For his bar mitzvah project, Shawn Srolovitz created a book of recipes, with profits to be donated to the Freehold Area Open Door food pantry. MANALAPAN — The bar mitzvah ceremony is a traditional religious rite of passage into adulthood for a 13-year-old Jewish boy. As part of their preparation for that special day, many young men are asked to perform a mitzvah, or good deed.
The bar mitzvah ceremony marks the culmination of years of study and once the ceremony is over, food is usually served to guests in the celebration that follows.
Foe his project, Shawn Srolovitz found a way to bring food to more people than just his bar mitzvah guests with a “Food for Thought” project.
Shawn, a Manalapan Englishtown Middle School seventh-grader, compiled the favorite recipes of people he knows, created a cookbook, and called his creation “Food for Thought.” He is selling the books for $10 each and donating 100 percent of the proceeds to the Freehold Area Open Door, which operates a food pantry.
Inspired by a canned food drive he participated in when he was in sixth grade, as well as by the memory of his late grandmother, Shawn chose this path when challenged to complete a community service project in the Hebrew school class he attends at Temple Beth Shalom, Manalapan.
“I thought it would be really cool to help the food pantry and after my grandma passed away last July we found a lot of her old cookbooks because she enjoyed making them. So I decided that I would carry on her tradition and make my own cookbook to benefit the Freehold Area Open Door food pantry.”
Shawn e-mailed his friends and family members and asked them to put together their favorite recipes along with anecdotes about why they like those recipes and where they got them. He sent all of the recipes to cookbookpublishers.com and that organization compiled the recipes and created the “Food for Thought” cookbook.
So far Shawn has sold about 225 cookbooks. On President’s Day, Feb. 16, he went to the Freehold Area Open Door food pantry in Freehold Borough and made the first donation of $2,000. He plans to keep the project going for an indefinite period and hopes to continue to donate 100 percent of the profits to the food pantry for a long time to come.
Shawn lives in Manalapan with his parents, Erica and Steven, and his sisters, Rachel, 10, and Samantha, 6. According to his mom, everyone is very proud of his efforts.
“He’s doing such a great job,” Erica said. “He just turned 13 and I’m so proud of him. We are all so proud of him. I love to see children make a difference.”
Shawn’s aunt, Ilyssa DeCasperis, of Staten Island, N.Y., summed it up in her entry on Shawn’s Internet website, She wrote, “I’m so proud of Shawn’s project. ‘Food for Thought’ is just that — making folks think about what we have and how we can help others. You Rock Shawn!”
For more information visit the website at www.cookbook4you.homestead.com.

