Valleywide : B’ nai B’ rith’s Passover Delivery Feeds Spirit

For two decades, volunteers have worked with the Encino B’nai B’rith to deliver boxes of food to Jews who can’t afford the basics of Passover meals.

“This is our biggest one yet,” said David Kaye, community service chairman for the Encino lodge. “We never put out 650 boxes before.”

Each familythat is helped gets two boxes filled with matzo, a frozen chicken, holiday wine, canned foods, eggs, potatoes and other supplies. The boxes are delivered throughout the Valley and the rest of Los Angeles by more than 100 volunteers from eight B’nai B’rith lodges.

But this year, the program started by Kaye and fellow lodge member Marvin Flagg, who is in charge of distribution, has grabbed interstate attention.

“They have done a tremendous job over the years,” said Florence Davis, community and volunteer services chair for B’nai B’rith District 4, which covers eight Western states plus Alaska, Hawaii and Britih Columbia. “It definitely inspired us to see how much can be done.”

This year the district sent fliers out to its lodges to explain and encourage similar programs. Groups in San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Tuscon, Phoenix, Seattle and Vancouver took up the call, said Burt Friedman, associate director for the district.

“It makes me feel good,” said Chick Weitzman, program coordinator with Rishon B’nai B’rith in Tarzana, a longtime partner in the distribution program. A retired sandwich maker and deliveryman, Weitzman is a 13- year veteran of the program. This year he directed 50 car- loads of volunteers as the boxes were picked up at Gelson’s market on Reseda Boulevard.

Other lodges helping in the local distribution effort were Van Nuys B’nai B’rith as well as the Haverim B’nai B’rith and Simcha B’nai B’rith, both of Thousand Oaks. Reunion B’nai B’rith, a lodge for Israelis and Sephardic Jews, also helped as did two lodges for young families.

Among the volunteers were Richard Singer, a Woodland Hills lawyer who had helped with deliveries since the program was founded. His teenage son and daughter-who were 5 and 7 when they first helped out-shared memories of how recipients would graciously invite them inside for something to eat, even though they were poor.

Boris Levitas, 85, and his son, Alex, of Los Angeles, emigrated from the Soviet Union separately in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They picked up three deliveries for new Russian immigrants on the Westside and the Fairfax district. They do this to repay the kindness they received when they arrived.

Often the new immigrants invite them in, but not to talk about Russia. “They like to talk about life in America,” Alex said.