Our Big Kitchen: Big kitchen, big heart

It’s August 2016, and along the Bondi Beach promenade, under the warm afternoon sun, stands a crowd of about 100 people from various walks of life, gathered together to celebrate the work of Rabbi Dr Dovid Slavin. Dovid is being commemorated with a bronze plaque along the ‘Recognising our Community Leaders Walk’ that includes both Bronte and Bondi promenades. The accolade is part of Waverley Council’s inaugural Best of the Best Local Hero Awards. 

The first plaque acknowledges the enormous impact of Our Big Kitchen, a non-denominational community kitchen and charity based in Bondi. Attached to the local Yeshiva Centre, which is known and highly valued by the community, Our Big Kitchen has seen many public servants participate in its programs, including former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Dame Marie Bashir, former governor-general Dame Quentin Bryce and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, among others.

Dovid’s younger sons run back and forth along the promenade in their smart suits and traditional yarmulke, killing time before the ceremony commences. They dodge passersby in bathing suits and sundresses before rejoining their equally dapper sisters and mother, Laya, who beams in the front row with her 8 children. 

As well as being founder and director of Our Big Kitchen, Dovid is an executive director of the Rabbinical College of Sydney and the Yeshiva College; he is a co-founder of Gift of Life Australia; a chaplain to the Ambulance Service of NSW; and holds a doctorate in Jewish history. But perhaps his most devoted and successful role to date has been as husband to his wife of 25 years, to whom he credits the founding of Our Big Kitchen.

"Cooking together has such a powerful chemistry, and that feeling is something you just want to bottle and mass produce." – Dovid Slavin

"This is all from Laya’s initiative and drive — I’m just her arms and legs at times," Dovid says. "To Laya, giving is the essence of her being, and it was inevitable that she would help people by cooking for them."

For years, Laya was active in helping the community, and many of these activities would lead back to food and cooking. "When Laya began meeting a woman who was suffering from cancer, it was inevitable that she would ask, ‘What are you doing for dinner?’" says Dovid.

Laya started sending off meals to this woman and others in the community, and began to bring volunteers into her house to help cook and deliver the food; she’d also have them shopping for ingredients. The family then fell in love with the concept of food being used to bring people together. "Seeing how Laya made food become some kind of magic potion again and again, I would have been negligent to have a wife who is so incredibly gifted at giving and not empower that facility to allow her to do this in a big way," he says. 

Without any government funding, the Slavin family managed to create a wonderful industrial kitchen space in the basement of the Yeshiva Centre with the help of local builders and tradesmen who volunteered their skills and resources. Our Big Kitchen now brings together people to support community programs targeted at the homeless, victims of terror, disaster or neglect. It also hosts ongoing activities that promote social action and unite people from different walks of life.

Activities in the kitchen include everything from cooking sessions or classes that bring Jewish and Muslim children together, to encouraging father–son bonding over food preparation and baking cupcakes for school fundraisers. An Amnesty International initiative saw refugees teach locals how to cook dishes from their home countries — putting a human face to the refugee crisis. The kitchen has even hosted singles’ cooking evenings, which has seen several successful matches made.

"Cooking together has such a powerful chemistry, and that feeling is something you just want to bottle and mass produce," Dovid says. "Who do you want to help? What’s important to you? For us, it doesn’t really matter, as long as there’s a legitimate need at the end of it," Dovid adds. "We don’t make food; we make stories and we make connections. Food is the excuse, the language and the channel. Our end product is not food; it’s a sense of community, belonging and second chances, and food is just a part of that."

The kitchen and all its equipment is also rented out to budding food entrepreneurs at the affordable price of $10–15 per hour, serving as an incubator for entrepreneurs to develop their business model without the burden of having to lease expensive retail premises.

"We’ve seen about 2 dozen companies launch after spending time working in here. People who start these small initiatives don’t have the resources to trial their business and work out the bumps along the way, especially when they’re locked into a 2 year lease. At Our Big Kitchen they can develop their business model until they’re ready."

Due to its inclusive working model, Our Big Kitchen operates in conjunction with a number of other charities. The 2015 Vinnies CEO Sleepout held by St Vincent de Paul in 2015 saw Dovid and his family prepare pumpkin soup, fresh bread and cookies for leading business executives shivering in the cold before adjourning to their sleeping bags for the night. The event raised $1,780,000 for vital services for the homeless.

Dovid says it’s a memorable success when business leaders give their time and resources either via events like the CEO Sleepout or when corporate groups use the kitchen to "set aside the imperative of billing hours and participate in making food for those in need." 

Following the unveiling of his plaque on the Bondi promenade, Dovid cited the importance of business leaders and the wealthy in general in giving back to the community.

"Here at Bondi, we see something special — we see before us the largest body of water in the world. Yet the sand in front of the ocean, which you’d think would be wet, is some of the driest soil," he says. 

"I think it’s very appropriate that the unveiling of the plaque takes place at Bondi Beach. It serves as a reminder that we live in a country with incredible wealth, symbolised by the water, and yet so close to it there’s dryness and dearth, and it’s for us to say that we won’t allow that to continue. Where we see great blessing, we will share it, and we will make it inclusive."