This essay is part of an ongoing series about Jewish poverty. Previous entries in the series can be found here and here. It was a bright Thursday morning in late May, and suddenly there was a blueberry crisis. A few staff members of the digital food pantry at the Commonpoint Queens location in Forest Hills…
Passover is around the corner. This year, as I begin to prepare in Jerusalem, where cleaning products went on sale the morning after Purim and municipal posters wishing everyone a happy spring holiday decorate the streets, I think back to preparing for Passover four years ago, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was still winter and…
If the American Jewish community seriously confronted the persistence of Jewish poverty, it could look like this: More than 200 people from 19 states and the District of Columbia gathered on March 19 at a large San Francisco hotel for a convening sponsored by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation to examine why a surprising…
In 1972, the journalist Paul Cowan spent weeks roaming Manhattan’s Lower East Side on assignment for The Village Voice, searching for the Jewish poor. He didn’t have to look far. “Most people think of the Jewish immigration as the most spectacularly successful one in American history,” Cowan wrote, “but the 50-year journey from the shtetl…
Why are people poor? It is, on the face of it, a simple question. People are poor because, in comparison to other people, they have less money. But the question is often asked in moral terms. What makes people poor? American political discourse, especially in conservative circles, views poverty as a moral failure of the…
Passover is around the corner. This year, as I begin to prepare in Jerusalem, where cleaning products went on sale the morning after Purim and municipal posters wishing everyone a happy spring holiday decorate the streets, I think back to preparing for Passover four years ago, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was still winter and…
On a recent business trip to L.A., when I mentioned I was Jewish, an Asian businessman told me that his son would ask him daily: “Dad, why was I not born a Jew, they are so smart and so rich!” I smiled at the “compliment.” That’s what’s called a positive stereotype — like the ones…
(JTA) — One-third of Holocaust survivors in the United States continue to live at or below the poverty line, according to an aid organization. The Blue Card, which provides financial assistance to survivors, reported the statistic ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday. Last year, the same proportion of survivors were at or below…
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