How the Flatbush Community Fund has Quickly Become a Lifeline for Local Families in Distress?

“We are trying to make it a one-stop shop, so that the people who need help have one address that they can turn to.” – Yitzy Weinberg, Executive Director of Flatbush Community Fund

“I am privileged to be involved in the truly remarkable and heroic work the Flatbush Community Fund does on a daily basis to alleviate the financial stress of needy families in our community.” – Board member David Heskiel

DAVE GORDON

This past Pessah, thanks to a new community initiative, hundreds of needy families who otherwise might have gone without proper provisions for the holiday didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table. For them, this holiday was indeed different from all other holidays – because there was a new organization at-the-ready to step up to the plate.

Flatbush Community Fund (FCF) has, for the past three years, been a lifeline for countless community members – those struggling paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, those in desperate need to pay for the necessitates of life. And that is particularly true during the past year, when so many have been economically devastated by the pandemic.

Thankfully, more than $1.5 million in food aid was given out to community members, so that they could partake in festive meals, without empty stomachs, shame or indignity.

But one might ask: what about the scores of existing community social safety nets? Aren’t they already taking care of struggling families?

The answer, surprising as it sounds, is that some families fell through the cracks. Although there are scores of charitable organizations all doing fine work, only one – Flatbush Community Fund – has arisen to forge partnerships with other assistance programs in order to reach more people in need.

“A One-Stop Shop”

Three years ago, a philanthropist in our community who had been helping a family in financial distress quickly came to the realization that there were other families like them who didn’t know where, or to whom, to turn. Not everyone who needed help knew of a program or a person to ask. And this donor wasn’t alone; some of his peers who helped the needy also understood the problem. So many in the community were defaulting on mortgages, facing utility shut-offs, or going into overdraft to simply buy the basics – with nowhere to turn for the help they desperately needed.

Together, these generous donors decided to plug the gaps, and provide more resources, by creating a central hub where anyone of any background could find help: the Flatbush Community Fund.

FCF touts itself as a unique multiservice organization, helping with food, bills, clothing, and interest-free loans.

“We are trying to make it a one-stop shop, so that the people who need help have one address that they can turn to,” said Yitzy Weinberg, Executive Director of Flatbush Community Fund. “At the same time, we are rallying our community around those hit by poverty, illness, pandemic, and unemployment to bring us all together to help each other.”

The rapid growth of the organization in such a short amount of time is astonishing, with millions of dollars fundraised and distributed. Its success in three short years is nothing short of stunning. It has distributed $2 million in aid to 1,200 families, distributed more than $400,000 worth of grocery vouchers to over 550 families, helped raised funds for 65 weddings, and funded $500,000 in interest-free loans.

And, FCF has evolved from a small organization with a cubical in a shared office space, to a real location and two full-time staffers.

Some 400 volunteers have stepped up to the plate to distribute goods and services, and the board is dedicated to investing their own spare time to help in as many ways as they can.

Board member David Heskiel proudly states, “I am privileged to be involved in the truly remarkable and heroic work the Flatbush Community Fund does on a daily basis to alleviate the financial stress of needy families in our community.”

Unique to our community, they provide free tutoring services to 200 children on a monthly basis, as part of a program that has demonstrated enormous tangible results, receiving praise from schools, donors, and students. The goal of the tutors, say organizers, isn’t merely to attend to those students who have slipped academically, but also to ensure they are proactively keeping up with their studies.

These initiatives have received the emphatic endorsement of an exceptionally wide range of community institutions and leaders. They have the support of 200 local shuls, and of prominent rabbis such as Rabbi Yisrael Reisman, Rabbi Elya Brudny, Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Leiff, and Rabbi Moshe Bergman.

Teamwork

Realizing that no one single organization can do it all, FCF immediately networked with an array of other organizations to more effectively serve the community. UJA Federation, Met Council, Tzur, and COJO are just a few agencies that have teamed up with FCF to provide more assistance to more families.

Tzur has a wedding fund matching scheme, dollar-for-dollar, that has given a half-million dollars to offset simha costs. Leon Goldenberg and COJO have offered various resources to process interest-free loans, with $1.5 million already collected by FCF and given out to those who need a helping hand. For their part, UJA has offered grants and funds, financial mentoring, and helping with the food pantry. And Met Council has also joined in, as a channel to help those with emergency utility and rent expenses.

