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…
“Eat Mexicans.” That’s Stephen Colbert’s advice to people who will be tossed aside when Congress finally gets around to overhauling the food stamp program. The solution proposed by the House Republican leadership is only slightly less macabre than Colbert’s — and, unfortunately, it is serious, as we may assume Colbert’s advice is not. The plan?…
This story first appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. It was translated into English by Frimet Goldberger. According to a study by the UJA Federation of New York, the poverty rate of the greater New York Jewish population grew exponentially as of late. More than 560,000 people — 20% of all the Jewish households in the…
Right now, I feel pretty bad for myself. As a result of my personal version of a pre-Passover plague of bed bugs, everything I own is in a plastic garbage bag. My kitchen looks like a landfill; a giant heap of what looks like garbage, but is actually the only possessions I have to call…
Let us speak of SNAP. “SNAP?,” you ask. “What is SNAP?” SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly know and still best recognized as the food stamp program. And now it is in danger. Here’s the story: SNAP has benefited enormously from the 2009 Recovery Act, which temporarily boosted SNAP benefits. But come November,…
For Shabbat dinner last week, Daniel Sayani planned to eat rice and beans. He consulted Jewish law to determine the minimum amounts of bread and grape juice needed to bless the Friday night meal. Since his budget was just $1.50, saying the prayer over wine was out of the question. Sayani chose to live on…
As a professional anti-poverty worker, one of the most frequent questions I am asked by friends and acquaintances is whether to give money to panhandlers. People want to be generous and helpful, but they are worried about potentially facilitating self-destructive behavior or aiding con artists. Given that Jewish tradition tends to rake every social issue…
A man asked me for money on my way into a convenience store one night in the fall of my freshman year at Yale University. I didn’t want to give money to anyone who would use it to buy alcohol or drugs. But I also didn’t want to be responsible for a man going hungry….
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