N.Y. State Supplying Kosher Food to Jewish Patients in Institutions

The State of New York is now supplying kosher meat and meat products to all patients in state institutions who desire them, it was reported here by Rabbi Ervin Hoffman, Director of the United Bikur Cholim. The action, Rabbi Hoffman reported, was taken by the Rockefeller Administration at the behest of the Bikur Cholim organization, which had been supplying the kosher products on a dally basis to thousands of observant Jews for more than three-and-a-half years. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had been negotiating for the State takeover for over six years but that knotty operational problems had had to be ironed out before the arrangement could be completed. “The difficulties we encountered in formulating plans for the program,” he said, “involved both preparation of the food and its delivery.” He explained that maintenance of separate kitchens in the institutions where kosher food was to be supplied had been discarded as unfeasible, while ideas of delivering prepared meat in metal cans were also dismissed because the meat would be unheated and untasty.

The plan finally decided upon, Rabbi Hoffman said, was the preparation of the products by kosher manufacturers to be shipped to the institutions in heatable plastic containers. Discussing the efforts of his organization. Rabbi Hoffman revealed that Jewish patients in six state institutions had been supplied with kosher food products by his group on a regular basis. Because of a limited annual budget of $25000, he said, the Bikur Cholim organization could not reach all observant patients, who were given a substitute dairy diet instead. The State takeover means, Rabbi Hoffman stressed, that all Jewish patients desiring kosher meat and meat products will be able to receive them. He said that out of 80000 patients confined in state mental institutions, approximately 10000 are Jewish. The Bikur Cholim director said the State takeover was accomplished largely through the personal efforts of Lt Gov. Malcolm Wilson and officials of the State Bureau of Nutritional Services.