The Abundant Bread of Salvation ministry, led by CEO and Director Brian Slater, has not forgotten the Holocaust survivors in Israel. Not by a longshot!
Based in Netanya, the Israeli nonprofit organization has been serving families since 2007, and continues to serve families throughout the country, making sure that survivors are cared for with sufficient food, clothes, furniture, and even trips to restaurants on a monthly basis. Every month over 400 families are blessed by this outreach.
This blessed work of the Holy Spirit is able to provide Holocaust survivors and other needy Israeli families with over 6,000 food parcels annually (equivalent to about 70 plus tons of food), via their headquarters in central Israel. Each bag contains over 25 much-needed food items, including cans of tuna, packages of rice, grains and pasta, cans of mushrooms, fruit, jams, corn and other vegetables.
In addition to food distribution, the ministry runs a weekly soup kitchen where volunteers help serve home-cooked, five-course meals – at least 3,800 hot meals being served annually. In addition, the ministry provides take-home meals throughout the week. In addition, 30-plus tons of new and used clothes and blankets are distributed to those in need, as well as furniture for new Jewish immigrants, which includes refugees from the Russia-Ukraine conflict since early 2022.
Abundant Bread of Salvation holds “Royalty Dinners” to treat Holocaust survivors to a full restaurant meal, and takes them on biblical tours throughout the country.
The monthly operating cost for the food bank program alone is over $10,000, which is raised through donations. This represents about half of the ministry’s total monthly operating expenses.
Their program also makes regular visits to local orphanages, bringing toys, new bed sets, new shoes, school supplies and much-needed love and attention to the children.
The Holocaust survivors also have opportunities to share their testimony with groups of believers, make home visits to encourage shut-ins and the needy and provide practical assistance like cleaning and painting to those in need. Holocaust survivors are also provided transportation to enjoy concerts by Messianic performers including Joshua Aaron, Aaron Shust, Carolyn Hyde, Karen Davis and Paul Wilbur, as well as enjoying biblical dramatic performances of Bible stories from local and international ministries.
During a recent interview, Slater shared his testimony of his Jewish roots and how he came to accept Yeshua as Lord.
While Slater was always certain of his Jewish heritage, he said his family had been only marginally involved in the Jewish community, attending a liberal synagogue from time to time. He enjoyed celebrating the Jewish holidays with his grandparents on both sides of his family, most of whom had come out of pre-Holocaust Europe – his father’s family from pre-war Poland and his mother’s family from Russia.
His maternal grandfather was a renowned rabbi, while his paternal grandfather left Poland in the late 30s to settle in pre-state Palestine, which at that time was under the British Mandate. He is one of the early settlers of a kibbutz in the Judean Hills, west of Jerusalem.
Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim, established in the 1920s by Jews coming from Ukraine, was instrumental in opening up the road to Jerusalem during the 1948 Independence War and breaking the Arab blockade of the city. About the time that Slater’s grandfather arrived in 1933, five of the kibbutz members had been ambushed and murdered by Arabs while planting trees in a Jewish National Fund forest. Slater shared that his grandfather would always travel dressed like an Arab to avoid a similar attack. His grandfather later joined Slater’s great-uncle, who had settled in the Bronx, New York, where his father was born.
As a young teen, Slater fell into the trap that grabs so many young people. Before reaching high school, he had already succumbed to both alcohol and drug addiction. Growing up in a moderately traditional, broken Jewish home in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, Slater was exposed to all the good and bad of American culture.
By the time he had reached the age of 17, he was already participating in a 12-step program for addiction recovery and was celebrating one year of sobriety. Slater held a party with his new 12-step friends to honor his sobriety that his mother excitingly organised and created an amazing food spread. Brian’s mother met a man that worked at the deli where she did her shopping for the party. This man happened to also be a drug and alcohol counselor that also assisted youth. Richard, the deli man gave his mother his phone number to give to Brian.
Slater claimed that his meeting with this man was an act of God because he had been seeking a sponsor for his recovery program. He began meeting weekly, with Richard, his newly-found friend, counseling him while sharing the Messianic prophecies from the Jewish bible. Those meetings not only kept him in sobriety but also brought him into God’s Kingdom, he said, as he learned the Hebrew prophecies and God’s truths, ultimately leading him to know the Jewish Messiah.
Slater later attended a believing congregation, where he met other Jewish believers and in 1987. He then became involved with a local Messianic Jewish congregation in the San Fernando Valley.