“We just gave wedding assistance to a single mother,” Weinberg says. She reached back out to me to thank me. She was incredibly amazed. She couldn’t believe it. She filled out the application, we went through the vetting process, and she got thousands of dollars toward her wedding expenses. She wrote a whole long letter. She couldn’t contain herself about the burden taken off of her. Besides the financial burden, there was the emotional component of feeling that there are people there for her.”

This wasn’t unusual, Weinberg noted, as thank-you letters, voicemails and emails come in on a constant basis from those who have felt incredibly impacted by the work FCF does.

“It was also the fact that someone was there for them, and cared about them, that they were part of a community. It meant something to someone. It really brought home, to me and others, that these efforts really help.”

Streamlining Charitable Efforts

Weinberg became involved shortly after the organization was conceived, and quickly learned that there was a widely-held misconception that the need wasn’t so dire, a belief that because so much money is typically raised for so many causes, everyone was taken care of. Alas, that wasn’t the case. As Weinberg puts it, “Many people were getting lost in the shuffle. There were gaps, despite the number of programs available.”

And even when an individual could be helped with several different services, he noted, “a person, especially in a crisis, doesn’t have the headspace to go from organization to organization.”

What he saw in FCF were committed and dedicated individuals who wanted to create a better, more streamlined, solution, and he jumped at the chance to become involved.

“It’s so gratifying to be able to know that you are on the front lines of providing help, every day, for people when they need it,” Weinberg reflects. “There are many needs in the community that aren’t being met sufficiently. We are trying to fill those areas. We are trying to be the organization that everyone in Flatbush knows they can turn to if they have a problem.”

Weinberg works with Yonason Schwartz, FCF Director of Operations, both the only hired hands at FCF.

“We’ve taken on this monumental challenge and helped create this unique organization that we now have,” Schwartz says proudly.

Of critical importance for him to express is that FCF provides not only critical aid, but also a method whereby people can request help discreetly, in the form of an online application.

“People already go through a lot of shame, and discomfort, when things get bad,” Schwartz explains, noting that this is one of the reasons why many people shy away from asking. “They shouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of reaching out for help.”

A Plea for More “Fuel”

As incredible as the growth of the organization has been, however, there is an ever-growing need for donor contributions, in order to keep up with rapidly increasing demand for grocery store vouchers, food pantry items, loans, and other vital forms of assistance.

If there was a time-sensitive message to our community Schwartz and Weinberg want to leave us with, it’s that we can all chip in wherever we can, and all do our part to come to the aid of our fellow Jews.

“We have the vehicle to help people, but we need to be fueled more,” Schwartz pleads. “Help your friends and neighbors, and let’s all give to this cause!”.

Added Weinberg, “We need to get community leaders to buy in, and help us help the community. The sum is greater than its parts in the Flatbush community. There are needs in every shul in Flatbush. A stronger Flatbush community is better for everyone.”

For more information, please visit FCF’s website, www.fcfund.org.

Frieda Schweky

Going to the hospital to have a baby is a very exciting, emotional, and sometimes stressful, venture. During a global pandemic, all those emotions drastically increase.

New moms-to-be set to give birth between late March and early May, 2020 had just two options: either stress and worry, or don’t think about it and trust that it’ll work out. Pretty much anything they thought they had planned for the birth of their 2020 child and what followed post birth, went straight out the window as soon as COVID-19 hit our shores. Hospitals were constantly changing their procedure and policies for labor and delivery, and since you don’t choose your child’s birthday, you just didn’t know which set of rules would be in force when the baby started knocking on the door, ready to emerge into what had become a crazy world.

All women have birth stories, some more fascinating than others, but none can compare to the stories of babies delivered amid the pandemic chaos. When the doctors and nurses need to consider the possibility that you’ve contracted a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus, tensions are sky high, and nothing is normal. Many of our community women had this (hopefully) once-in-a lifetime experience. Here are some of their stories.

