On March 2, Nathan Yachbes, a Las Vegas 13 year-old, was the star attraction at the Midbar Kodesh Temple library. There, Yachbes knocked over more than 1,000 cereal boxes in a domino chain, a celebratory act for an achievement he and his family are quite proud of.
As part of his bar mitzvah project, since last summer, he had been collecting cereal boxes to help Las Vegas’s hungry. His total recently topped 1,000 boxes, and he is donating them to the Jewish Family Services Agency (JFSA) Las Vegas food pantry, where it will be distributed around the valley to those in need.
As part of the effort, Yachbes reached out to family and friends around the country, as well as locals for support. Donors shipped boxes to his home and sent money for him to purchase cereal. He also sold items at Midbar’s Hanukkah Bazaar to raise funds.
“It warmed my heart to see the community coming together for Nathan,” his mother Jennifer said. “He turned quite a few eyes at stores when purchasing cereal and other customers asked him about it. One lady stopped him in the parking lot to give him a donation because she was so impressed.”
While making one of his many cereal purchases, Yachbes also befriended a homeless man outside the store. The man shared his story, which impacted the young man greatly, his mother said.
“Any time we see the man outside the store now, we always purchase him an additional treat,” she added.
Ken Moskowitz, JFSA’s CEO, was on hand at the1,000-box domino celebration.
“It was an honor to be part of Nathan’s project,” he said, “and good deeds like this go a long way to further our mission of offering help, hope, and support for individuals facing life’s most pressing challenges.”
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