Food Shelves Now Mandated By Law To Stock Kosher And Halal Foods

Food shelves are now mandated to stock emergency supplies of kosher and halal food, as long as it doesn't cost more than its non-kosher counterparts.

The AP has an insipid article on a new federal law that requires the USDA to make sure that food shelves in areas with large Jewish or Muslim populations have adequate supplies of kosher or halal food – as long as its base cost is no more than equivalent non-kosher or non-halal food.

This means food shelves will have tuna and salmon with standard kosher supervision, like that from the OU, but almost certainly not beef or chicken or lamb.

What makes the AP's article so weak are two things;

1. It's reporter's complete lack of understanding of food production and related costs.

2. It's reporter's and editors' complete failure to know the background of the people they interviewed.

So the AP interviewed the new CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty without ever mentioning the nonprofit's previous CEO, William E. Rapfogel; its top organizational consultant and former CEO Rabbi David Cohen; another top Met Council executive; and the Met Council's hasidic insurance broker, Joseph "Yossi" Ross; stole at minimum $7 million from the New York City Jewish Community's anti-poverty arm – money that should have been used to feed or house the poor.

But even though though the guilty pleas of Rapfogel and Cohen were big news last week, the AP's reporter and its editors appear not to be aware of them – or of the entire scandal:

…The New York City-based Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, which says it operates the nation’s largest kosher food pantry, expressed a desire to distribute kosher canned salmon. Agriculture officials say market research suggests the price should be comparable to non-kosher salmon already offered to the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the agency expects to start deliveries in July.

The Jewish philanthropic organization, which worked with lawmakers on the farm bill provision, praised the government’s efforts but acknowledged it won’t meet every need. Chief executive David Frankel believes some items, such as canned vegetables and tuna, will be available but he doesn’t expect chicken to meet the price requirement because it’s more labor intensive.

“We recognize it would be hard to ask the government to go out and buy more expensive food,” said Frankel, who oversees a pantry that provides food packages to 15,000 households each month.…

The money Rapfogel, Cohen, Ross, etc., stole came from city, state and federal government.

Those thefts took food and shelter away from poor people.

Neither fact is mentioned in the article.

Many donors lack confidence in the Met Council and the nonprofit's ability to run its programs has been justifiably hurt as a result.

The Met Council's food distribution has been cut and the nonprofit fired five top mid-level employees early this month when it was no longer able to pay them.

The AP doesn't mention that, either.

Yet the AP, when looking for a Jewish nonprofit to quote, went to the Met Council.

Why?

The Met Council was one of the organizations that asked the USDA to change the way it operates in order to make sure food shelves had kosher food.

And the AP's article is datelined Detroit. And the sad truth is that outside of New York City and to a lesser extent Chicago, Jewish communities do very little for the poor, Jewish or non-Jewish. They lack food shelves and shelters and pretty much every else poor people often need to rely on.

This doesn't mean there aren't poor Jews – there are.

What it means is that the Jewish community does a very poor job of helping them.

So the AP's reporter wouldn't have had an easy local phone number to call for a quote.

There are far better choices in New York City than the Met Council to talk to about this new law – Masbia or Bnai Raphael,  to name two.

To write a story about poverty and food and to quote the Met Council without mentioning the millions of dollars its top leaders stole from the poor is inexcusable.

Comments

[beleiver]

The Torah Portion this week Parsha Kedoshim 19:10 " Ani Taazov osem ani Hashem" Do not steal
from the poor because Hashem will fight for them (Rashi)
Regarding Money/Gifts to the poor.One should not think he can successfully cheat the poor of money due to them, for hashem will definately be an advocate/Judge for the poor.
Hashem can be relied upon to mete out both reward & punishment (Sefer Toras Kohanim)

[Yankel Dovid]

How can the journalism profession continue to exist when reporters at the AP, the NY Times, the Forward, and just about every other media outlet are so stupid while Shmarya Rosenberg is so smart?

