The story of God's grace behind Banff's mobile kosher kitchen
By Uziel Shiner – chabad.org
Banff, Alberta, Canada, has a kosher kitchen. The $200,000 project brings the first fully-fledged commercial kosher kitchen to one of North America's premier resort towns and tourist destinations — and it's all on wheels!
After serving the Jewish community of Edmonton, Alberta for 20 years, Rabbi Dovid Pinson, his wife Deborah, and their five children moved to the Banff area this fall to open Chabad-Lubavitch of the Canadian Rockies. Featuring majestic, snow-capped mountains set against an idyllic landscape of stunning slopes, hiking trails, parks, clear rivers and steaming hot springs, Banff is a destination that draws approximately five million visitors each year.
From the beginning, one of the Pinsons' priorities was to make kosher food more accessible to locals and visitors to this natural area. The answer came in the form of Chabad's new mobile kosher kitchen. It's a story of divine providence and the power of determined, faith-driven people working for a noble cause.
A prayer, a promise, and the perfect combination
When Howard Moster arrived at the resting place of the Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of revered memory) in Queens, New York, in 2017, he had a heavy heart and weakened kidneys. A transplant from Edmonton, he had been a detective in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had continued working for many years despite underlying health conditions.
Indeed, his years in law enforcement and then running a private security company were marked by physical energy. Besides barbecuing at large cookouts, Moster's main hobby was architecture, and he made a habit of renovating other people's homes, even building a cabin from scratch in Maine.
But the truth is, Moster had been battling polycystic kidney disease for years, a genetic condition that impairs kidney function and can lead to kidney failure. Eventually, Moster put himself on the transplant list, beginning a grueling, indefinite wait for a cadaveric kidney.
Rabbi Dovid Pinson, then youth director for Chabad of Edmonton, accompanied Moster to the Ohel, and as he stood by the rabbi's grave, Moster made a promise to himself: If God could help him find a kidney, he would dedicate himself to a major project for the Jewish community.
Back in Edmonton, Moster continued to wait, but Pinson got to work. One way to bypass the transplant list is to secure a transplant from a living donor.
Pinson began searching for a suitable kidney donor, drawing on the extensive contacts and network he gained from being a rabbi in a large Jewish community. Without even knowing who the rabbi was looking for, several people in the community came forward and quietly began the process of determining whether they would be suitable donors.
Each had different problems: some were too old, some had pre-existing conditions that disqualified them, and still others had incompatible blood types and antibodies.
That's when Rabbi Mendy Brachman, a colleague at Chabad in Edmonton, put Pinson's name on the list. He, too, didn't know who Pinson's desired recipient was. Only after he agreed to take a compatibility test did Pinson explain the situation to him.
Blackman was tested. The results were astonishingly conclusive: he was a near-perfect match. Moster's doctor asked him, “Are you two really not related? You'd have to be brothers to make a closer match.”
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity.”
The rabbis' immediate priority was to keep the identity of Moster's donor, Brakman, completely secret. They knew Moster would be uneasy if he knew that his donor was someone close to him, a rabbi at that. Moster had already turned down an offer from a compatible young woman who was of childbearing age and would have faced complications if she became pregnant with only one kidney. Brakman was a full-time rabbi with responsibilities to an entire community, and a young father of five children under the age of nine.
“There were a lot of concerns about what it would mean to accept Ravi's kidney,” Moster said, but he began preparing for the transplant with a feeling of relief and gratitude, even though he wasn't told who the donor was.
Thus began Moster and Brakman's extensive kidney transplant process, an ordeal that consisted of numerous tests and consultations before the actual surgery, which required regular hospital visits for the pair to prepare for the procedure. Confidentiality was paramount, and a meticulous schedule was put in place to prevent Moster and Brakman from running into each other during their multiple visits to the hospital.
At one point, a scheduling error threatened to derail the entire process: Moster had a routine checkup, and Brakman was scheduled for one shortly afterward on the same day, so the two never met. But a delay delayed Moster's appointment, and when he finally emerged from the exam room, he bumped into the rabbi, who was lying down. Tefillin With a Jewish man in the waiting room.
