It was twenty years ago when Bob Housman, a Boston-area resident, came to realize that many Jewish people in that city were in distress and no agency, private or public, could step in to provide them with significant help for their emergency needs. People were, indeed, falling through the cracks and serious short-term, immediate needs were not met.
As with so many of the "good people" we work with, Bob felt that he just had to "do something". He could not just ignore what was happening around him. Yad Chessed was Bob’s response to this void and since that time the small organization has raised and distributed more than $3,000,000 to provide food, clothing, help with housing, medical needs, interest-free loans…the list is long and often, when such needs are unmet, leads to even more dire circumstances.
Yad Chessed works in the simplest way possible. Other than a recently added part-time social worker, there is no staff, no advertising, and minimal bureaucracy. As referrals come to them they are investigated and if assistance can be offered the needs are addressed quickly and efficiently.
In a conversation we recently shared with Yad Chessed’s board chair, Marc Fogel, we learned that the organization is also laboring with increased emergency needs presented by the current economic situation. When Marc mentioned that in addition to the "usual" demands, they were now dealing with two single parent families, both functioning fairly well until job loss and illnesses took their toll and forced the parent to lose their home(s) and one now finds refuge in his car every night. How could it be, we thought? Both parents were working and yet could not reverse the misfortune that had fallen upon them. We doubt that this is an unusual scenario today.
We have offered Yad Chessed funds to underwrite specific needs for each of these families and hope that by working with them we might actually stop the downward spiral each is experiencing.
