Dina Moroz, 46, bites her lips nervously as she waits to see a counselor at the new Boro Park Jewish Community Council offices. “I left my patient alone,” the home attendant blurts out with tears in her eyes. Moroz has come to request help in processing her 81-year-old Holocaust survivor “patient’s” request for citizenship. “All she wants is to be a citizen,” Moroz explains in an English peppered with Russian and Yiddish as she removes a set of legal documents from an envelope and struggles to explain the problem.“I’m here because my landlord keeps raising the rent,” offers another new American, Manya Solboleva. “I’m already 62. I shouldn’t be paying any increases.” The new Boro Park Jewish Community Council, which observed its mezuzah dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony last week, is sandwiched between two specialty shops at 4608 13th Avenue. Its modest glass entrance leads up a steep, narrow staircase to a cramped space a small family once called home, and its redefined rooms resonate with a cacophony of languages as clientele sign up for help.The new organization is a community-appointed, not-for-profit heir apparent to the defunct Council of Jewish Organizations (COJO), which, after 22 years of service , met its end when two officials were charged with conspiring to misappropriate government funds. The development resulted in the termination of the group’s programs two and a half years ago. One official, Paul Chernick, pleaded guilty to the charges while another, Rabbi Elimelech Naiman, was convicted. Borough Park Assemblyman Dov Hikind was acquitted of related charges.With an annual budget of $5 million, the now-defunct organization had benefited more than 20,000 people each year with a plethora of services such as job training, refugee resettlement, preschool toddler programs, aid to the elderly and much more. The disruption had a damaging effect on immigrants, the poor and others who needed social services in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park.According to a recent study by Ukeles Associates Inc., one-third of the population lives in chronic poverty. Another third are effectively poor and large families. In New York City, the area ranks 11th in districts with a population living at or below 125 percent of poverty levels and ninth in those paying more than 35 percent of income for rent.Services were aimed at families and teens at risk, special needs, the elderly, immigrants and the unemployed. To fill the void and to meet the needs of the Borough Park Jewish community, which has grown since 1990 from 95,000 to 120,000, a nucleus of prominent Borough Park community leaders, representing the full spectrum of schools and organizations, put their heads together to form a council that would “meet the requirements of the government and the public,” according to Yussi Rieder, co-chairman of the board.“Since we opened on January 1st,” says Rieder, “we have serviced 6,000 cases.” Rieder admits that, operating on a half million dollar budget, the new group cannot expect to duplicate the work of its predecessor. “It takes time to build up,” he says. “We can’t do overnight what they did in two decades.”Rieder is particularly proud of the Pesach campaign, which delivered food packages and money vouchers to 2,000 families.The problem in the community, says Rieder, is that people are not aware of the benefits available to them. Often, he says, for example, the Council refers community residents to doctors and schools.“Sometimes someone will call and say, ‘I need a hospital bed,’ and our staff will refer him to the right person at the right place.”According to council management, at least 150 Borough Park residents appear at the Council each week with requests ranging from the easily attainable to the impossible.Most of the petitions, says Solomon Torn, one of the organization’s four social workers, are for government entitlements. He cites a case in which a 45-year-old teacher and father of eight suddenly contracted a chronic illness and could no longer work. “I filled out the forms and got him all kinds of benefits,” says Torn, who handles food stamps, Medicaid, social security and job development.Edward O’Connell, a Social Security field representative, visits the Borough Park office every Monday. “If you can enable someone to receive monthly checks, medical coverage and food stamps — and do it legally — it makes you very happy,” he says with a big grin, noting that his function is to “put a human face” on the federal government.“There’s a terrible maze to work through to get government benefits,” asserts Rabbi Yechiel Kaufman, the Council’s executive director, who is also spiritual leader of Congregation Anshe Sfard in Borough Park. “We help people get through it, and we negotiate with the bureaucracy to get what we need to help someone.” Rabbi Kaufman says although the Council is a Borough Park agency, “we will service any human being who needs help,” but qualifies that with, “The pie is only so large.”The new agency is an affiliate of the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, unlike the COJO, which received only a small portion of its funding through Met Council, a UJA-Federation beneficiary. William Rapfogel, executive director of the Met Council, was instrumental in obtaining money from Albany to start the new Boro Park Council. Met Council assists local community councils by directing funds, coordinating some of their services, offering assistance in crisis intervention as well as job placement and financial management. It also oversees the new programs. “Many individuals’ and families’ lives were saved by the new community council,” he says, referring specifically to Russian immigrants, young children and families in crisis. “We’re happy to be there for them.”“You don’t have to reach the $5 million level to serve people,” adds Rapfogel, alluding to the extinct COJO.Commenting, too, on COJO, Yussi Rieder notes the organization itself was never closed down. “Its funds simply dried up” following the indictments. “We have to judge our fellow human beings fairly,” he says. “We can’t condemn an organization which helped such a vast amount of Jews just because a couple of people might have done something wrong. “It’s like saying all GM automobiles are no good because one was found to have a defective part, or someone’s whole body is diseased because he has an infected fingernail.”Nevertheless, he says, the new Council “has nothing to do with the old.”But the presence of a half dozen politicians — including City Council Speaker Peter Vallone — at the mezuzah dedication at the JCC’s new office last week indicated that the old and new agencies will have something in common: political clout. The officials included Councilmembers Noach Dear and Steve DiBrienza and state Sen. Seymour Lachman, all Democrats whose districts include Borough Park.“They are convinced we are a legitimate association,” said Rieder.The new Council is also endorsed by a litany of distinguished rabbis and yeshiva deans, who issued a formal call for support. “We ask the broad public to stand with them whenever possible to support and strengthen them in their important mission,” the clergy wrote.The organization’s new publication, The Borough Parker, is named for the people in the neighborhood who “care for the welfare of their neighbors, who take an interest in the less fortunate and who espouse the virtues of charity and kindness.”“It is a tribute to the community that the new founders were able to galvanize resources and support in a very short time to perform such acts of chesed [kindness] in one of the largest Jewish enclaves in the world,” says Merryl Tisch, president of Met Council.
Print this Page