Kosher Soup Kitchen Gets 800 Pounds of Carrots From Muslim Farmer

Image by Facebook

By JTA February 14, 2016

A Muslim organic farmer from upstate New York made an emergency donation of vegetables to a kosher soup kitchen in Brooklyn.

Zaid Kurdieh, who with his wife, Haifa, owns and farms at Norwich Meadows Farm, on Friday delivered 800 pounds of high-end organic carrots to Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens that provides meals to hundreds of hungry New Yorkers each week in Brooklyn and Queens. He also pledged to give more in the future.

Kurdieh’s donation came after the soup kitchen’s shortage of donated food was featured in a local ABC news report.

Masbia Executive Director Alexander Rapaport told ABC7 that the soup kitchen needs some 30,000 pounds of food a week to satisfy demand, and that last week it had only 15,000 pounds to distribute.

The Kurdiehs are devout Muslims who practice faith-based farming.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO