Jewish Relief in Japan Feeds Thousands

Jewish relief efforts in Japan are focusing on the hard-hit northern city of Sendai, keeping two shelters in the coastal port stocked with food and distributing fresh bread from a local bakery.

"Our goal is to feed 5,000 people a day," said Chabad-Lubavitch of Asia director Rabbi Mordechai Avtzon, who is coordinating the distribution with Chabad-Lubavitch of Japan director Rabbi Mendy Sudakevich.

With food shortages rampant and rescue crews still recovering bodies from the rubble and the specter of a meltdown still hovering over the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan's worst humanitarian disaster in modern history has challenged the resources of foreign countries and non-governmental organizations.

"We get one bowl of soup or one piece of bread to share among three people," Ayumi Yamazaki, a 21-year-old refugee at an evacuation center in Otsuchi, told a representative of the Red Cross. "It's cold here, and [my daughter and niece] caught a cold, but just now we got some medicine."

Read the whole story on: Virtual Jerusalem