Jewish Leaders Blast De Blasio School Lunch Plan For Excluding Kosher Options
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum November 28, 2017
Jewish and Muslim religious leaders are criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio and his new free school lunch plan for not offering any kosher or halal options.
“Thousands of children in our community and the Muslim community are left out of this initiative due to religious dietary restrictions,” the letter dated November 22 and signed by more than twenty leaders from both faiths reads. “We urge you to remove the current impediments preventing thousands of students from benefiting.”
De Blasio rolled out the new federally funded program promising to give students free meals with the first day of public school on September 7, the Daily News reported.
Religious leaders from Jewish and Muslim institutions criticizing the new plan include Sheikh Musa Drammeh of the Bronx Islamic Leadership School and Rabbi Mark Dratch of the Rabbinical Council of America.
An estimated 38% of students in the city’s public schools are Jewish or Muslim.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters in Brooklyn as Columbia library takeover fallout continues
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture A pocket guide to the Jewish grandmothers of Mexico
-
Opinion Israel is choosing to inflict misery on Gaza
-
Fast Forward Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters in Brooklyn as Columbia library takeover fallout continues
-
Opinion This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.