon Yeshaya Humanitarian Network, at Rashi St. 60. Persecuted by Egyptians, founder and chairman Abraham Israel and his family fled to Paris, where they lived off that city's soup kitchens to survive during a three-year wait for visas to the US. "I always wanted to repay the big favor we received," says Israel, who also runs a meals-on-wheels operation.

Volunteers first slice or peel vegetables for the lunch being prepared. Then, at noon, they serve the needy what is for some their only meal of the day. This special experience often draws families celebrating bar or bat mitzvahs to volunteer as a group. "They want to make sure that their kids see not everything comes on a silver platter and appreciate what they have. As for the adults, when you feed a person their only meal of the day, ...that smile you see, ...you can't buy it with money. It's the greatest feeling you can have," Israel says.

From working with endangered animals to sprucing up city gardens. Hadasah Haviv-Nechustan, director of the volunteering unit in the municipality, calls Jerusalem "the capital of volunteerism," noting her unit counted over 40,000 Jerusalem volunteers, "and the number is likely really much higher."

"If someone has a special area they'd like to work in, we will find it for them," she vows. "There's almost no area in the city where people aren't volunteering." Doing so in the capital, "you get a feel for the city, its uniqueness and the special mosaic of those who live here," she says. The municipality volunteerism Web site can help you find the right volunteering project for you before you come, or dial 02-629-7003 for more information.

Finally, for those willing to travel a bit, Leket (formerly known as Table to Table) crisscrosses throughout Israel, gleaning leftover produce from farmers' fields, then storing, packaging and getting food to the needy.

After booking with the organization, you can spend a day picking oranges or gathering onions. Participants must provide their own transportation, but those who've gotten their hands dirty rave about it. Leket plans regular nationwide campaigns to collect food for the needy leading up to many holidays. Those interested in helping can call 09-744-1757.