[Allan]

@ “beleiver” - “hashem will definately [sic] be an advocate/Judge for the poor.”

Is that why he has let millions of poor human beings literally starve to death throughout history? That includes plenty of Jews in the 20th century. Exactly how bad do things have to get before your “advocate” actually does something? What happened to the God who used to make food literally rain down from the sky? Doesn’t the hunger of people today bother him as much as it did 3,000 years ago?

“Hashem can be relied upon to mete out both reward & punishment “

So you say. However a look at the real world outside the yeshiva will reveal that it’s often the good people that get the punishments and the bad that get the rewards. This is so clear that that rabbis had to invent an “olam haba” where they promise God will finally straighten out the whole mess and finally deliver the justice He keeps promising. Yeah, sure..,

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

What makes this story so weak is the writer's misuse of the apostrophe in #1 and #2.

[gevezener chusid]

@ chief rabbi: learn english. no errors with apostrophes here; there are several editors and one reporter.

[Rocky]

SR, Did you really expect an AP reporter to be familiar with the William Rapfogel case? Maybe you should ask him what he thinks of the e-rate funding scandal which was reported on this web site last year. Since there has been no follow up reporting on the e-rate scandal, I assume that it was swept under the carpet and no rabbi went to jail.

75 years ago, American Jews had a lot less influence on US politics than they do today even though they made up a larger percentage of the population at that time. So the refugee ship St. Louis was turned away from US ports in 1939 and its 900 Jews were sent back to Europe where most of them died in the Holocaust. These days, Jews are big players in US politics and foreign aid to Israel is always exempted from Federal budget cuts, even if it means cuts in benefits to poor Americans.

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

Posted by: gevezener chusid | April 27, 2014 at 09:04 AM

Its, not it's. I understand the difference between possessive singular and plural. You should work on your capitalization, though I commend you for you proper use of the semi-colon.

[Shmarya]

Rocky –

I've pointed out before that you really don't know what you're talking about and this is no exception.

Good reporters and editors use tools like Google to check to see if there's something they need to know about a source.

As for the e-rate scandal, if you were literate enough to understand the reporting, you'd know why there were no prosecutions. Why don't you go back and read it again.

[BMW]

Allan,
Evil exists because man creates it. There is an evil impulse (yetzer Hara) and a force of Goodness that we are constantly battling. Man was meant to live in an utopian society(Gan Eden) , However, the first man(Adam) decided that life needs more of a challenge because he didn't think that the entitlement of living in a perfect utopian society would be fulfilling/rewarding for his children. He then regretted his decision when his children murdered one another(Cain killed Ebel). Hashem meant for Man (Adam) to consume knowledge of evil on Shabbos, the seventh day. That day of Shabbath there is an extra neshama that had the capacity to overcome this evil more easily. Adam decided on his own to consume this knowledge before the right time. Once Evil was created, Hashem chose Abrahams' children to guide purity and have the light ( original utopian society) go through issac, Jacob and the shvatim (tribes of Israel). There will be a time when everyone reaches a metaphysical understanding of only doing Good and then society will revert back to the original Utopian society the Al-mighty intended.

[Jeff]

>>Posted by: BMW | April 27, 2014 at 10:16 AM

And you know this, how? (Apart from the Talmud, the Zohar and/or whatever your rebbe told you?)

[Believer]

Jeff if those sources aren't legitimate enough for you. This information is message told over from father to son all the way to the Giving of Torah where 1.2 million were present. No other people have said they've received message directly from the creator. You can fool some of the people but you can't fool 1.2 million.

[ah-pee-chorus]

BMW -

Aren't fairy tales fun? The problem with this one is that the very UNjust and UNkind god is therefore punishing billions of innocents for the sin of some guy who supposedly lived almost 6000 years ago.

