From one kitchen to every Jewish bedside
A Shopping Bag on the Subway
A mother needed money for her son’s hospitalization. A Rebbetzin carried food on the subway. An entire network grew from the same answer.
The hospital could make a person anonymous: a patient number, a distant ward, a family far from kosher food and familiar help. In Rabbi Yoel and Rebbetzin Alte Feiga’s home, illness became personal. A Jewish patient was someone whose bedside the community had to reach.
The mother who did not look Satmar
One remembered visitor was a Latin American Jewish woman whose dress and background were far from the Satmar world. Her son needed hospitalization, and she did not have the money. She left Rabbi Yoel with the full amount she needed.
No test of affiliation came before the child’s illness. The need entered the room first, and the answer followed it.
The Rebbetzin’s route
In the early 1950s, Rebbetzin Alte Feiga and other women began preparing food for Jewish hospital patients. The work started at kitchen scale. The Rebbetzin traveled by subway carrying shopping bags of homemade kosher food to Mount Sinai Hospital.
The scene contained the institution in miniature: cooking, carrying, traveling, entering a ward, and finding the individual person for whom the work had been done.
A kitchen becomes a network
Satmar Bikur Cholim grew from those bags into kitchens, hospital rooms stocked with kosher food, transportation, nearby lodging, medical guidance, and volunteers who sit with patients and families. From the beginning, its own account says, assistance was offered to anyone who called.
The institution carried forward the household teaching: the name above the patient’s synagogue was not the question. A Jew was in the hospital. Someone had to arrive.
Sources & further readingOpen the reading list +
Sources
Continue with the books and memories
The Satmar Rov on his 32nd yahrtzeit
Includes the account of the Latin American mother who received the full cost of her son’s hospitalization.
Open source ↗Mount Sinai honors Rebbetzin Alte Feiga Teitelbaum
Mount Sinai’s remembrance of the Rebbetzin traveling by subway with homemade meals for patients.
Open source ↗The beginnings of Satmar Bikur Cholim
The organization’s story of a home kitchen becoming a network serving Jewish hospital patients and families who call for help.
Open source ↗