Carmei Ha'ir looks like a high-class restaurant: Its tables are set with dishes, silverware, and warm pita bread. The wait staff is polite and well-dressed, and the food is delicious. Yet you'll find no cash register at Carmei Ha'ir. Instead, a lockbox rests in its place, with a sign suggesting that you pay whatever you can afford.

Located in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda neighborhood, Carmei Ha'ir is actually a soup kitchen, and serves about 600 meals a day to Israel's hungry. It also provides hundreds of sandwiches for needy children in local schools. Supported by benefactors, Carmei Ha'ir often receives anonymous donations of produce and meat from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market vendors.

"Our aim is to provide food with dignity," says Rabbi Yehuda Azrad, who established Carmei Ha'ir along with Itzik Levitan and Momi Ben-Zruel in January 2004. "A person who is hungry and in distress can only think about today, about where his or her next meal is coming from. Dignity is what gives people hope and the ability to think about the future."