Jewish Anti-poverty Workers Charge New York Discriminates Against Jewish Poor

The New York Association of Jewish Community, Anti-Poverty and Municipal Employees, called upon the City’s Human Resources Administration to end a dangerous “double-standard” policy with the Jewish community again finding itself the losers. David Farber, Executive Director of the newly formed grass-roots Jewish group, revealed that the Human Resources Administration allocated a modest budget for advertising the forthcoming poverty elections, in the various ethnic radio and newspapers, but made no provisions for advertising in the Jewish media. “Clearly,” Farber declared, “HRA is favoring certain ethnic groups over others in a poverty election of significant consequence. Favoritism is bad for the favored as well as the discriminated and it is a shame that HRA has not yet learned the bitter lesson of not too long ago.”

Hyman Dechter, General Counsel for the Association, declared that unless funds are equally allocated to the Jewish media, the Association would go to court asking it to void the elections. Dechter stated that unless all promotion methods connected with the campaign are equally distributed the City would stand accused of favoritism at a time when all concerned citizens are seeking a return to fair play. The Poverty Elections will be held May 5th. It had been scheduled for Saturday but was changed as a result of a petition by Rabbi Sholom B. Gorodetsky, Crown Heights’ representative to the City-Wide Council Against Poverty. “In originally scheduling it on the Jewish Sabbath, HRA once again indicated its insensitivity to Jewish needs,” Mr. Farber declared. The Association advised the City that thousands of poor Jews reside in the poverty areas, and many of them rely on the daily and weekly Jewish media for their source of news.