Food Given Despite Knee Surgery

Communicated

Tuesday morning. A group of women gathers outside a two-story brick home on Montgomery Street in Crown Heights, where vans wait with motors running.

The lady of the house emerges. Devorah Scheiner hobbles down the steps. Once again, the pain in her leg has flared up, but she must not stop. Dozens of people depend on her.

All the women line up and quietly enter the vans. Destination: Boro Park. At the entrance to the grocery store, the women are treated to hot drinks and Danishes. Then each takes shopping cart and rolls through the aisles. Cottage cheese, butter, sour cream – and, of course, meat, fruits, and vegetables – everything needed to prepare cheesecake, blintzes, and everything else for the upcoming holiday is placed inside the carts.

At home, day by wearying day, each lady often feels like a pauper or peasant. But here, in this store, she is treated like a queen. Each is accommodated by an attentive staff with every desired item; at the check-out counters each lady receives a discount.

Later that night, the calls come in, tying up Devorah’s line for hours.

“They were so grateful,” she explains. “They knew they could have a decent yomtov.”

Such is a typical day for Devorah Scheiner.

During the holiday season elsewhere, luckier women are rushing around to buy new clothes, plan meals, and swap recipes. But not here. These women come home to face empty cupboards and closets. Single mothers, wives with sick children or spouses – all either too poor or too overwhelmed to celebrate the holiday properly, let alone provide for themselves or their families.

But they have a loyal friend.

For years, Devorah Scheiner has been there for them. Come every major spot on the Jewish calendar, she is there to arrange truckloads of fruits and vegetables, special deals, and above all, her own time, where she will often accompany these women individually or together. Not even medical issues have kept her from her sacred work.

For Passover, she managed to arrange her usual discount shopping trips to Boro Park and provide food and staples for nearly two dozen families.

But this year, the holiday of Shavuot will be particularly rough. A recent knee surgery landed Mrs. Scheiner in the hospital.

But even as she painfully recuperates at home, she still can’t take her mind off the tasks at hand – the trucks that are due to arrive and park outside her home; the crates of food she and her family members personally hand out to the stream of visitors; the drinks and Danishes on hand for those who wait in line.

As the numbers of people in need of help grow; so too do the expenses. But Devorah Scheiner never turns anyone away. Once again, she must turn to the community for help.

So please, won’t you donate to the Mrs. Scheiner Yom Tov Fund at chcentral.org/donate (all proceeds go directly to these individuals). Or send a check to Mrs. Scheiner Yom Tov Fund, 519 Montgomery Street, Brooklyn, NY 11225.

In the merit of your donations may we all receive the Torah besimcha ubepenimius and see a world at last free of poverty or suffering.