Jenny Jajati

I gave birth at NYU hospital at the height of the pandemic, on April 1, 2020. I was instructed to bring only one person to the hospital, but this was my first child, so we brought my mom along anyway, hoping they’d let her in. Long story short, they didn’t. My temperature was checked, as was my husband’s. It was still early, so there were no COVID tests available, and masks weren’t yet required.

After a grueling four hours, my son was born, and he didn’t leave my side the entire time. No nursery. My husband was allowed to stay as long as he was healthy and in the same room as us. If he would leave the room, he would have to leave the hospital and not be allowed to return. After no sleep the entire first night, my husband was worn down and had a fever. They made him leave and held me an extra day for observation.

My son’s berit was like nothing I had ever imagined it would be. Only six people attended – my husband and I, my in-laws, and my parents. My siblings were instructed to stay upstairs, and my siblings-in-law stood outside and peered in through the window. As the berit took place on the first day of Pesach, there were no pictures taken, and no Zoom for all the family and friends who should have been there.

If I had to take one lesson from this experience, it’s that you really need your mom during labor. I couldn’t control that, and if I had to choose again, I’d probably still choose my husband so he wouldn’t have to wait for me to get out of the hospital to meet his son. But nonetheless, it was hard, and I wished my mom was with me.

Celia Safdie

Lenox Hill, the hospital where I gave birth, was eerily silent on the day my daughter was born – March 18, 2020. No hallway hustle and bustle could be heard outside the delivery room door. It was truly the strangest experience. In fact, if I had to pinpoint the strangest part of giving birth during a pandemic, I’d say it was the quiet city hospital. It smelled of sanitizer, and when I had to use the restroom, I wasn’t sure if I’d be allowed to leave my room.

At that point, the pandemic was very new. They had no COVID tests for us, and masks weren’t yet required. The baby nursery was still open. Lots of precautions that were put in place for the pandemic hadn’t kicked in yet. One thing that was enforced was that only my husband could come to the delivery, and no one could visit during recovery. It was very isolating, but at the same time, I was wary of being around people because of this fast-spreading virus. I shared a room with another couple, and I remember feeling too close. Uncomfortably close. Conflicting feelings, I suppose. I just wanted my family around me, and I wasn’t able to have it that way.

My husband named our daughter himself in our home, with our family and friends joining us virtually on Zoom. What I took away from this experience is to just be happy for what I have. I spent so much quality time with her. Our bond was so tight because I couldn’t hand her off to anyone else; it was just us. In the end I saw it as something positive.

Margaret H. Mizrahi

I gave birth to my fourth child in Monmouth Medical Center on April 13, 2020. I was expecting to deliver at Lenox Hill in Manhattan, but due to the virus, I did the unheard of – I switched doctors in my final trimester. The goal was to avoid the horror stories I was hearing about the city hospitals during the pandemic. I feel it was the right decision, and Monmouth ended up being quite calm.

My husband was allowed to join me for the birth and recovery, but once he left, he wasn’t allowed back. When we arrived at the hospital, there was a tent outside, and we were asked to go into the tent to get our temperature checked and to be questioned about whether we’d been exposed to the virus. No COVID tests were given because of the shortage at the time.

We got in the hospital, and it was such an unusual experience. It was quiet, almost tranquil. Things were clearly not normal. I had to wear a mask during the entire ordeal, even during labor and birth, in which one is asked to take deep breaths. It made it even more challenging, but not as hard or scary as one might think.

Recovery was really something different. There was no nursery for the baby, so she was with me the entire time. No visitors, no nurses checking in, no one waking me up to check my vitals or take my blood. They just left me alone. I imagined how scary it would be if this was the drill when I had my first kid. Also how potentially dangerous it was. If, Gd forbid, something was wrong with a mother or a baby, no doctors would have known, because they really did not check. Of course, this also meant that they didn’t offer nursing classes or check if the baby was latching properly, which is really important for new moms. You got the vibe that they all feared their patients. What a strange time to be in a hospital.

When we took the baby home, we named her – just me and my husband. I was in my pajamas. I honestly thought this made a lot of sense, a lot more sense than business as usual. Had it been a normal year, and I had a boy, it would have been a whole expensive ordeal. I don’t see the point in throwing out thousands of dollars every time a couple has a boy. And besides for the money, a new mom just had major surgery, has a highly dependent newborn, and is then expected to plan an elaborate event in eight days. It’s just so hard and can feel really unfair. This was a relief, a huge thing off my chest. No big social gathering, no pressure.

