Jewish hospice volunteer goes beyond ‘Shabbat blessings’ with ‘Froth and Bubble’

Jewish News
May 30, 2025
by Shannon Levitt

Jeff Lewis, 71, had about 100 boxes of books with him when he moved to the Valley from California more than a decade ago. Surprisingly, those books became his first link to Hospice of the Valley (HOV), an organization that would become very important to him through the years.

A friend suggested he donate the books to HOV. Lewis was happy to see them benefit an organization he considered a very good cause. He had some prior experience with a hospice in Palm Springs when his father was terminally ill.

“The concept of hospice has been part of my life for a while, and they were always angels from heaven,” Lewis told Jewish News.

Thus, when he decided to retire from his photography business but wanted to stay busy, his friend again nudged him toward HOV and its Shabbat Blessings volunteer program.

“It combined my love of my religion and my desire to repay hospice care,” he said.

As a Shabbat Blessings volunteer, Lewis, a member of Temple Solel in Paradise Valley, offers hospice patients a small Shabbat service, including lighting Shabbat candles, saying the Hamotzi and Kiddush blessings and offering small prayers.

He trained for a month before going out on his own, and soon he was giving the service a personal touch by adding prayers he liked and asking people what they would like to hear. He loves the voice of Todd Herzog, Solel’s cantorial soloist, and recorded his songs to play during the service.

Often, the people he meets aren’t able to communicate. Lewis remembered a woman who asked him to offer a service for her father who was noncommunicative. She told Lewis her father hadn’t spoken all day and that he wasn’t religious. She had requested the service because of her own belief.

Once Lewis started the blessing in Hebrew, however, the father suddenly started saying “Oy, oy, oy,” and Lewis and the daughter just looked at each other and started laughing.

“Sometimes the patients even call me rabbi. I say, ‘Oh, no I’m not a rabbi. I was kicked out of Sunday school more than anyone you ever knew,’” Lewis laughed.

What Lewis couldn’t have guessed when he started volunteering is how he would come to appreciate these blessings from a very different point of view.

In the summer of 2017, Lewis was diagnosed with cancer. He endured nine weeks of radiation, throughout most of which he continued performing his Shabbat blessings.

“It was a different mindset during that time,” he said. His prayers had always been heartfelt, but doing it while undergoing treatment himself, he realized how lucky he was to be able to continue.

“I wasn’t just saying the words. I was praying with these people and for these people, but it wasn’t a stretch to realize this could be me. In a way, I was praying for myself,” he said.

During the nine weeks of his treatment he recoiled at the idea of being pitied. He decided that every day of that treatment he would do a good deed. Sometimes it was something as simple as bringing in a neighbor’s garbage can from the curb. Once he stopped when he saw a fender bender and helped a woman involved find her phone. He also brought donuts to the radiation clinic, “because who doesn’t appreciate a good donut?”

That last mitzvah soon turned into something bigger when discovered that some of the patients who sat alongside him in the clinic ate the donuts more hungrily than they might have otherwise. A nurse told him some people had to choose between food and medicine.

He was surprised but asked if someone with that dire choice was there that day. He offered to buy that person’s groceries for the next three weeks. A couple weeks later, the clinic asked him if he could help someone else out. After that, he started buying $75 grocery gift cards to give away.

“Giving people money for food is good because when you’re in cancer treatment you have very little control over things. But eating is something you usually can control. To help someone buy the food they want seemed like a good thing,” he said.

When he finished his treatment he wanted to donate money to an organization that provided a similar service but he couldn’t find anything. So he started his own: The Froth and Bubble Foundation for Food Assistance.

He took the name from a line of poetry he liked, one he’d heard long ago at a Princess Diana breast cancer awareness fundraiser.

Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poem “Ye Wearie Wayfarer,” ends with lines that matched his mission: “Life is mostly froth and bubble,/Two things stand like stone,/Kindness in another’s trouble,/Courage in your own.”

He pays for his foundation’s overhead costs, which are minimal. Several social workers have volunteered to help him vet needs-based applicants, and any money he raises goes straight into buying grocery gift cards.

“A doctor asked me once how I raise money. I told her I begged for money from wealthy doctors. She wrote me a check for $1,000,” he said.

He started this work seven years ago. In March, he handed out his 10,000th grocery gift card. More than 2,000 of the cards he’s donated have been to HOV patients.

“We’re just so grateful to Jeff,” HOV Executive Director Debbie Shumway said in a press release. “These gift cards help families bridge the gap when they need food and are juggling bills and feeling stressed. He is a servant leader who quietly gives back and makes a huge difference, one person at a time.”

“It’s so rewarding to be there for people who want it,” Lewis said.

Offering only their first names, several HOV patients confirmed the difference the cards had made during their treatment.

“There were times when these cards were the only way I could buy groceries,” said Cathy, who lives alone and is being treated for mouth cancer.

Jan, a woman battling lung cancer again after five years of remission, uses the cards for staples, and even occasionally, some ice cream. Her husband said the cards have lifted a big burden from his shoulders.

“The struggles of the people I deal with are enormous, and it may not come out the way they want,” Lewis said.

After beating back prostate cancer, Lewis was later diagnosed with bladder cancer. But he said he’s lucky. Both are cancers that allowed him a good chance for recovery. Feeling blessed himself helps him in his mission to pay it forward.

“Say a small prayer for me and a bigger one for those who are more in need.” JN

To learn more, visit frothandbubblefoundation.org.