Uncategorized
How the CEO of New York’s largest food bank is inspired by Jewish values
(New York Jewish Week) — At the Food Bank for New York City, one of the largest food banks in the country, the holiday season is crucial to ensuring New Yorkers have enough food to be able to live with dignity.
Since its founding in 1983, the organization has provided over one billion meals to New Yorkers in need — as well as offering free SNAP assistance, tax preparation services and financial literacy programs to low-income residents.
“Our central mission is that we feed people for today, but we have made significant investments in programming that truly helps to lift people out of poverty,” president and chief executive officer Leslie Gordon told the New York Jewish Week. “Because the reason why people are food insecure to begin with is a resource problem. It’s an inability to get connected to networks or resources, because of racist systems or policy issues.”
Gordon, who is Jewish, has helmed the organization since 2020, and in some ways, rose to the role in a way that seemed inevitable. As a child, she loved to watch her grandfather sell meat, produce and other goods from the grocery store he owned in Tarrytown, New York, and deliver food donations to the needy. Her mother, who also grew up at the store, was the executive director at the Hunts Point Produce Market, the country’s largest wholesale produce market.
Prior to joining Food Bank for New York, Gordon held leadership roles at Feeding Westchester, a food bank network in Westchester County and City Harvest, which helps make fresh, nutritious food accessible around New York. Starting her job at the beginning of the pandemic, Gordon has overseen a doubling of the Food Bank for New York’s annual food distribution across the city from 70 million pounds to 150 million pounds.
A fourth-generation Tarrytown resident, Gordon has been a member of the Conservative congregation Temple Beth Abraham her entire life. She lives in the same house that she, her grandfather and her mother grew up in, with her wife, two dogs and two cats.
The New York Jewish Week chatted with Gordon about her background, her favorite parts of the job and the Jewish family values that got her here.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for length and clarity.
After leadership roles at two other food banks, Gordon took over the top position at Food Bank for New York City in March 2020. She credits her Jewish family values for helping guide her. (Courtesy)
New York Jewish Week: How have your Jewish values guided you as the CEO of Food Bank for New York?
Leslie Gordon: The thing about my connection to Judaism at the Food Bank is really a personal responsibility around doing tikkun olam. It’s an ever-present, everyday commitment to making the world more just and equal through social action, which is what we do every day at Food Bank — helping New Yorkers across the five boroughs to have the resources they need to be able to have a stable, healthy life where they can thrive and look forward to working on achieving their dreams.
Food is culture. Food is love. Food is history. Food has always been a big part of my personal Jewish experience — whether through holidays or through historical explorations. My grandfather was a butcher. He grew up in a small Jewish enclave in Rockland County called Pot Cheese Hollow [now Spring Valley], which is a sort of a European framing for all things cottage cheese.
You started this job right at the beginning of the pandemic. What was that like, and what was the path that led you to working at Food Bank?
I’ll never forget this: My first day was March 30, 2020. It was a little crazy to be the humble leader of one of the nation’s largest food banks at a time when the need was historically outsized and quickly escalated. It was a little bit of a challenge and, frankly, has been for most of my tenure.
Again, it goes back to my Jewish familial roots. I am carrying on a family legacy of feeding people: My grandfather, Norman Goldberg, was the son of European immigrants. When they came over [to America], and in his growing up years in that enclave in Rockland County, they were really, really poor. One of their biggest assets, believe it or not, was a dairy cow — no running water, no indoor plumbing. He would tell stories as kids that sometimes the only thing he ate in the course of a day was an apple that he picked off a neighboring farmer’s tree.
Fast forward many years into the future, he was a successful businessman, between a grocery store, a butcher store and a wine and liquor store, amongst other pursuits. He never forgot where he came from and he would talk to us about the importance of connecting people with food, and again doing tikkun olam. They would get phone calls from the rabbi at Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, where they lived, because food banks and food pantries didn’t exist back then — the World War II era all the way through the 1950s, ’60s, and even ’70s. They would get a list of people in the community who needed help and [my grandfather] would take my mother by the arm and they would go to the local grocery store and shop. Frequently, as my mom tells it now, they’d end up in a local fourth-floor walk-up apartment building, ring the bell, drop the groceries and go, because you wanted to preserve the dignity of those whom you are helping.