Yvette Franco

I gave birth to my second child, a boy, in Maimonides Medical Center on April 2, 2020. Like most hospitals during the pandemic, Maimonides was only allowing one person to be present for the birth. I understand why most people chose their spouse or mother to join them, but I chose my sister. My reasoning was that if I was going to be in a compromised state with a newborn, I don’t want my husband or my mother catching COVID.

I walked into the hospital with a full hazmat suit on. I wasn’t taking any chances during that crazy time. It was right at the beginning of COVID, and we knew nothing, just that it was highly contagious and people were dying. When I wasn’t wearing hazmat suits, I was constantly sanitizing my hands.

Unfortunately, Maimonides does not offer private rooms for postpartum recovery, so I had to share. After the birth, my sister had to leave, and I was on my own. I instructed the nurses not to bring me my baby for the duration of our stay. The nursery was open, and I thought he’d be more protected from COVID there. I felt judged, but I was doing what I thought was best for my baby.

I’m not sure I can blame this on COVID, but at one point I was in pain and had to wait four hours for someone to finally bring me Tylenol. I was alone with no one to advocate for me. Fortunately, I was sent home early; they weren’t requiring the usual two-night stay.

The best part, perhaps, about this whole ordeal was not having to plan a berit during recovery. The berit was on Pesach, with just me, my husband and the mohel. For months, my husband and I couldn’t agree on a sandak, so this experience really taught me that you can’t plan. My husband ended up being the sandak, because he was the only one there…

Katie Dweck

During my past pregnancies, leading up to the due date I would stock up on what I might need for the baby. I prepare the nursery and a hospital bag. This is called “nesting.” Nesting in 2020 took on a completely different identity. Instead of choosing paint colors and layette, we were stocking the freezer with meat, and the linen closet with toilet paper and diapers. My husband and I both felt the urge to nest in this exact same way. I thought it was funny, but also appropriate.

Having had bad experiences in the hospital where I’ve delivered in the past, I switched doctors for this pregnancy to be able to deliver in Staten Island. Little did I know at the time how this really saved me. If the hospital I’d gone to in the past was rough pre-COVID, I didn’t want to find out what it was like during…

My due date was May 6th, and I gave birth the very next day. Leading up to the birth, I was very stressed out knowing I’d be required to mask up. At the time we had just started wearing masks, and I didn’t know the difference between breathable masks and, well, non-breathable ones. So basically, I bought a cute mask to bring to the hospital, not taking into account the number one thing: whether I can breathe in it. And the answer to that question that didn’t occur to me, was no. I could not breathe well in it, but I thought that this is just what masks are. To this day, I won’t wear it to even run into a store for ten minutes, because it’s my least breathable mask. You live and learn…

They took a temperature check when I signed in, and then a COVID test in the delivery room. The COVID test was so painful – it felt like the stick went so far up my nose it poked my brain! It almost bothered me more than labor pains…almost…

The hospital hallways were nearly empty. I remember thinking that I liked it this way. It was far more peaceful. I recall nurses in the other hospital having loud conversations in the hallways and waking me up, and once again I felt lucky to not be there. The bed next to me in recovery remained empty for the duration of my stay. My husband was told he could stay if he didn’t leave my side. The minute he stepped foot out of the recovery room, he would have to exit the premises and not return. This actually worked to my advantage, because the nursery was closed and someone had to take care of the baby that night. I was grateful to my husband for taking the night shift and letting me rest.

I gave birth to a girl on Thursday. While I was focused on her and recovering, my husband was planning a super intimate kiddush in our house Shabbat morning. Just our parents and siblings were invited. We notified everyone that masks were required, and only grandparents with gloves could hold the baby. My husband left me in the hospital Friday morning to prep the house for the kiddush and to buy what we needed. He picked me up that afternoon, and they took so long with the discharge that I got in the shower just minutes before Shabbat.

I could not believe my husband named our baby in our home with just a siddur in hand. I still sometimes have doubts, like, is she really named? Just kidding, but really… Anyway, the kiddush was intimate, and I enjoyed it so much. We hadn’t seen our siblings in months, and it was nice to be together.

