On a recent chilly afternoon in Queens, two women shivered in a line of about 50 people that trailed out the door of Masbia, a kosher food pantry and soup kitchen.
The first woman, from Manhattan, wore baggy pants. The other, from Queens, was clad in a long, draping skirt.
Their outfits signaled differences in how they interpreted proper Jewish dress for religious women, but both were there for the same reason: They needed kosher groceries, which are more expensive than average, as they try to live on less since food stamp reductions last November.
“When food stamps are cut, it’s hard to buy kosher,” said one of the women, Debbie Greenbaum of Queens.
Masbia, the most robust kosher food pantry and soup kitchen network in New York, is at the forefront of filling hungry bellies — both Jewish and non-Jewish — but not without its own struggles.
Masbia saw a 200% increase in demand for food in the two months after the food stamp cuts, compared with the same period in 2012–13.
The not-for-profit expects to serve up to 1.5 million meals this year — twice the number doled out in 2013. The Queens branch now stays open an extra three hours Thursdays, when food packages are distributed. Alexander Rapaport, Masbia’s executive director, said the organization is operating “hand to mouth.” With Passover coming, he’s racing against the clock to find more funding.
“The most dignified and most efficient way [to stem hunger] is to give people food stamps,” Rapaport said. “We’re not the answer. We’re not the gym — the gym is something that keeps you healthy. We’re the emergency room.” About one in four Jewish families in New York City is poor. About half of those families depend on food stamps, according to Nicole Doniger, chief programming officer of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
Overall, one in five people in the city relies on emergency food programs to eat, according to the Food Bank for New York City.
Running a kosher soup kitchen has its own set of challenges. For one, kosher meat is more expensive because it requires additional processing and religious supervision.
Jewish law stipulates a separation of meat and dairy. But to simplify cooking more than 2,500 meals a day, Masbia serves only meat.
The organization cannot accept anything containing dairy, and donations from well-meaning people and city organizations are often rejected.
Some foods that are technically kosher are impractical for mass meal production. Take lettuce, which must be washed and checked thoroughly — leaf by leaf — to ensure that all bugs are gone.
While upscale kosher groceries sell pre-checked lettuce, the prices are too high for a budget-conscious charity, which is funded largely on donations from the Jewish community.
Many of the clients, though, are not concerned with whether or not the food is kosher; they’re just hungry.
At Masbia’s Brooklyn locations, in Flatbush and Boro Park, regulars include Latino day laborers. Some are black. In Queens, Chinese and Korean clients line up alongside Bukhari Jews from Central Asia.
Rapaport doesn’t care. What’s important, he says, is filling a need.
He opened Masbia in Boro Park nine years ago, along with his friend Mordechai Mandelbaum, using $100,000 in savings and loans.
Both had seen a need for Masbia in the Hasidic community. And at first, mostly Jews came. Soon non-Jews filed in, too, and Masbia opened in Flatbush and Queens. The changing population presents some cultural challenges.
On a recent visit to the Boro Park Masbia, Rapaport crouched down to pick up a small green pepper from the dining room floor.
“What this proves to me is someone brought food from the outside,” he said, his brow furrowed. “This is kosher, but you never know.”
Before running Masbia became a full-time job, Rapaport, 36, worked as a publicist within the Hasidic community. A jovial, fast-talking man seen only in his uniform of black hat and coat, he promotes Masbia aggressively on Twitter and Facebook.
In Boro Park, near where he grew up and is now raising seven children with his stay-at-home wife, Rapaport shmoozes with kosher grocery store owners and shoppers.
Every conversation is a networking opportunity. Maybe those owners will agree to a good deal on a bulk order of kosher meat. Maybe those shoppers will donate a night of meals to Masbia when their children are married, a tradition in the Hasidic community.
Maybe Masbia will be able to make ends meet.
“If we’re still around, it’s because of tzedakah, because of charity,” Rapaport said. “The awareness is what keeps our doors open and keeps the lights going.”
http://forward.com/articles/195896/kosher-soup-kitchen-struggles-with-rising-ranks-of/
dimanche 6 avril 2014
dimanche 15 décembre 2013
Jewish Center in Brazil Caters to Community Poor
Chabad opens new center for Ten Yad social services program, to serve over 8,000 poor in one of Brazil's largest cities.
A new Jewish Center opened Sunday in São Paulo, Brazil, sponsored by the social services arm of global outreach group Chabad.
The inauguration, which was timed to be close to the Hanukkah holiday, was attended by several dignitaries, including São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin, Jewish community representatives and leading rabbis.
The multi-million dollar center was dedicated in memory of philanthropist Joseph Safra's mother, Esther. The center is part of the "Ten Yad" (lit. "lend a hand" in Hebrew) program, which provides food and social servicesfor São Paulo’s poor.
According to The Rio Times, almost 16.7 million Brazilians live below the national poverty line. In São Paulo, this includes roughly 8,000 Jews.
Ten Yad has provided food for the poor since 1992 through soup kitchens, "meals on wheels" programs for the elderly and disabled, and food collection and distribution programs. In addition, recent expansions have allowed for more intensive social service programs, including aid for the homeless, scholarships, and support systems for orphans and prisoners.
Rabbi Dovid Weitman, a Chabad representative in São Paulo and chief rabbi of the Sephardic community center there, said the new center was prompted by the desire to ensure that those suffering from poverty “should not live on the margins of society, but should be empowered to participate socially, and to celebrate their own family life-cycle events in dignity, with pride.”
