In preparation for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, more than 900 community volunteers and 20 elected officials joined the Met Council at 82 locations throughout the city to distribute fresh food packages for more than 100,000 New Yorkers in need of food.
Met Council has spent the last few weeks distributing food packages in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. The diverse list of groups that Met Council provides free food for includes Boro Park JCC to COJO Flatbush, from the Vaad Hakhol of Crown Heights to the JCC of Washington Heights to Tomehei Shabbos of Queens.
Queens elected officials that participated in the food distribution include: Council members Donovan Richards and Barry Grodenchik; state Senator Joseph Addabbo; and state Assembly members Nily Rozic, David Weprin and Daniel Rosenthal.
“During these Yomim Noraim (High Holidays) there is no greater mitzvah than tzedakah – helping our fellow neighbors in need,” said Met Council CEO David Greenfield. “We at Met Council are grateful to the hundreds of volunteers, donors, community and elected leaders who came together in the weeks before Yom Tov to make sure that everyone that needed food in New York had fresh quality kosher food. It’s a real zechus (privilege) for us at Met Council to operate the largest free kosher food distribution network in the world.”
For the past four decades, Met Council has provided comprehensive social services to aid, sustain and empower more than 225,000 poor and near-poor New Yorkers. The organization works with any Jewish organization that is interested to make sure that communities across New York have food for the holidays.
Met Council has 10 different programs ranging from affordable housing at 21 locations across New York to domestic and family violence services to Holocaust survivor services to senior programming to the largest free kosher food distribution program in the world. Additionally, during the year, Met Council provides food daily to 39 kosher food pantries in New York, ensuring that no one in the community goes hungry.
The organization distributed 26,000 jars of honey and hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruits, vegetables, eggs, fish and glatt kosher chicken during the largest free Yom Tov distribution in the U.S.
“This year’s Rosh Hashanah distributions were our most successful yet thanks to our Met Council Food Czar Jessica Chait and our active support from co-Presidents Ben Tisch and Joseph Allerhand and our friends at UJA-Federation of New York,” Greenfield said. “We came up with new and improved ways to serve the community including an expansion of our digital food pantry system.”
