Wor ld

Next Meal

As economic recession drags on,
middle-class families are forced
to turn to Jewish food banks.

THE HIT BROADWAY MUSICAL

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

San Francisco

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30 October 14 • 2010

obert M., 58, worked for a
news organization in the
San Francisco Bay area until
September 2008, when he lost his job
in layoffs that eliminated 15 percent of
the company's workforce nationwide.
Robert had eight months of savings.
They ran out in six months.
After 14 months of unemploy-
ment, last December Robert turned
to San Francisco's Jewish Family and
Children's Services for help with rent,
utilities and, hardest of all, food.
"It was gut wrenching',' said Robert,
who asked that his last name not be
used. "I'd contributed a lot to charities
over the years, including JFCS. My wife
and I gave to the food bank regularly.
Now we were on the other side'
It sounds apocryphal: Former
donors to a Jewish charity reduced
to seeking help from that very same
organization. But as more and more
Jews are caught up in the recession,
now two years running, food banks
across the United States are reporting
the same phenomenon. Middle-class
Jews, professional Jews, young people
with families — they're out of work,
their savings are gone, and they are
showing up for help at Jewish social
service agencies.
Yad Ezra, the kosher food pantry
in Berkley, Mich., now estimates it
is helping 5 percent of the Jews in
Metropolitan Detroit. Its monthly case-
load is 1,600 families, or about 3,600
individuals.
Lea Luger, Yad
Ezra's development
director, said that is
a 40 percent increase
over the 1,100 fami-
lies it was assisting
in December 2007.
With unemploy-
Lea Luger
ment extensions
about to run out
for many, the problem is expected to
worsen.

Norman Keane,
executive direc-
tor of the Jewish
Family Service
of Metropolitan
Detroit (JFS), said
his agency's caseload
has been climbing 20
Norman Keane
percent per year. "We
also have an extensive
waiting list for services," he said, "some-
thing we never had before!
There is a growing need for mental
health services, Keane said. "Someone
who needs food help needs a lot of other
services as well:'
And JFS, like similar agencies across
the country, is seeing a demographic
change. Its clients used to be predomi-
nantly people in the 50-plus age group.
Now, Keane said, it is people in their 30s
and 40s with family.
In addition, older people once retired
are now finding they need to go back to
work. Their home values have fallen and
they no longer feel financially safe. Keane
believes this situation will continue long
after the economy recovers.
In New York City, "In addition to the
poor and the working poor, which we've
always served, there's been a substantial
increase the past 18 months among the
middle and upper-middle class who
are not in a position to make it, yet are
not poor enough to get benefits" from
government, said William Rapfogel,
CEO and executive director of the
Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
Even so, the myth persists that Jews
are affluent
"There is denial of the degree of need
in the Jewish community' said Barbara
Levy Gradet, executive director of Jewish
Community Services in Baltimore. "We
have young families as well as retired
people looking for work. This is an
equal-opportunity recession:'
The Met Council in New York, which
serves the largest number of Jewish poor
in the nation, distributes food packages
at 60 sites in New York City's five bor-
oughs, part of the $3.5 million in food
aid it gives out every year.
Fifteen thousand households receive
the packages — up from 9,000 a year-

