Tuesday, April 4, before Passover, the Boro Park JCC was handing out stipends, food and clothing for the needy families of the community. As the word went out through the local grapevine, lines were seen forming outside their facility on 13th Avenue, filling the entire street between 46th Street and 47th Street. Soon after, the weather turned nasty. A heavy, wet snow came down on those waiting, but their situation at home was obviously worse. So they continued to wait under the freezing snow for hours, for rations that totaled somewhere between one hundred and two hundred dollars. If this picture doesn’t speak volumes about the poverty in the Boro Park community, nothing will. Hundreds of mothers with children, some of them in strollers, when every minute is precious for holiday preparations, and heavy snow is falling, were not deterred from waiting on this line.
When Rebetzin Deutch of “Oneg Shabbos” saw this picture, she said “I was wondering why G-d was sending us this untimely snow. But now I know; so that these women waiting on line should have where to hide from embarrassment – under their umbrellas, rain bonnets, or falling snow!”
In Masbia, we don’t take pictures of our patrons, so they can have their full privacy, but every day, we serve mothers with children, from Boro Park. We hope that this picture where you can’t identify any individual will be enough to bring out our point, that there are thousands of undernourished families in Boro Park.
