Why Momma Chef Opened a Kosher Soup Kitchen

Fans of the popular food blog “Momma Chef” love the site’s promise of 6-ingredient recipes that take only six minutes to prep. Each month, tens of thousands of cooks learn new recipes from the blog’s creator.  Her new cookbook, 6-Minute Dinners (and More!), is bringing Momma Chef’s ethos of easily-prepared dishes to an even wider audience.

“Momma Chef” is Karen Rubin Nochimowski, a Jewish wife and mom living in suburban Chicago.  Unbeknownst to many of her fans, in addition to keeping kosher, Karen is also a major philanthropist who’s revolutionizing the charitable sector in Chicago.

Karen grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and spent time living in Israel after college.  The experience changed her life. She taught English and spent a few months volunteering on an Israeli kibbutz, working in the kitchen.  “The lessons you learn in a kibbutz kitchen are how to cook in bulk,” Karen recalls.  She regularly prepared meals for hundreds of people in about an hour.  She learned how to prepare tasty, nutritious meals that require little prep time.  This attitude informs Karen’s cooking today.

Back home in Chicago, Karen deepened her connections with the Jewish state. She worked for several Jewish and Israeli charities, gaining valuable skills in marketing and fundraising. She also met her husband Izzy, an Israeli who was working in the United States.

Karen and Izzy built a comfortable life. They often entertained friends and neighbors for Shabbat, and sent their three boys to a local Jewish school. Yet Karen felt that something was missing. “My kids are in a bubble,” she explains, describing their middle-class lifestyle and community. “They didn’t know what it was to truly want.”

Growing up, Karen lived in a more diverse area and was well aware that not everyone enjoyed financial security. “My mom raised me with a sense of empathy and a sense of knowing how lucky we were,” she recalls. “It’s important for me to raise kids who have a sense of empathy and I think the best way to do this is to give back.”

As soon as their youngest son started kindergarten, Karen began looking for opportunities for her children to work to help others who were less fortunate. She found Maot Chitim of Greater Chicago, which distributes kosher food boxes to needy Chicago-area families before major Jewish holidays. Children and adults alike participate in packing and delivering the boxes, and Karen and Izzy began bringing along their own children to help. As Karen and her family drove around delivering food, she found herself shocked at the extreme poverty she saw within the Jewish community. Many of the recipients of Maot Chitim’s food boxes couldn’t afford adequate food for their families without assistance.

Karen began to think of ways she could help even more.

She was already making her mark as a food blogger. “I love to cook,” she explains, “and I’d been sharing my recipes for years.”  She started her food blog Momma Chef in 2017 and within a year garnered 70,000 followers.

Karen had a middle-of-the-night idea that blended her love for food and her desire to help impoverished Jews: “I want to start a soup kitchen.” Her family had long supported a soup kitchen that was sponsored by a synagogue several miles away, which catered to the general community.  Karen wondered: What if she started a soup kitchen that was kosher and could help both kosher-keeping Jewish Chicagoans, as well as the wider community, too?

Karen put together a business plan and began to research synagogues that had the space and the location to make an impact. “Every single thing fell into place without a hitch,” Karen describes.  She emailed KINS, an Orthodox synagogue in Chicago’s West Roger’s Park neighborhood, which is home to a large Jewish population and also contains areas with low-income housing. Within a week, Karen had met with the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Leonard Matanky, who embraced the idea. “They happened to have an entire basement with a handicapped lift. They had storage for the carts of homeless people,” Karen described.

She began recruiting volunteers, including local kids, whom she hoped would help out at the soup kitchen and develop a sense of empathy from helping others.

“When Karen first approached us with her idea, we were excited to partner with her,” Rabbi Matanky explained in a recent Aish.com interview.  “Her project has not only fed thousands of people, she has inspired our synagogue to find even more ways to do acts of chesed (loving-kindness).”

The soup kitchen was incredibly ambitious.  Strictly kosher, it operated once a week, serving multi-course meals in a beautifully decorated dining room complete with tablecloths and flowers.  Visitors not only enjoyed a delicious dinner; they were given a brown bag lunch for the following day before they went home.

Karen’s suburban community jumped at the chance to help.  Volunteers could be aged eight and up, so that entire families could come and help out. “When we opened our doors, we had a six-month waiting list for volunteers,” Karen recalled.  The kitchen opened its doors in 2018.

The outbreak of Covid changed her business model. The soup kitchen closed for only two months in 2020, but it no longer is a sit-down experience. Guests received a takeout container filled with kosher nutritious food instead.  Children still volunteer to cook and hand out food, but the minimum age of volunteers is now eleven.  Each week, the soup kitchen gives out nearly a hundred meals.  They also supply meals to two different homeless shelters in Chicago.

The Little Free Pantry

During Covid, in 2020, Karen came up with another way to help people: a “free pantry movement”.  Working with two different Chicago churches and two synagogues, Karen set up four outdoor cabinets containing an array of food staples, free for anyone who needs it. Signs on the food pantries ask people not to take more than three food items at a time, and this request is usually honored. “It’s a great way to take food, especially anonymously,” Karen explains.  The food pantries are in areas of high need, and are refilled daily.

“I feel very fortunate that I’m able to do this,” Karen explains.

Karen credits a quote from Anne Frank with keeping her focused: “No one has ever become poor by giving.”  “I saw that quote years ago and I realized that my kids have to understand this,” Karen explains.

Fostering a love of helping others requires putting other people’s needs before our own at times, something that’s hard for some modern families to do. “Having your kid sacrifice something in order to help – missing a basketball practice or a game, for instance – isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Karen counsels.  Prioritizing spending time giving to others helps kids develop character. That’s something Karen has seen up close among the many volunteers. “Thinking ‘I just packed a hundred meals for people who don’t have enough food’ feels so good.” She’s noticed that many of the kids who volunteer have asked their parents to make helping out at the soup kitchen a regular part of their family’s routine.

Karen has plans to expand her charitable work, with the goal for more families carve out time in their busy schedules to help others. “Your kids will ultimately thank you.”

Karen's first cookbook, 6-Minute Dinners (and More!), is filled with over 100 simple and delicious kosher recipes with six ingredients or less, including nut-free and allergy-friendly options, to help get dinner on the table with ease. It is available on Amazon.