NY Times Covers Gmachim

Finally we see some positive news of our community in the general media. The Gray Lady covered today the phenomenon of Gmach, in an article titled “A Traditional Jewish Loan Program Helps Ease Pain of Tough Economic Times.”

It describes how it spread even to Atlanta, to help the “Middle Class Needy,” by

Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz, whose father had a Gemach, a free-loan program, in the Hasidic enclave of Brooklyn. It assisted people with no public exposure, stressing the importance of helping people Bderech Kavod (honorably).

“I honestly never thought, in my realm here, to start a gemach,” Rabbi Minkowicz said in a recent interview. “I thought people wouldn’t understand it. It’d be a foreign concept. They hadn’t grown up that way. But definitely, definitely, definitely the economy now is the worst. The 13 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen people go from a regular life to rags. I’ve seen that up-front and personal.”

Speaking of Jewish poverty in general, the Times report that “the evidence points to an economic toll on Jews — not severe enough in most cases to plunge them into homelessness and destitution, or to qualify them for food stamps and Medicaid, but deep enough to destabilize what had been securely middle-class lives. Since the stock market collapse in late 2008 pushed the nation into recession, the demand for food and clothes from Jewish social-service agencies and charities has risen by roughly 40 percent, according to their administrators.”

“This area of the middle-class needy has just exploded,” said William E. Rapfogel, the chief executive of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, which covers the New York area. “We’ve seen people who were making $75,000, even $200,000, lose a substantial portion of income. When they lose a job, they get another, but it’s a job for less. They’re so over-leveraged in their homes, they can’t get out. If they sold, they wouldn’t take out a nickel.”

 “You help the people who are struggling. And you try to preserve their dignity,” Minkowicz - a Chabad Rabbi - said.