Homeless on Shabbat

...On die contrary, she became upset and scolded me in a motherly fashion when I objected to the amount of the funds she felt she had rightfully coming to her...

...But the judgement as to when homeless persons are putting themselves in danger—through malnutrition, exposure to extremes of temperature or physical assault by other street people—is usually an arbitrary one...

...But most mental health professionals simply are unable or unwilling to devote this kind of time and caring to the mentally ill homeless...

...Her need to be respected by others and to lead a meaningful life is strong, propelled by the indignity of being homeless...

...Criminal law defines what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior toward others...

...These scoldings over the amount of the funds I could provide for her became a continual theme throughout our relationship...

...But other advocates for the homeless believe this to be counterproductive as well as cruel...

...While supporting shelters as a temporary solution that addresses the emergency situation, RAC's policy is to lobby Congress for long-term solutions—low-income and affordable housing—that will keep people off the streets permanently, Jewish organizations throughout the country agree and try to help in a variety of ways...

...1 say this was my "job" because Betty believes that any social worker of a Jewishly affiliated social service agency has a responsibility to help a Jewish woman on the streets observe a- holiday...

...A major pillar of Betty's life is her sentiment for all tilings associated with her home state, New Jersey...

...In her case it might take additional months, if not years, to get her to accept medication and the supportive living environment she needs...

...Once a diagnosis is written in stone on the forms of the mental health professionals, it is easier to prescribe medication than it is to take part in the pain and struggles of individuals who possess thoughts, feelings and personal histories...

...But there is a serious problem with this working philosophy...

...We realized that if there was a need for food collections during the high holidays, then there must be a need throughout the year," says Gary Dembs, president of Yad Ezra...

...Betty accepted the referral to the synagogue because she did not regard it as a shelter but as a Jewish environment where she would be safe...

...However, talk and respect—which includes working within the delusions of the mentally ill—are the first steps required if we are to usher people like Betty in off the streets...

...Like Detroit, the St...

...Betty slept in the synagogue for about a month...

...My job the first evening Betty and I met was to provide her with enough money to rent a motel room for the first two nights of Passover...

...The temporary homeless, who need help to cover a crisis period like a job loss, an unexpected illness or a shift in living arrangements, are the easiest to help, say social workers...

...But more importantly, Newark is minutes from Bayonne, her birthplace, and stirs childhood memories of better times...

...Robby's" childhood and the intimate moments they spent together are a continual theme of Betty's thoughts and conversation...

...These rooms are rented to people who may have been displaced from their low-rent housing or are living in substandard housing...

...I believe that street people should be forcibly removed when it is clear they are putting themselves or other people in danger...

...Having collected her items, she takes off for the train terminal in the World Trade Center and rides to a motel on the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel...

...During the years I have known Betty, I have never labeled her a homeless person to her face, nor have I heard her refer to herself as homeless...

...Partially satisfied with the amount of tzedakah she had received, she sought out other social workers and rabbis on the Lower East Side for additional sources of money to observe Passover...

...Betty left my office that evening with 320.00, approximately half of what she needed to rent a motel room for one night...

...Unfortunately, the visits to Robert have a negative effect on Betty, however, because they remind her of the gulf between her life as a young mother and her present situation...

...Even if there was a way to identify particularly Jewish homeless, our attitude would still be to work for the greater homeless population," says Ed Rehfeld, a legislative assistant at the Religious Action Center (RAO of Reform Judaism...

...She believed that she continued on page 49 Homeless on Shabbat continued from page 43 had a right to stay at a synagogue...

...She did not feel thai she was asking for a handout by requesting money to stay in a motel for Passover...

...Newark Airport is a well lit public space where Betty feels safe...

...The core of Betty's existence on the streets is her struggle to preserve her traditions and maintain an Orthodox Jewish life...

...Impoverished and homeless Jews live in every city in the United States, invisible amidst the general affluence of Jews in America...

...No one could help her adjust to the one shelter in which she was willing to remain, the synagogue shelter—because Betty did not regard it as a shelter but as a shul where she happened to lay down at night on a cot...

...The medication slows down the nervous system so that the anxiety produced from a mentally ill person's thought patterns is reduced and is no longer overwhelming...

...After a few weeks the volunteers could not tolerate Betty's behavior anymore and reluctandy had to ask her to leave...

...To disregard her thoughts and feelings as crazy and irrational and treat her merely as a mentally ill person would take away what is most precious to her...