That really made an impression on me. My grandfather was also an avid backyard gardener and was famous for leaving those little brown lunch bags full of excess produce from his backyard garden on people’s stoops.
My mother became the head of the world’s largest wholesale produce terminal, which is based in the Hunts Point section of South Bronx. I caught the bug on logistics and operations in food and really the romanticism of the food system. I’m still of that generation where I feel very connected to my local food system and farmers. I had a very unique growing up experience, where I got to see train cars full of broccoli or potatoes or other amazing produce that traveled through small towns and cities across the United States to land up in the South Bronx. So, I’ve been in the arena of food banking for about 15 years. I couldn’t have predicted it, I call it a happy accident. Of the 10 food banks in New York State, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of leading three of them.
What type of outreach do you do to New York’s Jewish community?
We’re a city of about 8.4 million people, and 1.6 million of them, give or take, are people who just don’t know where their next meal is coming from or what it will be. Ask yourself: Have you ever been hungry for a long period of time during the day? How do you deal with that? Imagine if that was your every day. That is compounded, potentially, by other struggles that you have. People don’t live single-issue lives. So, typically, when you’re food insecure, there are a lot of other issues that you’re grappling with — could be housing issues, could be mental health issues, could be employment or underemployment issues. There’s just a lot going on in the mix. New York City is a particularly expensive place to live. It’s a tough environment.
We’re the heart of a network of about 800 on-the-ground partners across the five boroughs. On nearly every street in nearly every neighborhood, our partners are food pantries, community kitchens, senior centers, shelters, community-based organizations like New York City Housing Authority or a Boys and Girls Club. In the case of the Jewish community, we have relationships with more than 40 on-the-ground agencies that specifically serve observant Jews. Organizations like Masbia, Alexander Rapoport’s restaurant-style soup kitchen that he’s now famous for.
We’re serving one of the nation’s largest kosher observant populations in the U.S. right here in New York City. We’re committed to making sure that kosher-observing communities in Williamsburg, Midwood, Crown Heights, Coney Island, Lower East Side, etc., have access to good kosher food that they can feel good about. The number of Jews in New York City who struggle is just astounding. We have a very large Jewish population, obviously. And so, you know, it’s something that’s on my mind a lot. I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Jewish community in New York now for over 15 years. Studies tell us that more than 10% of Jewish adults, and Jewish adults with kids in New York are food insecure. It’s serious. You’d be astounded, probably, to learn that more than 20% of adults in Jewish households in New York are at the poverty line.
What is your favorite part of the job?
A job as a food bank leader is very, very unique. In the course of a day, I can work on operations, I can work on marketing and communications, I can meet with donors, I can be on the phone with one of our agencies or food pantries on the ground, or I can be working on policy or advocacy. So it’s a really varied position. The most fun part about my job is the people and the stories. It’s the people who we serve who just have really big hearts and deep and interesting personal stories, and they’re just like you and me — moms and dads and families and kids who are trying to live their best life. We take the opportunity to be able to help them along the way pretty seriously.
For me, it starts internally with our Food Bank family. I take that really seriously. The culture in the organization is really important to me. I want people to feel supported and have all the resources they need to do their job, to be excited and energized about the ability and opportunity they have to impact people’s lives. At the end of the day, it’s always the people.
I’m a bit of a builder, and a fixer. It’s just who I am. Why I’m that way, I have no idea. My mother tells me that I’m my grandfather’s granddaughter. I just have a particular affinity for how things work and systems and processes and making things better and more efficient. It’s just part of my DNA, I guess. That is a skill set that really fits well with what’s required to run a food bank.
