East Side Elderly Jews Fight to Obtain Federal Funds for a Kosher Lunch Program

Some 100 elderly Jews on Manhattan’s Lower East Side are waging what is apparently a hopeless fight to obtain federal funds from City Hall for a kosher lunch program. But the group, which meets at the Educational Alliance on East Broadway, one of the city’s oldest settlement houses, has vowed not to give up. Although many of the people involved are in their 70’s and 80’s, some suffering from the infirmities and disabilities that plague the old, they recently braved cold and windy weather to picket City Hall and other municipal buildings. Their demonstrations began last Nov. during the administration of Mayor John V. Lind say and are continuing now that Mayor Abraham D. Beame is in office.

Gloria Rosenbaum, coordinator of adult services for the Alliance, says the program would provide a hot kosher lunch five days a week for 175 people. It would be open to the elderly Jews and non-Jews in the area. Ms. Rosenbaum said that the Alliance feels the program is important and that once the elderly come in for lunch they would also be able to benefit from the comprehensive services offered by the settlement house.

The Alliance would provide these people with the type of nutritional meal they would otherwise not have, Ms. Rosenbaum stressed. Most of the elderly are widows or widowers and live alone and are victims of what she called the “bread and butter syndrome.” Ms. Rosenbaum explained that this syndrome affects the elderly, most of whom have raised families, but now living alone do not know how, or lack the desire, to cook for just one person. So they eat just a slice of bread or a roll and butter or just warm up some soup. The program would also provide hot lunches in the home for people who are bedridden or cannot leave their houses for some other reason.

What particularly Irks the Educational Alliance is that they feel they were promised the funds by the federal government some two years ago. This was when Dr. Arthur Flemming, U.S. Commissioner on Aging, visited the East Broadway building and, according to Alliance officials promised them they would get funds for such a program.

TOLD TO FORGET ABOUT APPLYING

Then last summer the Older American’s Act was passed by Congress providing $100 million for food programs for the elderly of which $4.1 million was given to New York City. The funds are administered through the city, and when Alliance officials who thought they would be in line for the program first broached the subject last Nov. they were told not even to bother applying, according to Ms. Rosenbaum. The Alliance nevertheless applied along with some 200 other organizations of which 55 were approved for the flat $64,000 grant. But some additional funds were available and the Alliance thought it would be on the top of the list to get approval. But apparently it isn’t.

Alice Brophy, head of the Mayor’s Office on the Aging, said that all of the groups which have applied are probably deserving. “There are 250,000 elderly living below the subsistence level in New York. How do you choose?” she asked. But she said the Alliance could not be chosen because there are already two lunch programs in the area. “There is none in the Rockaways where 40 percent of the people are over 65,” she said.

But Ms. Rosenbaum stressed that the other two programs on the Lower East Side are non-kosher programs. “These people cannot eat non-kosher food,” she said. “People who eat non-kosher can eat kosher food.” She noted that the lunch program as outlined in the Older American’s Act stresses that the meals should take in the cultural habits of the people involved. And this would require kosher meals under this category, she said.

There is one other aspect of the program which was placed eloquently by the elderly themselves who meet every other week to plan their strategy. Many of them have been Alliance members for nearly 40 years. “The Educational Alliance is the center of our area,” one said, “We are lonely, and a lunch program would help us to be together, to cut down on our loneliness.” Another woman in her seventies said she lived on the fourth floor of a walk-up and stayed at the Alliance all day since she could not go home for lunch and have to walk up the stairs more than once a day.

Ms. Rosenbaum said these people, now living on Social Security, are either immigrants or children of Immigrants who lived on the Lower East Side all their lives. Many have children but they do not want to leave the neighborhood they love and always lived in. She said that the Alliance knows that the $64,000 will not be enough, especially for kosher food. But she said the Alliance feels the program is so important that it is willing to provide the additional funds, if it can get the federal funds as a basis.