One year ago, Yonathan Iluz decided to open a restaurant in Kiryat Shmona, on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

“About a year ago I opened a restaurant. I had been doing catering jobs and things like that; but I just really wanted to open a restaurant,” the 28-year-old immigrant from South Africa recalls during an interview with ISRAEL21c.

Jewish by heritage and Christian by faith, Iluz put a lot of thought into whether or not to move forward with the idea.

“I knew there were a lot of pros and cons — I prayed about it and I eventually said ‘I just gotta go for it,’ and so I opened my own restaurant.”

Doing so was a leap of faith that would lead to thousands of mouths being fed every day — but not patrons of his newly opened establishment.

“A few months after I opened it, the war started,” Iluz explains. “My brother went down to Gaza [to fight]. I was in the restaurant and I didn’t really know what to do. My brother was out of contact and I was going a little bit crazy.

“The first day was kind of quiet, but then I had some soldiers come in to eat and I decided it didn’t really feel right to charge them for the food — I just charged them for drinks, but the food was on me. By the second day, I said ‘Let’s start cooking for soldiers.’

“After the first week, I realized that there were a lot of hungry soldiers, and not a lot of civilians [were coming into the restaurant], so I became more focused on making food for soldiers: cooking, packing and driving it out, trying to find people who needed food.”

From 100 to 1,300 meals

Quickly, Iluz saw a need to upgrade his base of operations to provide as much food as possible to those in need.

His father, the preacher of the Congregation of Kiryat Shmona Messianic Church, agreed to utilizing the church as a headquarters to scale up his efforts. Iluz began searching for volunteers and donations to support his expanded operation.

Iluz spent hours each day preparing curries, grains, meats and pastas, which were packed and delivered to soldiers throughout the North. As time went by, he began enlisting more volunteers from the Christian community, which enabled him to go from making 100 dishes to over 1,300 meals each day.Lately, however, with increased tensions and more rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the operation has been scaled back somewhat. The church is within the range of falling missiles (Iluz notes that recently a bomb fall next to the church “and we had to close for a week while we cleaned everything up”).

Despite this, he still manages to put out around 400 meals a day, depending on how many volunteers show up.

The joy of serving

Today, Iluz’s restaurant is closed for business.

“I paid my last rent check last month. No civilians were coming to Kiryat Shmona to buy food, really — and I’ve also been busy with the project. We’re busy from the morning until about two or three in the afternoon, so there’s just no time for me to open up the restaurant after I finish that every day,” he says.

Yet Iluz sounds happy — many of his responses over the phone are punctuated with laughter, and he explains that he feels he’s made the right choice, drawing hope and inspiration from his faith in God and the joy of serving those in need.

“Right now, it’s really [great] to see how much the soldiers feel blessed by it. They ask why all these volunteers and I are doing it, and it gives us a chance to share the gospel. People have started asking questions and going to churches — we’re really reaching the whole country. The chance to show people love and show them we care is what really gives us strength.”

Iluz concludes by elaborating on his plans for the future.

Originally posted on israel21c.org