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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.
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The post How the CEO of New York’s largest food bank is inspired by Jewish values appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us
I spent part of Shabbat reading about the stunning performance of the Israeli stock market — which is up dramatically since Oct. 7, outpacing the gains of the S&P by a significant margin.
The 35 Israeli stocks with the largest market capitalizations are up a whopping 90 percent since Oct. 7. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was up 60 percent during that same time period.
I wondered why I had not read more about this, and was struck by what Eugene Kandel, the chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, told Investors Business Daily.
“Israel was, and still is, under a PR attack from ideological actors, who finance huge campaigns against us,” Kandel said. “But even during these two years, the collaboration with so many organizations, companies, governments and investors did not stop despite threats and protests.”
Why aren’t we hearing about those collaborations?
Then the news of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting broke. Instantly, all the peace of Shabbat dissipated, along with all the thoughts of collaborations — and who is covering what and why, and in which language.
Instead, I thought again of how terrorists worldwide seem to own a well-thumbed Jewish calendar. The date and timing of this massacre — on yet another Jewish holiday — was no accident, and Jews around the world know this.
We are living through a sustained campaign to make Jews afraid to be Jews. Attacks on Jewish holidays are an effort to erase Jewish joy, Jewish observance, and in the case of Hanukkah, Jewish history.
And perhaps we are also under a sustained campaign to minimize Jewish achievement.
Some politicians take notice
Some politicians are making efforts to look at the often-exhausting layers of what is happening and find ways to name them.
I appreciate the effort to find language for all of this. Representative Brian Mast, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a Florida Republican, commented that he discerns a “very specific network that is in place that works together to sow antisemitism that is now, in many cases, working on the left and right across the media, to go out there and put this wedge in this relationship.”
He was referring to the U.S.-Israel connection.
Speaking at a Hudson Institute conference on antisemitism, he called this network a “very, very serious global threat across multinational organizations, media across the globe and adversaries and terrorist organizations.”
When he said “media,” I thought of the minimal coverage of the Israeli stock exchange and the strength of Israeli stocks.
The relief of acknowledgment
I felt a strange sigh of relief as I read Mast’s comments. It was the relief of actual acknowledgment. It was the relief of hearing someone trying to name things, even though I’m not sure if “network” is the best possible word.
Because something must be said.
What I noticed the day after the Bondi Beach massacre was the deep silence. The silence came from so many people that maybe “network” was the right word for it.
I went to a non-denominational holiday party this week, and no one mentioned what had happened in Australia. I wondered what the conversation would have been like if the shooting had happened at a Christmas tree lighting, or a drag story hour that turned into carnage. What would the conversation have been if any other group, but the Jewish community, had been targeted?
It’s unlikely that there would be total silence. Total non-acknowledgment. No words in a room of people who work with words.
The threat we face is not just the threat Representative Mast detailed, or the PR threat Kandel described. It’s also the silence, a silence so loud that it is visible as candlelight in the darkness.
How to respond to silence
I don’t know how to answer silence, but maybe some wiser people out there do.
Late last night, I saw a reel of a very long line of cars with menorahs on their roofs driving along the New York State Thruway, not far from the Palisades Mall, just a short drive from where I grew up.
The line of cars went on and on. The silent message was Do not be afraid. And I saw it as a response to Bondi Beach.
I hope there are more Hanukkah menorahs lit tonight, not less. And I also hope that we can consider bringing layers of truth into the light. Sometimes, layers represent both a dose of reality and an antidote against despair.
Yes, a father and son attacked the Jewish community on a holiday. But it is deeply important and also true that an unarmed Muslim father and fruit seller named Ahmed al Ahmed jumped on one of the gunmen and undoubtedly saved many lives.
The video of that heroic act should be watched by all.
It is a reminder that perhaps there is another “network” out there, a network of those who object to hatred. And it is a reminder that generalizations can only take us so far; as my mentor James Alan McPherson taught me, a story is about an individual at an individual moment in time.
Ahmed al Ahmed showed us all the power of an individual. And the power of a single layer in any truth, and in any story.
As for all those under-discussed Israeli companies holding on in wartime, through boycotts, pushing up the index by 90 percent since the worst day in Israeli history, continuing to collaborate with partners around the globe despite a PR onslaught to isolate them — even in this darkness, and in this silence, we see you.
The post The Israel news we don’t hear – and the forces that silence us appeared first on The Forward.
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Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians
(New York Jewish Week) — Zohran Mamdani visited the gravesite of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s late leader on Monday, one day after the shooting that killed 15 people at an Australian Hanukkah event hosted by Chabad.
Yaacov Behrman, a Crown Heights activist who works as a PR liaison for Chabad, said Mamdani reached out about visiting the gravesite, known as the Ohel.
“Following the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia, the mayor-elect asked to visit the Ohel to pay his respects and came last night,” said Behrman, who was present during Mamdani’s visit.
The New York City mayor-elect did not publicly share anything about his visit to the Ohel on Monday, but a photo obtained and posted by Forward journalist Jacob Kornbluh showed Mamdani wearing a black velvet kippah standing at the gravesite.
Mamdani had shared a lengthy statement on Sunday morning calling the Bondi Beach attack a “vile act of antisemitic terror.”
“I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers,” Mamdani wrote.
Mamdani specifically mentioned Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the attack, and his “deep ties to Crown Heights,” the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
“What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too,” Mamdani wrote.