Moster knew right away. With both the rabbi and kidney donor standing before him, a wave of emotion washed over him. A few weeks later, Howard Moster and Rabbi Mendy Brachman were wheeled into the operating room for the transplant. A few hours later, the operation was completed, and a few days later, Rabbi Brachman visited Moster in his hospital room, where he was recovering. The two embraced, and Brachman said, Tefillin He helped Moster put it on. Before leaving, Moster thanked Brakman again for saving his life. Brakman turned to Moster and said, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to perform such a wonderful mitzvah!”
The new kitchen takes shape
In the aftermath of the transplant, Moster and Pinson began thinking about how they could fulfill Moster's desire to give back to his community as a way of showing his gratitude to God. The fact that the organ he needed was found so soon after his visit to the Ohel, and that his perfect match for a donor was one of his Chabad rabbis, among others from around the world, shone out as an unmistakable sign from God. “It was clear to me that the rabbi played a big role in helping me find my kidney,” Moster said.
Thinking about the needs of Alberta's Jewish community, they quickly came up with an idea: there was a lack of kosher food options in the general Alberta community, and being an area frequented by many tourists, there was a significant need for a sustainable kosher food destination.
“The idea was born for a mobile kosher kitchen,” Pinson says. “We envisioned a commercial kosher kitchen that could be brought to any event, resort, or space and instantly provide a complete kosher experience for all attendees.”
Given Moster's aptitude for architecture, his experience in government that allowed him to help navigate available funding and grant funding, and his passion for cooking large festivals and serving delicious food to large crowds, this project, like his new kidney, was a perfect match.
The biggest hurdle to overcome with the mobile kosher kitchen was funding. With the total project cost estimated at $200,000, raising enough capital to make the project a reality was a concern for Pinson. Raising the initial seed money to get the project off the ground became a priority.
It came in the form of another family who, in the aftermath of their own tragedy, wanted to give something meaningful to the community in memory of their loved one.
Daniel Weig was an active teenager in the Edmonton community. His parents, Yehuda and Ilana, raised three children in Edmonton, and Daniel was the eldest. Not only was he studious and did well in school, but he also volunteered as a lifeguard and guide at local summer camps, teaching kids outdoor skills and first aid.
Daniel tragically took his own life on his 19th birthday. His family struggled to come to terms with his death and tried to find constructive ways to commemorate Daniel's life in the aftermath of an unfathomable tragedy.
They asked Rabbi Pinson for ideas; Pinson mentioned, among other ideas, a mobile kosher kitchen. The Weigs were intrigued. In addition to the originality of the project, the idea resonated with them because it aligned with Daniel's own life.
Danielle spent many summers volunteering at a Jewish summer camp in Edmonton and noticed something: “Every summer, the kids come home thinner than they were when they left camp,” says Yehuda Weig. “There aren't many kosher food options in Alberta, so it would be great to have a kosher kitchen that can be used to meet the kosher food needs of the community.”
The Weigs donated money to the project, including the proceeds from the sale of Daniel's car, and organized fundraisers, and soon they had raised the initial funds to start a mobile kosher kitchen.
“Everyone helps each other in their own way.”
Nearly six years later, after fundraising, getting grants, losing grants, taking out loans, raising more money, installing industrial equipment and a global pandemic, Banff's mobile kosher kitchen is finally complete.
The 36-foot rig is equipped with a barbecue deck and grill, two gas ovens with six burners, a charcoal grill, a griddle, a full stand-up refrigerator and freezer, a 50-pound deep fryer and soon a Traeger smoker. It also has a full-service table and drainboard, two large sinks, shelving, hot and fresh water tanks, a capacity of up to 200 pounds of propane and a 10,500-watt generator, meaning the kitchen “can be wheeled into the middle of the desert and feed 200 people,” says Rabbi Pinson.
Moster sees the kitchen not only as a convenient location for the Jewish community, but also as a way to promote spirituality and goodness throughout the Canadian Rockies.
“Everyone helps in their own way,” Moster said. “The rabbis' job is to help people fulfill their mitzvahs, and I help in my own way. They say, 'If you feed them, they will come.' With this kitchen, we're able to host great events for the community and increase participation from people who might not have come otherwise.”
For Pinson, Moster, the Weig family and the entire Banff Jewish community, this new mobile kitchen means more than just kosher food: it's an innovative solution that meets the precise needs of a sprawling Jewish community and, hopefully, a means to raise the spiritual profile of the entire province.
