Keeping kosher can be especially challenging for homebound elderly and disabled people. Since its founding in 2013, KC Kosher Meals on Wheels has been trying to make keeping kosher easier for these populations: The program delivers free kosher meals in the Kansas City area on both sides of the state line; most of its clients live at or below poverty level.
Now, the Anna and Max Zalcman Torah Learning Center in Overland Park--the operator and headquarters for Kosher Meals on Wheels--has raised nearly $800,000 toward its $1.7 million campaign goal to support the expansion of its building and the scope of KC Kosher Meals on Wheels’ services, according to Esther Friedman, the center’s co-director, along with her husband, Rabbi BenZion Friedman.
The fundraiser started in late 2019 with a grant from the Dreiseszun Family Foundation. Subsequent contributions came from the Sunderland Foundation, which gave $250,000, and Dr. Rues Chaya Hersh. The Mabee Foundation offered a challenge grant of $250,000, contingent on the center separately raising $1 million.
The plans for expansion call for a larger kitchen, a walk-in freezer, added storage space, a multipurpose room, classrooms, offices and a library. The larger space will enable the Kosher Meals on Wheels program to double the number of clients served with delivered meals and on-site programs, and better enable social distancing requirements because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the center, founded in 1998, started KC Kosher Meals on Wheels, it regularly delivered kosher food to seven people, Friedman said. It had been giving out food to homebound seniors for many years.
In 2019, the program delivered 11,000 kosher meals. Increased needs because of COVID-19 drove that number to 20,000 meals in 2020 for 134 homebound Jewish elderly and disabled people.
KC Kosher Meals on Wheels has 80 to 100 volunteers who cook food at the center and deliver it. The program serves homebound seniors “who want the comfort of staying at home,” Friedman said. The center will deliver kosher meals to non-Jewish homebound seniors who request them, but typically refers them to Johnson County Meals on Wheels.
“In a place like Kansas City where people need to drive to get somewhere, homebound seniors having home-cooked meals is really important,” she said. “It helps their health, including mental health. For many of them, it’s hard to cook.”
The program provides nutritious meals including fresh or frozen vegetables and fruit. When the center started the program, those it served often kept easy to prepare but not especially nutritious food in their refrigerators. The program makes “a huge difference for them,” Friedman said.
“They tell us that all the time,” she said. “Some of the homebound seniors have an illness, so they’ll need the food for three or four weeks after surgery, for example, but they won’t need it long term. They can’t get kosher meals any other way.”
The human interaction the program’s delivery volunteers provide the seniors they serve is as important to them as the kosher food itself, Friedman said.
“The feedback they give us (is that) it’s lifesaving,” she said. “A lot of people were panicked during COVID. Volunteers talked with them frequently by phone, making sure they were taking their medications and were otherwise all right. We were their eyes and ears when they needed something. Just for people to know, ‘We’re thinking of you.’”
According to statistics from Meals on Wheels America, 1 in 3 Kansas seniors faced the threat of hunger in 2020, and 1 in 4 were isolated, leaving them “struggling physically, emotionally and mentally.” Kansas ranked second in the United States for the number of seniors who were “very low food secure.” An estimated nearly 220,500 Kansas seniors, or 7.5% of the state’s population, faced daily hunger and isolation.
Using the 7.5% figure and statistics from “United States Jewish Population, 2019” by Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, which estimated the Kansas City area’s Jewish population at roughly 20,000, about 1,500 area Jewish seniors faced hunger and isolation.
Along with KC Kosher Meals on Wheels, the center also started a program called Friendship KC in 2018 for special needs adults. It provides skills training, social interaction and recreational activities. The center paused the program because of the pandemic. It needs extra space for social distancing for that program, too.
The center also started a program last year called Shabbat for You, providing gift boxes with grape juice, homemade challah, kugel and candles.
Having a honey cake on Rosh Hashanah, a latke on Chanukah and kosher food for Passover all strengthens Jewish people’s mental health, Friedman said. Much of the food brings back memories, “and that does a huge amount for seniors.” Visits from those delivering meals also ease the effects of isolation.
Friedman described a client with Alzheimer’s disease who didn’t recognize a spouse or children. She and Rabbi Friedman visited the couple. He would sing songs from the couple’s childhood and they would sing along.
“It’s such an amazing thing to see,” she said. “With the singing, they come alive. There are so many wonderful outcomes from the act of delivering meals, of visiting. You save lives that way. It adds another day of positive.”