...We try to prevent them from becoming homeless...

...The mentally ill living on the streets today need, before anything else, food, clothing and housing...

...I'm a good customer...

...I do not know how long Betty has been homeless, but I suspect that her mental decline and her street life can be traced to the period when Robert was institutionalized...

...She is nourished by her Jewishness and her loving memories of her son, Robert, whom she still manages to visit regularly...

...Give them safe, decent living quarters and appropriate outpatient facilities, is their battle cry, and you won't have to coerce people off the streets...

...Within every community a certain number of people live on the edge of economic disaster and a minimum setback like a medical disability, divorce, separation or a job layoff can send these people into the ranks of the wanderers...

...Robert is the product of Betty's brief marriage in the 1940s...

...For example, the organization I work for is currently renovating an SRO in Brooklyn for the elderly homeless...

...affordable SRO residences which disappeared from the urban economy in the 1980s and intensified the homeless problem...

...She is not homicidal nor does she let herself deteriorate to the point where she is severely ill or starving, so she cannot be hospitalized...

...For more than three years I have been her social worker, confidant and provider of goods and services...

...Many cities around the country are replacing the diminished stock of...

...What can be done for Betty, who has been homeless for a long time, continually refuses offers of shelter and puts herself in danger on the streets...

...The United Synagogue of America, the congregational arm of the Conservative movement, created Project Isaiah, a Kol Nidre food and clothing drive...

...In Los Angeles, the Gramercy Place Family Shelter, a 3&bed family facility sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Services, has created a program of job training, education and counseling to stem the cycle of poverty that leads to homelessness...

...Louis, the local federation created the Task Force on Economically Disadvantaged Jews, which found that, though few local residents were homeless, 13 percent or 2,800 Jewish households earned less than $10,000 a year...

...She did not understand that the synagogue was converted into a shelter each night and she became increasingly indignant at the presence of non-Jews in the shul...

...But many homeless people give false names or no names at all and they are rarely asked to acknowledge their religion...

...This medicine would diminish the fears that propel Betty into delusions and cause her to remain on the streets...

...more to visit Robert at the home...

...Louis Jewish community is developing a kosher food pantry...

...She makes her daily rounds of social workers and rabbis to collect food and money, telling her stories of martyrdom to anyone who will listen...

...she thinks about that period through a haze of anger...

...Betty made it quite clear in our first encounter that she was a decent Jewish lady, from good family stock, trying to live de-cenUy while being homeless...

...Eventually Betty's anger subsides...

...When homeless persons are neglecting themselves to the point where they are sick, then they should be forcibly placed in a hospital...

...That pre-Passover evening was the beginning of a tumultuous, often draining relationship widi Betty that continues to this day...

...In Betty's world accepting the judgment of a social worker or a psychiatrist that she is in need of medication and possible hospitalization threatens to destroy the pillars of dignity and meaning in her life...

...This help can often come as a cash outlay for a first month's rent or emergency benefits for a displaced homemaker...

...Above all, Betty counts the days of each week until she can retreat to her tiny motel room in New Jersey on Shabbat with candles and food...

...Once checked into her room, Betty showers for the first time in that week, lights Shabbat candles, enjoys her meal and sleeps for the better part of the next 20 hours...

...Amazingly, she manages to keep kosher and observe every Shabbat and Jewish holiday on the calendar while remaining homeless...

...She is a squat, 67-year-old lady whose beefy arms protrude out of a sleeveless cotton house dress...

...Every day is a struggle for Betty and those like her to maintain die dignity of their lives...

...The rehabilitation and subsidizing of SRO properties is probably the quickest and cheapest way to create permanent housing for the homeless...

...She doesn't see herself as a person who needs food, clothing, shelter and treatment for an emotional disability and she will not involve herself with anyone who treats her on those terms...

...the day has a special meaning for her as it does for other observant Jews— sometimes, I think, a little more so...

...She turns to Jewish social service agencies and rabbis to confirm her self-definition, as well as for food and money...

...The group distributes food to at least 2,000 Jews who are either homeless or on the brink of homelessness...

...Homelessness is a characterization that she cannot accept because it represents the immoral and depraved people of the streets, whom Betty believes she has resisted becoming...

...In some communities if a Jew comes to a local mission or hospital and identifies himself or herself as a Jew, the Jewish organizations are notified...