—
The post How the CEO of New York’s largest food bank is inspired by Jewish values appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
George Washington University Investigates Contaminated ‘Vial’ Which Injured Jewish Student
Demonstrators gather at The George Washington University in Washington, DC on March 21, 2025, to protest the war in Gaza. Photo: Bryan Dozier via Reuters Connect
George Washington University said this week that it was investigating a shocking report that someone possibly poisoned a Jewish student by placing contaminated “vials” near the site of an Israel Fest event held there last month.
“At least one student was injured by the incident, which is now under an investigation that will examine among other things whether individuals were targeted based on their Jewish faith,” the university, which sits just blocks away from the White House, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The university condemns this reprehensible and criminal action. Acts like this have no place in our community, which is a safe and inclusive space for individuals of all backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.”
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University (GW), wrote on his website that Israel Fest “is a celebration of Israeli food, music, and culture.”
“The event often draws protesters,” he continued. “I have spoken to Jewish students about their fear of attending, including visiting the popular camel brought to campus each year. Others have told me how students in classes for weeks have been bad-mouthing the planned event and have described those attending as ‘supporting genocide.’”
This latest threat against the Jewish community comes amid an epidemic of antisemitic violence in the US. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest annual audit of US antisemitic incidents, assaults against Jews increased 4 percent in 2025, and perpetrators are more often resorting to using “deadly weapons” in the commission of their crimes. That raises the likelihood that their actions result in severe injury or death.
The advocacy group noted that the upward shift was reflected in the shocking murders of Jews in antisemitic attacks in the US for the first time since 2019. Two Israeli embassy staffers — a young couple set be engaged — were shot dead in Washington, DC last May, and weeks later a firebombing in Colorado claimed the life of an octogenarian. In both crimes, the alleged killers cited anti-Zionism as their motivating ideology.
Other incidents which stopped short of the worst possible outcome continue to create a sense of insecurity for American Jews. Over the past year, for example, The Algemeiner has reported on a public-school principal’s inveighing against “Jew money,” an attempted arson at the Hillel International chapter in San Francisco, California, and the movement of some conservative students into the far-right ecosystem of antisemitism — a path cleared by Nicholas Fuentes, Candace Owens, Kanye West, and troops of social media influencers.
“Behind every one of these incidents is a real person: a family threatened at their synagogue, a rabbi attacked on the street, a student harassed on campus,” ADL senior vice president Oren Segal said in a statement regarding the organization’s latest statistics on antisemitic violence and discrimination. “The safety of Jewish communities depends on our collective willingness to meet this moment with urgency, which is what we’re doing every day at ADL.”
George Washington University has allegedly been a microcosm of societal antisemitism, as reported by various claims described in court documents. One ongoing lawsuit alleges that the university enabled an eruption of antisemitic discrimination on campus by declining to intervene in a slew of incidents in which anti-Zionists threw rocks at Jewish students, vandalized the campus office of Hillel International, and uttered slurs such as “filthy k—ke.” Meanwhile, The Algemeiner has reported extensively on the activities of its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, which once threatened a Jewish professor and continues to spread antisemitic tropes about Israel.
“Given the history of antisemitic protests on campus, the [latest Isael Fest] incident is chilling for many on our campus,” Turley wrote.
However, rising hatred will not stop the campus Jewish community from being visible and unafraid, the school’s Hillel proclaimed in a statement issued on Wednesday.
“We are grateful to GW officials and security personnel for their swift response,” the group said. “Incidents like this will not deter our community. GW Hill will continue to support our students so they can proudly be Jewish.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Shabbos Kestenbaum: The New Encampments
The “People’s University” encampment, established by Students for Justice in Palestine, on the campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Screenshot
The encampments have returned. At Smith and Occidental Colleges, the ugliest form of campus bigotry since the 2024 Tentifada is back.
The 2023-2024 academic year saw an unprecedented wave of antisemitic incidents on American college campuses. Infamously, anti-Israel “encampments” — also known as the Tentifada — took over at least 80 campuses during this period. These pro-Hamas zones were designed to make Jewish students feel unsafe. Sadly, they’re here once again.