Healthy mom, healthy baby. That’s what we always pray for, and that’s what’s important. These birth stories are unique, different from those of any other time in modern history, and deserve to be documented. With modern medicine advancing at the speed of light and new vaccines rolling out around the world, we look forward to healthier and happier times – and births!

“We always saw it as food being ‘culinary diplomacy,’ a way of bridging cultures, a way of getting to know each other, because your food is your identity.”

DAVE GORDON

As the lone kosher food provider in the United Arab Emirates, Elli Kriel used to deliver about a dozen or so meals a month to businessmen and travelers passing through.

Two major events happened that changed her small upstart boutique catering business, into a giant one, now globally recognized.

For one, the UAE government proclaimed 2019 “The Year of Tolerance,” a breakthrough for interfaith and religious relations. It meant that the 1,500 or so Jews believed to be living in the UAE were recognized as an “official” part of the country’s cultural fabric.

Towards the second half of 2020, the UAE was the first country to sign the Abraham Accords, the deal that normalized ties with Israel. This spurred some 130,000 Israelis to visit UAE. And as it happened, many sought homemade kosher meals, which Elli provided.

Today, Elli’s business flourishes. Demand for her kosher delicacies has skyrocketed, to the tune of 15,000 meals produced in the past 12 months. Elli’s UAE-based kosher food has attracted global attention, including articles by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, among others, who marveled at Elli’s trailblazing kosher business in a formerly quite unlikely place.

In the Beginning

Ross and Elli Kriel and their three children moved from South Africa to Dubai in August, 2013. A major hurdle was figuring out how to create a Jewish life for the family in a place where there was almost none before. They managed to cobble together a regular minyan in their living room, and while they never hid their Judaism, they did not flaunt it either.

“We never really spoke about our Jewish identity publicly. We were very quiet about it. So, if people would ask us about our religion, we would tell them. And if people wanted to know why we couldn’t go out on a Friday night, or why my children couldn’t come to birthday party on Saturday morning, we would say why, and we never experienced any negativity. We always experienced, ‘Oh, you’re Jewish. My friends back in New York, or my friends back in Toronto, or my friends back in Montreal, or my neighbor was Jewish.’”

Today there are two synagogue buildings and two kosher restaurants in UAE, but when they arrived, the Kriels were the only kosher family they knew of in the city. As word got out there was a family who kept kosher living in Dubai, Elli began to receive requests from travelers to provide kosher meals.

“They obviously bring crackers and tuna, and maybe some vacuum-packed meats and whatever else. But you know, people needed food. So, they would contact us, and ask us to help them with food, and my husband would say, ‘Don’t worry, my wife will help you,’ and off, I would send some food.”

Originally a sociologist and an academic, Elli became a de facto caterer virtually overnight. “And that just grew over time.”

By November 2019, Elli’s business had blossomed to the point where she was able to attend the New Jersey-based Kosherfest – the world’s largest kosher industry convention – to showcase her catering company, Elli’s Kosher Kitchen.

The Catering Business Takes Off

Elli’s first official foray into large scale catering was for a conference in Abu Dhabi, where a group of rabbis were gathering. Some hotels made inquiries, too. “Requests were getting bigger and bigger, and this turned into something that was enough to be a business,” she recalled. “I was working with two people at home. We were constantly on our feet, sending packages and packages of food around the city daily.”

The Abraham Accords caused an influx of diplomatic missions, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and Israeli leaders, on their visits to the UAE. Elli’s food was in high demand during the normalization deal.

“It was amazing. But not only that, also just an honor, really, being this homegrown business, in the UAE. I was representing the government of the UAE in welcoming Israelis,” Elli recalls.

“Everyone was shocked at how sudden this was. That automatically put a massive focus on my business.”

Hotels, Israeli tour groups, and government offices in UAE contacted Elli, having realized a need to provide kosher food. December began the wave of 130,000 Israeli visitors. “My business just sort of skyrocketed.”

Her deliveries “went crazy” and to keep up with demand Elli had to close the delivery section down for two weeks. To fill the slack, she opened a popup restaurant, inviting people to come eat, rather than sending off parcels.