Monday marked Mamdani’s first known visit to the Ohel, which is in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, and is a site with particular significance for adherents and admirers of the Chabad movement. It is the resting place of the movement’s two most recent leaders: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson.
In recent years, it has become an oft-visited site by Jewish and non-Jewish politicians and public figures.
The Ohel draws 1 million visitors per year, according to Chabad’s website, who are “religious and not, laypeople and leaders, Jews and non-Jews, each one coming to pray, seek inspiration and find solace.”
Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, has visited the Ohel at least seven times, and has said that he finds himself there during “the most difficult days” of his life. President Donald Trump visited the Ohel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Other visitors to the site in the last five years include Ivanka Trump; New York Gov. Kathy Hochul; then-Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin, who is Jewish and now heads Trump’s EPA; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during his presidential candidacy; Rep. Mike Lawler; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Argentinian president Javier Millei and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both visited from abroad.
“There’s nothing opulent about it,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson, told the Free Press during a tour of the Ohel in early 2025.
Visitors have found deep meaning in their time in the open-roofed mausoleum. Booker, who prays at the Ohel on the eve of his elections, told the Free Press that he finds “something universally spiritual about that sacred space” even though he is not Jewish.
“I find my visits are both grounding and expanding,” Booker said.
Mamdani’s visit to the Ohel comes as Chabad officials and Jewish leaders are doubling down on their efforts to celebrate Hanukkah with public menorah lightings around New York City. Those events have surged in attendance in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack.
The visit is Mamdani’s most recent appearance in a primarily Orthodox Jewish space as he seeks to overcome skepticism among many Jewish voters who were turned off by Mamdani’s opposition to Israel. Voters in Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch community is headquartered, turned out heavily for Andrew Cuomo in November’s general election.
The mayor-elect attended a celebration by the Satmar Hasidic sect last week, which is anti-Zionist for religious reasons. He was endorsed by a Satmar rabbi, Moishe Indig, and was welcomed to a sukkah by Indig in the fall.
During the Democratic primary, he made an appearance at a breakfast organized by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, where there was a large Orthodox Jewish population.
The photo of Mamdani at the Ohel circulated in Jewish WhatsApp groups, and has been shared by some local Chabad chapters’ social media pages.
“His decision to go was surprising,” Chabad Virginia Beach wrote in an Instagram post. “But we all know that when light and darkness meet, light has the power to transform. And this place is a place of light.”
The post Zohran Mamdani visits the Rebbe’s Ohel, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Opposes Grossi’s UN Secretary-General Candidacy, Accuses Him of Failing to Uphold International Law
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi holds a press conference on the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) quarterly Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl
Iran has publicly opposed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi’s potential appointment as UN Secretary-General next year, accusing him of failing to uphold international law by not condemning US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June.
During a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, sharply criticized Grossi, calling him unfit” to serve as UN Secretary-General next year, Iranian media reported.
“A candidate who has deliberately failed to uphold the UN Charter — or to condemn unlawful military attacks against safeguarded, peaceful nuclear facilities … undermines confidence in his ability to serve as a faithful guardian of the charter and to discharge his duties independently, impartially, and without political bias or fear of powerful states,” the Iranian diplomat said.
With UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ term ending in December next year, member states have already begun nominating candidates to take over the role ahead of the expected 2026 election.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel’s relationship with Guterres has spiraled downward, reaching a low point last year when then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz labeled the UN “antisemitic and anti-Israeli” and declared Guterres persona non grata after the top UN official failed to condemn Tehran for its ballistic missile attack against the Jewish state.
Last week, Argentina officially nominated Grossi to succeed Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General.
To be elected, a nominee must first secure the support of at least nine members of the UN Security Council and avoid a veto from any of its five permanent members — the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.
Afterward, the UN General Assembly votes, with a simple majority needed to confirm the organization’s next leader.
As head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog since 2019, Grossi has consistently urged Iran to provide transparency on its nuclear program and cooperate with the agency, efforts the Islamist regime has repeatedly rejected and obstructed.
Despite Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapons development, Western powers have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
With prospects for renewed negotiations or nuclear cooperation dwindling, Iran has been intensifying efforts to rebuild its air and defense capabilities decimated during the 12-day war with Israel.
On Monday, Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), declared that the IAEA has no authority to inspect sites targeted during the June war, following Grossi’s renewed calls for Tehran to allow inspections of its nuclear sites and expand cooperation with the agency.
Iran has also announced plans to expand its nuclear cooperation with Russia and advance the construction of new nuclear power plants, as both countries continue to deepen their bilateral relations.
According to AEOI spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi, one nuclear power plant is currently operational, while other two are under construction, with new contracts signed during a recent high-level meeting in Moscow.
Kamalvandi also said Iran plans to build four nuclear power plants in the country’s southern region as part of its long-term partnership with Russia.
During a joint press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated Iran’s commitment to defending the country’s “legal nuclear rights” under the now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal, noting that Tehran’s nuclear policies have remained within the international legal framework.
Iran’s growing ties with Russia, particularly in nuclear cooperation, have deepened in recent years as both countries face mounting Western sanctions and seek to expand their influence in opposition to Western powers.
Russia has not only helped Iran build its nuclear program but also consistently defended the country’s “nuclear rights” on the global stage, while opposing the imposition of renewed economic sanctions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described the reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran as a “disgrace to diplomacy.”
In an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), Lavrov accused European powers of attempting to blame Tehran for the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, despite what he described as Iran’s compliance with the agreement.
Prior to the 12-day war, the IAEA flagged a series of Iranian violations of the deal.