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, students set up the “Rafah to Jenin Liberated Zone.” Organizers recently called it the longest-lasting encampment since 2024. The radicals were handing out “No Zionists” pins and red inverted triangle stickers, a symbol Hamas uses to mark targets.
In 2024, Occidental settled a Title VI complaint filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Brandeis Center, agreeing to implement sweeping reforms to address antisemitism. The agreement explicitly states that “no Zionist” litmus tests may constitute discrimination against Jewish or Israeli students.
At Smith College in Massachusetts, radicals occupied Chapin Lawn and renamed it “the People’s University.” They demanded divestment from Israel and called for a critical race theory curriculum. The president and chairwoman of the Board of Trustees agreed to sit down with the ringleaders. Despite this concession, the coordinators pledged to continue disrupting campus.
The Smith College jihad pajama party disbanded only after the college’s administration agreed to enter into sustained negotiations with the anti-Israel rule-breakers. The radicals openly stated that they will continue to disrupt campus life to demand divestment and threatened that “if the institution won’t give it to us, we will make it.”
Allowing these terror-supporting encampments to fester is a losing strategy for college administrators. It causes real damage, both physical and institutional, at the schools that fail to immediately disband them. Many colleges are now under investigation for failing to protect their students during the spring 2024 semester.
One of the most destructive tentifadas occurred at Columbia University. Pro-Hamas radicals seized the Butler library in May 2024, disrupted final exams, and targeted Jewish students. They besieged Hamilton Hall, smashed open the doors with hammers, injured security personnel, and barricaded themselves inside. Jewish faculty lost access to campus. Jewish students alleged structural antisemitism in a lawsuit. Ultimately, Columbia canceled in-person classes and commencement ceremonies for the remainder of the school year.
Across the United States, campus agitators vandalized property with swastikas and terrorist propaganda and defaced war memorials and statues of American heroes. They smashed and occupied buildings and poured cement into sewage systems. Jewish students faced violent threats and were blocked from getting to class. In some cases, physical violence resulted in the hospitalization of Jewish students. Due to the severity of the campus disruptions, many classes and graduation ceremonies were canceled across the country.
The Tentifada caused an estimated $3 million in property damage at the City College of New York, millions in damage at Cal Poly Humboldt, and $29 million across the University of California system, including new security measures, law enforcement, and the destruction of campus spaces. These incidents are just a small portion of the damage that was done by pro-Hamas radicals on American campuses during the 2023-2024 academic year.
The Tentifada was a dark chapter for American universities. Pro-Hamas campus radicals are now trying to start a new chapter of destruction and disorder. Administrators must not let them. The response should be immediate: disband the encampments, impose disciplinary proceedings, expel participants, and refer criminal conduct for prosecution. American universities exist to educate students, not to host pro-Hamas block parties.
Shabbos Kestenbaum is a political commentator at PragerU and a former lead plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University.
Uncategorized
The Special Importance of Memory in Judaism
The entrance gate of a Jewish cemetery in Gauting, Starnberg, Upper Bavaria, Bavaria, Germany, on Nov. 8, 2020, is a wrought iron gate adorned with a Star of David. It stands between two stone pillars, leading into a tree-lined cemetery with gravestones and a pathway visible in the background. Photo by Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
A few weeks ago, I conducted the funeral of Ron Plotkin, former owner of Monster.com and once a leading philanthropist in Los Angeles. In recent years, his life changed drastically — from prominence and influence to obscurity and hardship.
I knew Ron at his height and stayed in touch as others drifted away. By the time he died, there were no resources left — not even enough for a burial. We arranged for him to be laid to rest through charitable means at the Jewish cemetery in Commerce, California.
Sadly, we struggled to find 10 men to attend Ron’s funeral so Kaddish could be recited. A group from my synagogue agreed to come, but there were only nine of us. We stood in the blazing sun, waiting for a minyan.
Suddenly, a 10th man appeared: Shalom Raichik — originally from Los Angeles, now living in Baltimore — was at the cemetery just at that moment and agreed to join us.