...She has her own bench on which she sleeps each evening and is well known to the police...

...Shabbat for her is a time-out period to rest and renew herself after a grueling week on the streets...

...She recalls his childhood in the minutest details, visits him regularly and sends him cards on his birthday and on every Jewish holiday...

...The current mental health system in New York diminishes the self-worth of homeless people and ultimately makes it difficult to help them...

...We have developed a ritual: Each week she receives a contribution toward a motel for the evening, two chicken dinners and Shabbat candles...

...Last year nearly 400 of the 850 member congregations participated...

...The Church and Temple Housing Corporation, a partnership between Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles and All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, owns and operates two single room occupancy hotels...

...She became verbally abusive towards the black and Hispanic people sleeping in the synagogue...

...Once every two or three months Betty collects the strength and money to take a btts from the Port Authority to central New Jersey to visit her son, Robert...

...You want me to take my business to Catholic Charities...

...Betty slept in the subways for approximately three months...

...If they miss a social security check or a pay check, we have a modest tenants' assistance program," says director Bill Lane Doulos...

...Among the homeless is a wandering population that travels from city to city with no desire to be anchored, according to Joan de Pontet of the Jewish Social Service Agency in Rockville...

...Mentally ill people cry out for help yet continually reject mental health professionals and their medication because accepting them would mean giving up the struggle to be full human beings in exchange for the role of patient...

...She understood very well that the traditional meaning of tzedakah is not simply charity, but an act of giving to support justice and equity in the community...

...These wandering homeless— including Jews—were created by the drying up of low-income housing, unemployment or underemployment and cutbacks in federally funded programs to aid the poor...

...There she recuperates after another week on the streets...

...I usually don't see Betty all week, but every Friday afternoon she comes to my office to prepare for Shabbat...

...She could not see it objectively, as a place where black and Hispanic people also needed refuge and so she could not get along with the others...

...The longer Betty remains homeless, the greater the distance she builds between herself and other homeless people...

...This "objective" diagnosis distances mental health professionals from the messy, internal world of homeless people...

...then she decides that her best recourse is to gather her resources once Is Homelessness a Jewish Problem...

...Betty and thousands like her will not accept help, including medication, from anyone who approaches them on the premise that they are mentally ill...

...After such a scolding, Betty would often tease me, "Mr...

...Concerned Jews in Detroit established Yad Ezra, a kosher food pantry...

...This is not to say that Betty is not in need of psychiatric care...

...But when people like Betty refuse offers of medication, they are regarded as uncooperative patients who are not ready to be helped and consequently must remain on the streets...

...The shelter receives federal funds and private donations of food, clothing and furniture from local synagogues...

...She waits impatiently with her hands on her hips as the minutes tick toward sundown...

...Some social workers agree with author Peter Fine that some mentally ill people may need to be coerced into institutions to prevent them from harming themselves through hunger or exposure...

...In our conversations she would often refer to herself as "a Jersey girl at heart...

...Her parents were deeply religious people who passed on their observance and devotion to Judaism to Betty...

...After a workshop on the homeless at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C., a group of volunteers from the synagogue rented and furnished the Anne Frank House, where five formerly homeless women live who can remain at the house indefinitely...

...Only 20-25 percent of the homeless are mentally disabled like Betty (see 'Homeless on Shabbat," p. 40), according to the National Coalition for the Homeless...

...One day, on a whim, I offered Betty the chance to sleep in a synagogue shelter on the Upper West Side of Manhattan...

...PETER FINE The first time I met Betty was in a cramped office on the Lower East Side on the evening before Passover in 1987...

...She was the daughter of Eastern European immigrants who setded in Bayonne, New Jersey...

...Approximately 367,000 patients at psychiatric institutions throughout the country were released from institutions as a result of the 1975 O'Connor v, Donaldson Supreme Court decision, which stated, "A state cannot constitutionally confine..,a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom...

...A combination of two Yiddish words, meshugge (crazy) and goyim (non-Jews), mishegoyim translates as "crazy non-Jews," but to Betty it is a catch-all term for the dangerous and licentious people, Jews and non-Jews alike, with whom she is forced to interact on the streets...

...It seems to me that saving a person's life is a higher good than preserving the civil liberty that allows a person the right to die on the streets through self-neglect...

...Unless her identity as the middle-class Jewish mother is validated, Betty refuses all offers of help and chooses to remain on the streets, where the comfort of her delusional system is reinforced...