Inspired by the example set for him by his counselor and sponsor, Richard, Slater decided to be trained as a drug and alcohol counselor and worked at drug and psychiatric rehabilitation centers and hospitals in the Los Angeles area, joining forces with other believers, including Christian evangelist Pat Boone.
After attending nursing school, Slater was working as a licensed vocational nurse, when he decided to take a tour to Israel with a Messianic Jewish congregation. This planted the seed that would one day blossom into full aliyah when he immigrated to the Jewish homeland.
Slater answered a tiny advertisement in the Messianic Times Newspaper for the House of Victory drug rehabilitation center in Haifa looking for volunteers. He volunteered to work at the center under the direction of Eric Benson for several months, returning to the United States gaining experience as a nurse and finally immigrating to Israel in 1996, shortly after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Slater explained that, during that time, there were many terrorist attacks and bus bombings, so his decision to immigrate to Israel was met with resistance from both his family and friends. However, once in Israel, Slater established himself as a nurse and worked a variety of jobs in the field, including as a nurse in a psychiatric rehabilitation facility, a school nurse, a private surgical clinic nurse, at hospitals and for nursing agencies.
Despite working hard, Slater was still struggling financially, and while he had always considered nursing to be his chosen profession God had other plans. Nursing was to be a stepping stone that would lead him to even greater accomplishments in the healing field, serving a hurting community of needy Holocaust survivors and others by establishing the Abundant Bread of Salvation ministry.
Slater describes his work as “more than a ministry” and said that many of the families he works with have become like family to him.
One of the newer programs that Abundant Bread of Salvation sponsors is called the “Adopt-A-Holocaust Survivor” program. The program’s goal is to connect believers with Holocaust survivors, supporting them financially and any other practical ways. Slater has already supported more than 50 survivors with monthly donations from believers. Slater says, there are at least another 50 survivors needing this essential adoption program.
“Ideally, we would like to see each of our over 100 survivors, WWII veterans and handicapped veterans, receive a cash gift in hand of $200 on a monthly basis,” but every little bit counts for His glory and their comfort in their last remaining years, Slater said.
The ministry doesn’t just meet the physical needs of Holocaust survivors but also looks to feed the soul.
Since its inception, Abundant Bread of Salvation has witnessed dozens of unsaved Jewish people accept the Messiah of Israel, including Holocaust survivors, Ethiopian immigrants, and other needy people in Israeli society.
Nachum, age 90, passed away last year, he was the head of the Netanya Holocaust Survivor organization, had traveled to the U.S. seven years ago at the invitation of Slater. Together, they visiting churches and Messianic congregations sharing his testimony in Hebrew with Brian translating. Nachum, who was not a believer at the time, was deeply touched by all the love he received during the trip and was very touched by the praise and worship that he experienced while visiting these groups. He, too, was soon raising his hands in praise and worship to God, Slater said.
Nachum accepted the Lord at a very symbolic moment, Slater explained, on the evening of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, after the two had been speaking at a church in California. A dinner that followed the church service with the elders, Slater shared, Nachum asked to receive the blessing of salvation: “Yes, please, I want what you all have!”
Nachum told Slater that he was convinced that “God is real” after experiencing the constant overflow of love for Israel and the Jewish people that he felt during his time in the U.S. During that time, arrangements were made by Brian for Nachum to return to Israel accompanied by Rosemary Schindler, a family member of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist and humanitarian credited with saving the lives of some 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Rosemary was about to fly to Israel with a tour group and arranged for Nachum to fly with her in first class.
Over the last several years, Slater also has worked closely on projects with two local orphanages that house over 500 poor and needy children. He was recently awarded a Certificate of Honor from the Israeli Ghetto Survivors Association for his aid to Shoah-Holocaust Survivors.
“We are always in need of servant-hearted volunteers of all languages,” Slater said and asked the community for prayerful support and prayer for the physical and spiritual restoration of our Jewish people.
Slater stressed that time is short and quoted the words of Nachum who tells those he meets, “Please help now because in a short while, we will all be gone, and there will be no survivors to help anymore.”
Abundant Bread of Salvation is always seeking servant-hearted volunteers to come and be a part of the blessing. Those who are interested can contact Brian Slater at [email protected]
For more information about Abundant Bread of Salvation, click here or call 054-735-9280
To help financially support the ministry, go to: www.abundantbread.com
To apply for the “Adopt-A-Holocaust Survivor” program, please write [email protected].