This week saw Birmingham’s Jewish community work together to help offset the loss of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by up to 23,000 Birmingham households due to the ongoing federal government shutdown. The effort is part of a City of Birmingham initiative that involves multiple agencies across the city plus the City of Mountain Brook.
“Here at the Levite JCC we’ve seen a steady stream of neighbors and friends supplementing what our own members have been able to contribute to this special effort,” says CEO Brooke Bowles. The Monday-Thursday effort this week saw Jewish organizations raise — as of this writing — nearly $18,000 from some 60 donors, along with food donations that overflowed from the lobby into other storage areas.
“We even ran out of space for donations and had to make multiple trips to deliver food to Christian Service Mission — the main collection point for this citywide effort,” Bowles says.
“All this along with donations to our sister organizations truly embodies the Jewish value of tikkun olam, or repairing the world,” she adds.
Crucially, although the donations are just a small fraction of total citywide SNAP-related needs, they have met the requirements of a number of LJCC and Collat Jewish Family Service employees plus senior and disabled CJFS clients… at least for November.
“When the shutdown will end remains unclear, of course,” Brooke says. “So we’ll keep working with our partners to figure out what will come next and when, and how we can continue to best contribute.”
