Food Comes With Side of Kibitz

The line starts forming early at North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry, where mothers and children, renters and homeless, and the young and old await their turn to receive shopping bags filled with canned corn, crackers, tuna, cereal and bread.

On a recent Friday morning, loud laughter erupted among a group of food recipients in line at the organization’s First Christian Church of North Hollywood distribution center, where Jerry Rabinowitz worked the crowd as he handed out paperwork and clipboards.

“No, you may not borrow a pencil,” the 73-year-old volunteer quipped to an obviously pregnant Food Pantry regular who had announced earlier that her baby was due the next day. “And you can’t sit down either.”

“Everyone loves Jerry because he’s not afraid to kibitz,” said fellow Food Pantry volunteer Charlene Lash. “Even though it’s stressful and busy here, we laugh a lot together. He’s sincere and he’s helpful.”

And strong. Lifting 22-pound bags of groceries as though they were filled with cotton candy instead of canned goods, the longtime community activist stopped intermittently to stuff hamburger buns and loaves of breads into shopping bags that are distributed to the needy.

With the help of Rabinowitz and other volunteers, the North Hollywood Food Pantry feeds about 5,000 people a month.

“I can never forget that my father, who owned a small candy store in Brooklyn, often brought someone to the back of the store, where we lived,” Rabinowitz said. “That stranger would always be fed before my father. That’s what I was taught and it stuck.”

It must have, because the retired businessman has spent the last 15 years dividing his time between distributing food to the hungry, working at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital medical library and lending a hand at the Braille Institute, every week without fail.

The Encino resident said his altruism and positive attitude about life stems from his experiences fighting with the 95th Infantry Division in France during World War II.

“I was one of only three men in my company of 220 soldiers to return from the war unhurt,” he said. “Coming out alive taught me to be a survivor and to make the most out of life.”

After completing a UCLA degree in marketing and accounting in 1949, the entrepreneur began working for Marvin Fischer, who later became his partner in a wholesale grocery business. The pair sold their company 25 years later.

In 1954, on a weekend respite at a local mineral-spring resort, Rabinowitz met Joyce Rubin, “the single best thing that ever happened to me.” The couple married shortly thereafter, and have rarely spent time apart since.

The pair volunteer together at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles where Joyce Rabinowitz--an expert in Braille--serves as a specialist in mathematics, and Jerry Rabinowitz helps collate and stitch periodicals that are distributed internationally.

“The greatest pleasure in my life comes from being appreciative of all the wonderful things I’ve enjoyed in my life, especially my two kids and my grandkids,” Rabinowitz said. “I express my thanks by trying to help others.”

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