Earlier this month, Josh Katz noticed a dip in sales at his kosher restaurant, Ben Yehuda Pizza in Silver Spring, Maryland.<\/p>\n
He knew the culprit, and it wasn\u2019t antisemitism or an anti-Israel boycott. The federal government\u2019s shutdown had left hundreds of thousands of federal employees across the country furloughed, and his regular customers were tightening their belts.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are being a little bit more vocal about their financial insecurities at the moment,\u201d said Katz. \u201cThey\u2019re just not sure when they\u2019re going to be getting a paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Silver Spring alone, the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration draws over 10,000 federal employees. In the greater Washington, D.C. area, roughly 280,000 workers are employed by the federal government. With all of those workers going multiple weeks without paychecks, Katz said he\u2019d heard from members of his community who were feeling the financial strain.<\/p>\n
So last week, he posted an offer on Facebook: \u201cOrder now, and pay us down the road when the paychecks come in.\u201d Soon, the first requests started rolling in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not giving anything away for free here, but I realized by just allowing people to defer payments, that could really help with their sense of normalcy,\u201d Katz said.<\/p>\n
The post did not take a stance on the shutdown, which has hinged on a stalemate between Democratic and Republican senators over competing spending bills and does not appear to be near resolution. \u201cWe try to avoid politics at Ben Yehuda,\u201d it said. \u201cWe support the Pizza Party, but that\u2019s about as far as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Yehuda Pizza is located in Kemp Mill, a neighborhood of Silver Spring with a sizable Orthodox Jewish population and multiple synagogues and Jewish community centers. Katz said that while the deal was open to all federal workers, most of his regular customers are Jewish.<\/p>\n
He said the timing of the shutdown, which began on Oct. 1 and coincided with the beginning of Yom Kippur, had further compounded the strain on local Jewish families he serves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it started during the holidays, all of a sudden we have massive food bills, because we have to pay for all these festive meals,\u201d said Katz. \u201cWhen you\u2019re not sure when the next check is going to come, you tighten the belt, or maybe you\u2019re not as festive as you\u2019d ideally like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jewish leaders and groups across the country have mobilized to support unpaid federal government workers affected by the shutdown, some of whom are working essential roles without being paid.<\/p>\n
In San Diego, the local branch of the Jewish Family Service began distributing bags of groceries to affected federal workers just days into the shutdown. It has has since provided over 5,700 meals to about 1,000 families.<\/p>\n
And multiple free loan societies have created special programs for federal workers, echoing an initiative offered by the Hebrew Free Loan Association of Greater Washington during the 2018 shutdown that lasted 35 days, setting a record that could soon be eclipsed. The Hebrew Free Loan Society of New York, for example, is providing interest-free loans of up to $7,500 for federal employees affected by the current shutdown.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Katz said two families had already signed up for Ben Yehuda\u2019s payment deferment deal. But far more community members, he said, had reached out asking how they could contribute a meal to a federal employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really what inspires me, is seeing people who are willing to do that,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s really been the most beautiful thing that comes out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, Josh Katz noticed a dip in sales at his kosher restaurant, Ben Yehuda Pizza in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[9292,97,8640,269,97937,4322,56915],"class_list":{"0":"post-268643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-government-shutdown","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-maryland","11":"tag-nutrition","12":"tag-pizza","13":"tag-restaurants","14":"tag-shutdown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}