[ah-pee-chorus]

Believer |-

There is no chain of father to son. NONE.
That is made crystal clear from nach itself. Just read Kings 2:22 and Nechemiah 8 and you'll see that there was no knowledge of the torah until it was (re-)introduced to b'nai yisroel by single people. Once the people accepted the word of yoshiahu and then ezra, they accepted the story of millions of witnesses even though they knew nothing about it. So there is no chain. That's a big lie foisted on the credulous and spread by the dishonest kiruv slime. Open a tanach and learn for yourself the truth.

[Jeff]

"No other people have said they've received message directly from the creator."

And again, you know this solely because it says so in a old book. I can live my life without Bronze Age fairy tales, thank you.

(And I thought it was 3 million. When did it get reduced by more than half - or is it because women don't count?)

[Believer]

Ahh pee chorus/Jeff The source agreed upon by a 1/3 of the population and now scientists agree that we originated from common parents. This Common ancestor that the Bible calls ADAM (Human who originated from the ground and goes back to dust after death) chose a path for us to challenge us between Good/Evil. This is Fact Out of 6 Billion people today there is a people of 11 million who all agree they have a lineage traced to abraham. You are right we are like a fairy tale but when I look at millions of Jewish people that are still here for centuries even after being gassed persecuted and exterminated I see the reality of the creator's promise to Abraham that his people are eternal.

[Jeff]

"and now scientists agree that we originated from common parents"

Not in the way that you mean - not that there were two people, married to each other, from whom all the rest of humanity descends.

"This is Fact"

Yeah... that word doesn't mean what you think it does, either.

Frum people and evangelicals are nothing if not predictable. You treat scientists as you do rabbis; they're reliable authorities as long as they say (or you think they say) what you want them to.

"You are right we are like a fairy tale but when I look at millions of Jewish people that are still here for centuries even after being gassed persecuted and exterminated"

Which brings us back to Allan's original point - your Invisible Friend is extremely unreliable.

[!!]

"No other people have said they've received message directly from the creator.
Really. Try telling that to the Moslems (who by the way - equally as legitimately trace their lineage back to Abraham.

And then pretty much any other religion.
There's Christianity, where they got the message too (through the forefathers) but it was "renewed" a long time ago and then more recently by the Mormons...
And have you studied the Far Eastern religions to know whether or not they have a direct claim to the Creator?
It is unbelievable how people who study nothing but Torah claim to know what everyone else is thinking and believing.

[Allan]

@BMW –“Evil exists because man creates it.”

So it’s MAN? who creates earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods and other natural disasters ??? If man behaved better, then the continental plates would stop moving ? Did man also create the flu virus, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, childhood leukemia and hundreds of other diseases - or are they a gift from our “beneficent creator.”? So millions have to endure horrific suffering because some guy in garden disobeyed God and ate a forbidden fruit ?

-“However, the first man(Adam) decided that life needs more of a challenge”

No he didn’t – because there was no “first man”. The Ancestors of the human race – Australopiticus Afarensis – evolved on the plains of East Africa 3 million years ago. Fully modern humans were walking around Europe and Asia 50,000 years ago and soon migrated to the Americas as well.
Your Adam and Eve story is a myth – a fairly tale –– not taught in a single university on earth. It is a product of ancient Man’s first efforts to understand his origins. You are wasting your time constructing any sort of argument around it the fantasies in the Book of Genesis. You might as well tell us about Santa Claus’ life at the North Pole or Harry Potter’s at Hogwarts because your Gan Eden story is exactly in the same class as these stories.

[ah-pee-chorus]

Allan -

Good one.

[!!]

"not taught in a single university on earth."
Writing at idiotic extremes is no better on the "left" than on the "right"

Really? Not taught at Brighan Young or any other Christian University in the US or Europe? Not at Yeshiva University? Not by any professor in any department of any university on earth?
How on earth would you possibly know anyway?
Your statement ruins the credibility of the rest of what you wrote in the same way that
"No other people have said they've received message directly from the creator" did earlier on this thread.

[Allan]

@!! OK. I stand corrected. I should have said "no university that does not have a religious agenda"

Of course, most universities teach the mythologies and beliefs of the various religions - but as myths - not as actual history.