The Met Council has just carried out its biggest food distribution of the year, providing 2.65 million pounds of Pesach packages to more than 50,000 Jewish households in the New York area. “You don’t have to be poor to be needy,” says council head William Rapfogel, who’s spent the last two decades alleviating the pain and hopelessness of thousands of New York’s elderly, poor, and crisis-ridden.
Before Pesach a volunteer from Met Council arrived at the listed address and was surprised to hear children’s voices behind the door as she was used to delivering packages to the elderly. When they let her in they told her their mother was sick and resting but their father would arrive soon.
“The father had lost an administrative job and was driving a taxi and only bringing in half of what he used to” says William Rapfogel the executive director of Met Council (Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty) since 1992. “He showed up a few minutes later and when the volunteer prepared to leave he told her ‘Wait.’ Then he fished a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and gave it to her as a donation. ‘I feel I have to give something back ’ he told her. ‘That’s how I was taught in yeshivah.’”
Between a major recession and Hurricane Sandy thousands of New York Jewish families have found themselves stripped of their livelihood and hard-earned possessions. “It’s heartbreaking to see how many ‘regular’ families have had to turn to us for the basic necessities” Mr. Rapfogel says. “Today you don’t have to be poor to be needy.”
Met Council which retains a large corps of volunteers who deliver weekly food packages to the needy — especially to the homebound and elderly — has just carried out its biggest food distribution of the year providing Pesach packages to more than 50000 households in the New York area.
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