As part of the Gezint project, members of Hackney’s orthodox Jewish community have been putting together food packages at the Yad Voezer day centre in Amhurst Park, Stamford Hill, ready for the patients and for families in need.
‘Gezint’ is a Yiddish word for ‘blessing’ that is spoken when someone falls ill or even just sneezes – similar to Gesundheit in German.
The project delivers pallets of essential supplies each week to the centre where volunteers including youngsters with special needs help label and package the items. This also gives the youngsters some work experience and a sense of purpose and inclusion.
Hackney’s mayor Caroline Woodley dropped into the centre with the council’s cabinet member for health Cllr Christopher Kennedy to see the ‘Gezint’ project in action.
She said: “It’s a double ‘mitzvah’ to see people with special needs involved in helping others. This is exactly what community involvement looks like — to know their work is going directly to patients in hospital.”
Cllr Kennedy praised the project for “combining compassion, inclusion and practical care” in a sustainable way.
More than 140,000 items have been labelled and distributed so far, including hygiene products and drinks. They are sorted, labelled and boxed up to send to 18 hospitals in London and Essex.
The young volunteers are also preparing Rosh Hashanah sets ready for anyone in hospital over the Jewish New Year holy days. These include bottles of water for the Yom Kippur fasting to make sure no one misses out on the spirit of religious festivals when they are ill.
The project costs around £5,000 a week which is expected to double as the religious New Year approaches, from September 22 to 24, donated by well-wishers and voluntary organisations.
It operates round the clock, seven days a week, headed by Stamford Hill’s Rabbi Yitzchok Kohn and magistrate Efrayim Goldstein, with the Gezint work experience programme overseen by Zeev Rub, whose vision got the project off the ground.
Well-wishers wanting to get involved can visit the website at https://gezint.org.uk/.