Food Featuring the Best of Both Worlds

Elli realized that she could combine Emirati cuisine with Jewish cuisine and she developed a hybrid menu for customers to enjoy the best of both worlds.

“Customers don’t necessarily want to eat gefilte fish and latkes every day. They want to try something with a local flavor. I want to make it familiar to them, and blend things, to come up with something new, and to give them access to Emirate food.”

Elli dubbed the fusion cuisine Kosherati. “If you look at Jewish cuisine around the world, it reflects the local environment. You have all these influences. So, you know, Ashkenazi food in the U.S. is going to be different from Sephardic foods coming from Morocco,” she noted.

“Because the UAE doesn’t have any real direct history with the Jewish community or Jewish individuals and Jewish culture, I thought that if we are going to start developing Jewish foods in the UAE, it should take on the flavor of the environment. And that’s how Kosherati came about.”

Food as a Vehicle for Sharing Cultures

This culinary fusion had been a work in progress for some time. It grew out of Elli’s desire to experience Emirati culture through food.

“I couldn’t just eat the local food because I needed to keep kosher. So, I started making it myself, looking at recipe books,” Elli noted. It was difficult to find recipe books for Emirati food in English, however, but one of two she discovered was written by the German ambassador’s wife, who had interviewed a number of Emirati women, who offered their traditional recipes.

“So, this resonated with me, because I was also using my own home-cooked recipes, both Jewish and international.”

Prior to the “normalization” with Israel, Elli befriended a local Emirati woman, Mai Al Budy, who ordered fela from Elli. They found common ground and met regularly for coffee, eventually gravitating to discussions of food and to sharing recipes.

“We always saw it as food being ‘culinary diplomacy,’ a way of bridging cultures, a way of getting to know each other, because your food is your identity. Basically, it reflects your history, reflects where you come from, it reflects where you are today, it reflects your social status and life,” Elli says.

“By presenting one’s food to another culture, you get to know their culture intimately; you get to know the identity of each other. This was a way of building a friendship. And we were hoping that it would be a way that others could also, through our food, come to experience each other positively.”

Today, Elli blends (and sells) her own Emirati spices, including one called bazaar. She also cooks an Emirati pancake called chebab, made with saffron and cardamom. The pancake is folded, and then eaten with date syrup or labneh. Elli has dubbed it her version of “Emirati blintzes.” Another fusion creation is balaleet kugel, cooked with sugar and saffron, made with vermicelli and eggs, with an omelette on top. Her gefilte fish is made with local spices.

Much to her surprise, many Emiratis who had studied or traveled to the U.S. had discovered Jewish foods and came to Elli with their wish lists of Jewish cuisine. They enjoy her traditional rugelach, kugel, babka, latkes, matzo ball soup, and Israeli dishes.

“People just went crazy here for it, locals and residents, and it was what I described as ‘nostalgia eating.’ Sitting in their homes, wanting something of comfort,” Elli says. “I had an overwhelmingly positive response.”

Elli’s Business Explodes

In recent months, Marriott Hotels franchised Elli’s business in Abu Dhabi, invested in the business, and opened a production kitchen, the main distribution center for products in and around the UAE. There, Elli caters for 70 hotels.

This past Passover, Elli partnered with V Hotel Dubai by Curio Collection, where she and her team cooked daily meals for kashrut observant guests staying at Habtoor Palace Dubai, LXR Hotels & Resorts, V Hotel Dubai by Curio Collection, and Hilton Dubai Al Habtoor City. Food products were shipped from

the U.S. and Israel, and were prepared by local chefs, as well as chefs from Egypt, Syria, India, and Nepal, overseen by a mashgiah from Iran.

The menus featured local cuisine, such as Arabic sausages, molehea (a local vegetable similar to spinach) cooked with chicken, bamriya (okra with tomato sauce), Arabic salads, as well as dishes made with rosewater and pomegranate molasses.

This month, Elli will be providing supermarket-ready pre-packaged foods and will be providing sandwiches to a local coffee chain, three airports, the mall of Emirates, and the touristy Dubai Mall.

“It’s an exciting time, and I think it’s going to get more exciting,” Elli says.

“I’m so thrilled with the way the business has grown over time, and the acknowledgement I’ve received from people in the UAE and from around the world who have eaten my food.”