Queens JCC provides Passover meals
By Roxanne Wang
“My father always said we were kept alive for a reason,” said Cynthia Zalisky, the Executive Director of the Queens Jewish Community Council whose parents were Holocaust survivors who settled in Massachusetts in 1948. “I’ve been working in QJCC since 1995, and before that I was on the QJCC board.” Established in 1968, Queens Jewish Community Council is a multipurpose social service agency for the entire borough, located in Forest Hills near Kew Gardens.
Since 1990 the group’s food pantry has distributed Kosher food to 1,500 needy families every month. Although it is a Kosher pantry, it is “not limited to particular people” in terms of recipients, according to Zalisky. Seventy-five percent of food pantry recipients are Jewish, and the rest include Asian, south Asian, Latino, and other groups. The pantry is open Monday through Thursday, from 12:30 to 3 pm., except during holidays like Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Passover, which celebrates Moses leading the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt.
“Passover is a very expensive holiday,” said Zalisky. “If they’re going to follow the holiday to the letter of the law, they are not allowed to use any of the products that they have in their cupboards. They have to use all new things, even things like salt. They just have to close that cupboard and they have to use for eight days, kosher for Passover items.”
“Most people think that Jewish poverty is oxymoron,” she said, but the numbers say otherwise. According to The 2011 Geographic Profile of the Jewish Community Study of New York, Forest Hills, Rego Park and the Kew Gardens area have one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in New York, with a population increase of 37 percent since 2002. Yet it is one of the poorest Jewish communities in the metropolitan region, with 57% of the households having annual household incomes of under $50,000.
“One day I got a call from a friend, he told me there’s an elder who lives alone suffering from having nothing to eat,” said Zalisky. “In the end, I delivered a meal to that elder.” That’s when she realized how serious the situation was for elderly people. A high proportion of adults ages 75 and over live alone in this area – about 61 percent – so seven years ago QJCC started its Meals on Wheels program. “By elderly, I’m not talking about boomers, because I’m a boomer,” she said. “We’re talking about boomers’ parents – People over 85.” Now they deliver Kosher meals to 130 seniors with an average age of 92.
The 2008 recession hit the community hard, particularly the middle class. “We thought the economic downturn will recover, but it didn’t,” said Zaliksy. “There is about 30% food demand spike every year in this pantry.”
Ten years ago, QJCC distributed 300 special food packages for Passover; this year, they handed out 3,000. At 9 a.m. on Sunday, April 17th, a group of volunteers entered a building on Union Turnpike where the basement was filled with rows and rows of boxes and loads of various foodstuffs. About 30 volunteers filled bags with essential kosher for Passover foods such as matzoh, or unleavened bread, and apples needed for charoset, an item on the ritual seder plate. By 12:30 p.m., all the packages were done. Outside, a line of recipients stretched half way down the block. Each recipient received five pounds of matzoh, three pounds of onions, one pound of carrots, five pounds of potatoes, six apples, apricot jam, apple sauce, mayonnaise, vegetable oil, grape juice, two cans of tuna, and macaroons.
A line of recipients stretches halfway down the block, as distribution begins for the day. Photo: Roxanne Wang.
“I became involved because I wanted to give back to the community,” said Aviva Peress, a volunteer who is a member of the Hillcrest Jewish Center. She discovered this food pantry ten years ago and keeps coming back to help with Passover food distribution. Other volunteers included members of a local synagogue, QJCC board members and their families, representatives of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, and a group of students from New York University who participate in a national coeducational service organization – Alpha Phi Omega.
Volunteers from several Jewish organizations and students from NYU help with Passover food distribution. Photo: Roxanne Wang.
“I know most people are preparing their homes for Passover, but being here enables the community to celebrate the holiday properly, that’s what means a lot for us,” said Judith Friedman Rosen, Vice President of QJCC.
Rabbi David Keehn, president of Queens Jewish Community Council, said “we care about our clients’ dignity. But you can always see some people so gracious that they will bow and say ‘thank you’,” a moment that touched Rabbi Keehn’s heart.
Gerard Murphy, 61, refers to himself as “the Johnny on the spot volunteer” — while he doesn’t come on a regular basis, he shows up every month or so, whenever the executive assistant at QJCC, Fred Fleisher, calls him. Murphy, who is not Jewish, decided to volunteer because QJCC helped one of his friends who had cancer two years ago, and had to use the pantry. “The work I do here is different from other volunteers. I fix the shelves and re-organize the room so when the food comes they can easily go on to the shelves. The room needs to be ready.” Murphy is happy that he is strong enough and physically able to do this work, which reminds him of a part-time job he had in high school, at a grocery store.
Arti Chandra is also not Jewish. From India, she came to the U.S. in 1990, when she was 48, with her family and her mother. All the members of her family have become citizens except for her mother, who had difficulty with the required test and interview, and still holds a green card. “My mother’s green card expired, I didn’t know what to do,” said Chandra. Through a senior center she learned that QJCC provides assistance regarding document applications. “This place helped me, I want to give back,” she said. Now Chandra works as a volunteer here three times a week.
Laura Bart, who has volunteered since 2009, found the program through a recruitment letter Fleisher sent out to local Jewish communities. She is now working full time at OHEL, a Jewish non-profit organization, but still comes to QJCC every year for Passover and Rosh Hashanah. “Extra pair of hands to smooth the process just feels good,” said Laura.
Although QJCC encounters challenges raising funds every year, the group is determined to continue. “I even want my grandchildren to come and learn,” said Zalisky, who has become a grandmother of five kids.
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