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The de Blasio administration on Monday agreed to serve up kosher meals at 10 select Brooklyn and Queens locations, expanding its new program providing free meals to all New Yorkers during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Department of Education’s decision to offer the kosher food in two of the city’s five boroughs came hours after the City Council’s Jewish Caucus fired off a scathing letter, saying that by “offering free meals to everyone besides kosher-keeping New Yorkers, the city is sending a strong and deeply offensive message about its priorities.”
“Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers keep kosher, and they are being left behind in the most diverse city in the world,” added the letter, signed by the caucus’ chairman Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn) and its 12 other members.
The grab-and-go food program has been available to all New Yorkers since April 3, after it was expanded from students and family members. It provides breakfast, lunch and dinner for pickup daily at 435 public schools throughout the city.
More than 4.5 million meals have already been served, including vegetarian food and halal meals for Muslims.
Six of the 10 locations providing kosher meals are in Brooklyn, including two in Williamsburg at PS 132 on Manhattan Avenue and PS 257 on Cook Street, which will begin serving Tuesday. The rest of the sites will begin providing kosher cooking on Thursday.
They include two sites in Crown Heights, one each in Borough Park and Midwood, and two each in Queens’ Far Rockaway and Flushing/Kew Gardens neighborhoods. All are located in parts of the Big Apple with large pockets of Jewish New Yorkers.
However, Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island — also home to many Jews — were shut out of the expansion.
“I believe this is a good first step, but we need to ensure every borough’s food needs are addressed,” said Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), a member of the Jewish caucus who also chairs the education committee.
Neither the Mayor’s Office nor DOE addressed why only Brooklyn and Queens are getting the free kosher meals, instead claiming in a press release that they are doing everything they can do make sure “no New Yorker goes hungry during this crisis.”
This is not the first time religious food options became a hot potato topic in city government.
In 2018, Deutsch secured a $1 million pot of legislative taxpayer funds to provide a pilot program offering free kosher and halal lunches at 10 city schools.
But The Post last May reported the program was plagued by delays, which Deutsch then attributed to the DOE trying to first figure out “how best to avoid bullying” of Muslim and Jewish students over their food choices.
It only moved forward this academic year after Treyger ripped the DOE for the delays at a public hearing.