After I recited Kaddish for Ron, Shalom asked if we could gather at another nearby grave to say Kaddish again, along with a memorial prayer.
“Who is it?” I asked. Shalom’s answer sent a chill through all of us. It is a story I cannot put out of my mind — a story about reclaiming someone who had disappeared from history.
We often think of death as a single, final event. But Jewish tradition introduces a powerful idea: a person can die twice. The first death is physical. The second is when they are forgotten — when no one remembers their name, or visits their grave, or even knows they existed.
The man we said Kaddish for that day is marked as “Ploni ben Avraham” — the Jewish equivalent of John Doe. We don’t know his name.
His story is tragic yet extraordinary: He survived the Holocaust, came to America alone, had no money and no family, and lived quietly in New York in obscurity.
At some point, he sought the help of Dr. Maurice Frey, a dentist and fellow refugee who had escaped Europe during the war. Dr. Frey was known for caring for penniless Holocaust survivors and treated this man without charge.
The patient, wanting to keep his dignity, insisted on giving something in return and arranged to donate his body to medical science, requesting his skull be given to Dr. Frey for educational use.
Years later, long after the encounter had been forgotten, a small package arrived containing the man’s skull. Dr. Frey tried to transfer it to the NYU School of Dentistry, but when they declined to take it, he kept it.
After his death, Dr. Frey’s widow moved to California, bringing the skull with her. There, she sought its disposal according to Jewish law and was directed to Chabad, who helped arrange a proper burial in 2021. Though only a skull remained, they honored the survivor and fulfilled the obligation to respect even the smallest remnant of a Jewish life.
Still, something was missing: There was no name, no marker, and no memory. Visitors to the cemetery unknowingly walked over his grave. A man who had survived the worst horrors was, even in death, being trampled, not by malice but by ignorance.
Finally, a small group decided to act, and this past January, they placed a modest stone, simply acknowledging that Ploni ben Avraham had existed and was not forgotten. And a few weeks ago, someone finally said Kaddish for him at his grave.
At Ron Plotkin’s funeral, having just buried a man once surrounded by success and admirers, but who died nearly alone, and then walking over to the grave of Ploni ben Avraham, I was struck by how fragile life and legacy can be.
Ron had a name and achievements, and was once celebrated, but at the end, there were barely 10 people at his funeral. Ploni ben Avraham had no name or notable achievements, and no family to remember him — yet, by chance, both were remembered on the same day. Their second death was averted.
At the end of Sefer Vayikra, in Parshat Bechukotai, the Torah presents consequences for the Jewish people’s fidelity or disregard for their responsibilities. It seems like a strict formula of reward and punishment: Follow God’s laws and you’ll receive blessings; abandon them, and hardship will follow.
And yet, within this passage, there is a quieter message. After the warnings and descriptions of suffering, the Torah offers a redemptive promise (Lev. 26:42): “I will remember My covenant,” says God.
That is the turning point. Even if everything falls apart — even if the people are scattered and shattered — God says: I will remember, I will always remember.
God teaches us that memory is the foundation of meaning. In Jewish thought, remembering is not merely recalling; it is restoring. When God says, “I will remember,” it is an active commitment: No matter how far we fall, we are never erased.
That is why we say Kaddish — not for the dead, but because memory sustains identity. It ensures a person’s life continues to echo in this world. We mark graves, tell stories, and cling to names — because the greatest tragedy is being forgotten.
That is why we tell stories about the dead, and that is why we refuse to let people disappear after they’re gone. Because the ultimate curse is not suffering, or even death. It is oblivion. And the ultimate redemption is not just survival. It is being remembered.
When we remember someone, we return them to the narrative. We restore their place in the story of our people. Ploni ben Avraham had no land, no family, and no possessions. He didn’t even leave a name. But we still remember him, and that is his redemption.
That day in the cemetery, I was reminded that in the end, what matters is not how loudly a person’s life is celebrated at its peak, but whether it is remembered after they are gone. And sometimes, in the most unexpected ways, we are invited to be part of that remembering.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.