Manna From Heaven? No, Try Brooklyn Instead

BROOKLYN, NY — A truck from City Harvest pulled up on a recent weekday to a food pantry in a heavily Orthodox Jewish section of Midwood, Brooklyn. The driver stepped out and unloaded cabbages, bananas and Tropicana juice containers bearing labels with the letter “K” in a circle, indicating that they were kosher.

Within minutes, the donated items were on the shelves and inside the carts of shoppers like Chana Wilner, an observant Jew wearing an ankle-length black dress and a brown wig, in keeping with Orthodox Jewish practices. Ms. Wilner was laid off from her job at a health maintenance organization last year and has yet to find another job.

“This place is incredible,” said Ms. Wilner, who is divorced and lives alone. “People are really struggling.” Kosher items, she said, are often more expensive than nonkosher food, making it hard for Jews who, like her, are feeling the weight of the recession.

And with Passover, a holiday associated with a generous array of kosher dishes, starting the evening of April 8, the pressure to provide for families is even greater. That is why City Harvest, a nonprofit group that helps feed hungry New Yorkers and already provides weekly deliveries to 36 kosher food programs in the city, started a drive this month to provide kosher food for Passover.

Besides augmenting its supply of fresh food, City Harvest is collecting kosher canned items from schools, synagogues and other places.

With the economy in the doldrums, the number of impoverished Jews is growing, according to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a social service agency.

“The situation has gotten much worse since September,” said William E. Rapfogel, the executive director of the Metropolitan Council.

“We are seeing a dramatic increase in demand,” said Rabbi Mayer Mayerfeld, who works for City Harvest and manages its kosher food program. He said the agencies that the group supplies were seeing more middle-class families, who in the past did not have a need for free food, turn up at food pantries every week. City Harvest, which provides food to 45,000 people a month through its kosher food program, anticipates that the need will rise by 20 percent this Passover.

At the Bnai Raphael Chesed Store and Food Pantry in Midwood, where Ms. Wilner was getting her kosher food, the number of registered families jumped to 1,500 this year from 800 in 2007. The pantry, which distributes about three million pounds of food a year, is open every day except Saturday, the Sabbath.

Goldie Greenberg, 66, who works as a home attendant, was filling her cart at the food pantry last Wednesday with cans of borlotti beans, spinach and hummus, which she described as a “good nosh.” Ms. Greenberg said she did not make enough money to afford to keep kosher. “It’s been harder this year,” she said. “It’s been a nightmare. Everything costs so much. This saves my life. It allows us to eat good and healthy.”

Rabbi Mayerfeld spends much of his time on the phone trolling for kosher food donations and handling the logistics of getting food from Point A to Point B without contaminating the kosher items.

“The best bang for the buck comes from wholesalers, farmers and manufacturers,” Rabbi Mayerfeld said. Some of them, like Tropicana, make kosher products.

“Mayer is constantly looking for food,” said Jilly Stephens, the executive director of City Harvest. “He’s very creative. He has to get a lot of food into the community.” And the demand for food is high as Jews prepare for Passover, which commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt.

Shmura, the special type of matzo often eaten during Passover, can be expensive. So are the meats, fish, fresh vegetables and fruits that are typically eaten.

Ms. Greenberg plans to invite at least 10 people for a Passover Seder this year, including her neighbor, whom she describes as “someone who needs to be fed.” The food from the pantry, she said, “enables me to make a nice soup and nice vegetables and sweets. I don’t abuse it. I just take enough. I’m a good cook anyway. Not to be conceited.”

To supplement the Passover demands, Rabbi Mayerfeld is working to arrange several tractor-trailer loads of fresh food deliveries in the next few weeks to agencies that are part of City Harvest’s kosher food program.

Ms. Wilner, whose cart contained a box of potato starch in order to make kugel, a traditional potato pudding, says she will return to the food pantry a few more times before Passover. She said her parents, who were Holocaust survivors, were grateful to live in America, where they could freely observe religious requirements.

“As American citizens, they were so proud to be part of this great country, and to be an observant Jew as well,” Ms. Wilner said. “They didn’t have to be in hiding for Passover.”

She plans to invite her children to her home for Passover this year. “If necessary,” she said, “we will make do with the basics.”