Rabbi Weitman told Chabad representatives that the center's $4.5 million budget is entirely funded by private philanthropists. The center measures six stories high and is open 24 hours per day to provide food, social services, and event catering for the impoverished. It also inludes an ophtalmic clinic, a reading library, and an auditorium.
“This is a truly happening place, where adults and children can hang out in a constructive environment, make use of the well-equipped game rooms, watch films, enjoy the library, all in a lively, inviting setting,” said Mrs. Fany Waiswohl, coordinator of the volunteer services. Some 300 volunteers work at the center, in tandem with a team of social workers
In his remarks at the elaborate Chanukah celebration/dedication, Mr. Safra paid tribute to his mother and her legacy of caring for the needy in Lebanon. “I have seen how Ten Yad started, and how it has developed and grown inspired by the values of Judaism, and I am proud to be part of its expansion," he stated.
Biden: White House to help Holocaust survivors
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Vice President Joe Biden said the White House will work with the Jewish community to help Holocaust survivors living in poverty.
Speaking at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Centennial on Tuesday, Biden said the White House will appoint a special envoy at the Department of Health and Human Services to act as a liaison for survivors and the nonprofit community organizations that serve them.
A partnership with the AmeriCorps VISTA program to increase the number of volunteers helping Holocaust survivors will be established, Biden said. Also, the White House will explore public-private partnerships to increase funding for organizations that work with Holocaust survivors.
“Today our country took a major step forward toward addressing the needs of many Holocaust survivors,” said Michael Siegal, chair of The Jewish Federations of North America board of trustees.
According to JFNA, there are about 120,000 Holocaust survivors in the United States, of which about 25 percent live below the poverty line.
“As Jewish Federations continue to raise needed funds to support social service programs for Holocaust survivors, we will use the momentum from the vice president’s announcement to draw extra attention to this cause,” said Jerry Silverman, the president and CEO of Jewish Federations. “Enabling Holocaust survivors to age in place is vital for health, comfort and security, and brings dignity to this vulnerable population.”
http://www.jta.org/2013/12/11/news-opinion/united-states/biden-white-house-to-help-holocaust-survivors#ixzz2naw74JCH
mercredi 16 octobre 2013
Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Jewish Poverty ?
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Did you know that one in five Jewish persons in New York lives in poverty? If you didn’t, you are not alone: it is a little-known reality, even in the Jewish community. Unfortunately, this contributes to reinforce stereotypes that help anti-Semitism flourish. This is the genesis of our upcoming documentary, ironically titled “Jews Got Money”, which I produced and first-time filmmaker Sasha Andreas directed.
The shooting took place in New York City last year, and most of our film consists of interviews with charity leaders who have first-hand knowledge of Jewish poverty. Unfortunately, news recently emerged that one of them, William Rapfogel, has been indicted on allegations of fraud and theft against the nonprofit organization he directed, New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish poverty (“Met Council”).
We were shocked to learn about his arrest: while he hadn’t kept his promise to help us promote our work, his remarks in our documentary were and remain highly relevant. More importantly, we are still appalled to think that resources might have been taken away from people in need, and we are worried that the scandal might take attention away from the work of Kosher food kitchens and other Jewish charities.
The Hebrew Free Burial Association is one of those associations. Almost invisible to the general public, it performs the thankless task of giving a decent burial to poor co-religionists. Since its inception in the 1880s, it has buried over 60,000 indigent Jews, from newborns and elderly people to victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
As part of our research work, we also recorded a very interesting meeting with the Conference of Presidents’ executive vice chairman Malcolm Hoenlein, who has been described as “the most powerful Jew in the Western world.”
Our journey making this documentary has been rich in teachings. One of the things we learned is that Jewish poverty is more diverse than you may think. In New York City, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, the Jewish poor include Orthodox Jews, but also elderly Holocaust survivors who lost their relatives and Soviet Jews who emigrated to the U.S. after the fall of the USSR, as well as families who, like many of their fellow Americans, deeply suffered from the financial crisis.
We also discovered that the taboo is more powerful than we imagined. Our difficulties had already started in the pre-production phase. After five years of trying to find backers with no luck, we ended up filming our documentary on a very small, self-financed budget. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t have been possible without our cinematographer, Dave Burdette, who made himself and his equipment available for a token sum.
One year has now passed since we completed the editing, and yet we still have to find a distributor. Unfortunately, 99% of the journalists to whom we have reached out ignored us, and no philanthropist helped us. We were granted the opportunity to blog about our work in the Huffington Post, and now in these columns, for which we are very thankful, but the only print media outlet that spontaneously requested an interview was Belgian magazine Regards.
We are deeply saddened to see that the first documentary on this topic is welcomed with indifference, skepticism and silent hostility. Not only does ignorance fuel anti-Semitism, but it also deprives dedicated charities from donations they need as much as ever. While ‘tzedakah‘ and philanthropy are deeply entrenched in the Jewish culture, many Jews don’t know that invisible members of their community also need help.
The taboo is such that we are starting to wonder whether our work is doomed to fail. Still, we are hopeful that we can contribute to breaking the silence. Are we wrong to think so? Find us on Twitter and share the word about ”Jews Got Money” to help debunk a damaging stereotype.
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