...Betty sees herself as a decent but victimized Jewish mother from New Jersey who somehow ended up amid a sea of what she calls mishegoyim...

...She complains to any social worker or rabbi who cares to listen to her diatribes that the people at the home keep her Robby apart from her...

...Every hotel room was too shabby for her and, of course, shelters contained too many homeless people...

...The routine of Betty's life was upset in the winter of 1988, when the police at Newark Airport were ordered to clear the facility of homeless people...

...She returned to my office after her first night at the synagogue with a smile on her face, criticizing me for not sending her to such a nice place sooner...

...Betty cannot be forcibly removed from the streets and placed in a hospital...

...Betty talks about Robert as the boy she raised in Bayonne, yet the home has been his address for more than 25 years...

...Although she wanders the streets of New York all day in search of kosher food and tzedakah, she returns to Newark Airport each evening to sleep...

...Yad Ezra is funded by private donations and 10-12 synagogues in the Detroit area who collect kosher food...

...The judgment as to when a homeless person is a danger to someone else is usually clear...

...The working philosophy of mental health practitioners under the current system is to induce someone like Betty to take psychotropic medication in order to diminish her delusional thinking...

...At this point she has not received medication and has refused even to be diagnosed by social workers...

...Today Betty lives as she did when I first met her more than three years ago...

...She was fattened up on kosher food and was given plenty of warm clothing by the volunteers who enjoyed taking care of a Jewish woman...

...This, combined with the patience and attention she received from the shelter volunteers, resulted in some of Betty's best weeks in years...

...Buying and mailing cards 11 times a year is no easy feat when you have no address, very little money and walk the streets in a house dress and cracked shoes...

...Betty has a psychic investment in the life she has built on the streets and she will put up with hunger and physical suffering in order to preserve it...

...she believed that they threatened her and the sanctity of the synagogue...

...The depth and intensity of Betty's need to see herself as a middle-class Jewish housewife gone astray makes her an endearing person, yet difficult to help...

...Offering a measure of respect to the homeless is the first step in putting roofs over their heads...

...only after basic physical needs are met can the problems of mental illness be addressed, social workers say...

...Jewish social service and welfare agencies acknowledge that they probably see only a small percentage of the Jewish homeless because the agencies cannot or do not find the Jews living on the streets...

...Instead of having a familiar place where she could return every evening, Betty was forced to retreat to the New York City subway system for shelter...

...But to help Betty we need to take time to listen to her stories and gain her trust...

...Betty has never explained why Robert was taken from her...

...Betty still refuses to go to shelters or low-priced single room occupancy (SRO) hotels because she sets herself apart, believing she is a pristine middle-class Jewish lady...

...In St...

...She had her pockets slashed in her sleep and was continuously harassed by gangs of teenagers out for a night of kicks...

...But over the course of time Betty developed problems at the shelter...

...Surprisingly, she jumped at the offer, although in the two years I worked with her she had not accepted any offer of shelter...

...Many in this group travel north to south as the seasons change...

...Street people are viewed first and foremost through the prism of a psychiatric diagnosis...

...She was—and is—a mentally ill woman who lives on the streets of New York City...

...Betty raised him in Bayonne until the early 1960s, when he was involuntarily taken from her and placed in a home for retarded adults in central New Jersey...

...But until we earn the trust of the homeless mentally ill these rooms will go empty...

...These are the most hopeful cases and when they show up at the doors of the nation's social service agencies, social workers often need only to steer these clients to the appropriate service organizations...

...As Betty continued to sleep on the subway, she retreated further and further into her private world filled with anger and resentment...

...In her own way Betty has managed to create a meaningful if eccentric life for herself as she tours the city each day in pursuit of the food, clothing and shelter she needs to stay alive...

...Betty in turn enjoyed the volunteers to whom she referred as "nice Jewish kids...

...The house is supported by the synagogue and private contributions...

...For months after her return to New York, she is resentful and angry about the loss of her son and his involuntary living situation...

...Yet it is this messy, internal world that makes street people human...

...The question of whether homeless mentally ill people should be coerced off the streets is one of the most troubling ethical and legal issues that urban dwellers face today...

...Her physical and mental health began to decline as her self-image as a victimized martyr increased...

...These mentally ill patients, however, were virtually abandoned to the streets without any support system at the same time that low income housing was dwindling...

...Fine, come on, I know you have the money...