Federal Food Stamp Plan Urged in New York for Needy Orthodox Jews

A national Jewish organization asked New York City Mayor John Lindsay this week to seek city adoption of the Federal food stamp plan both for the city’s general poor population and particularly for its Jewish poor, it was learned today. The request was made to the mayor by the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), an organization formed to assist Orthodox Jews in areas of public policy.

Harvey Schwartz, chairman of COLPA’s newly-formed committee on social welfare, declared in the letter that many needy Orthodox Jewish families were ineligible for the present surplus food distribution program administered by the city. Under existing law, a city may have either program but not both.

Such families, he said in the letter “would be able to benefit under the liberalized eligibility standards of the food stamp plan.” He pointed out also that the types of food distributed in the city’s surplus food program were limited and often of a type forbidden to observant Jews. In contrast, he noted, the variety of foods available under the food stamp plan was virtually unlimited. Users of Federal food stamps may apply them to purchase of standard packaged foods in any grocery. In most of them a wide variety of rabbinically-certified kosher products is available, and “thus, full participation in the program’s benefits, denied to Orthodox Jews by the present surplus food program, would be available to them under the food stamp plan,” Mr. Schwartz said. He noted also that the food surplus plan provides for food distribution only once a month and only at a local food surplus depot, whereas the food stamp program, “because of absence of these restrictive limitations, would be a far simpler and less demeaning method of providing food aid to needy families.”