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June 11, 2004/Sivan 22 5764, Vol. 56, No. 38
Seniors face limited meal options
DEBRA MORTON GELBART
Special to Jewish News
The 20,000 Jews age 65 and over living in Greater Phoenix - 24 percent of all Valley Jews - have only three options in the entire Valley for meals that are institutionally prepared and certified kosher.
Fewer than 500 Jewish seniors actually receive at least one institutionally prepared kosher meal every day.
About 320 residents of Kivel Campus of Care at 36th Street and Thomas in Phoenix get kosher meals. Up to 10 residents can receive kosher meals at Levy's Jewels of the Valley, a new assisted living home in Scottsdale.
Approximately 85 seniors who live in central Phoenix and either qualify financially or are willing to pay out-of-pocket have a hot kosher meal delivered to them every day by the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center Senior Center in Phoenix.
A hot kosher lunch also is available five days a week at the senior center, located at 1805 W. Montebello. There, a donation of $3 per meal is suggested from the 70 or so seniors who come there for lunch each day.
"We frequently get calls from people outside our boundaries - especially those in Scottsdale - asking if they can receive a hot meal," said Sandy Reichsfeld, director of the senior center. "We suggest that they pick up a week's worth of frozen meals from us here at the center. The cost is $8 per meal on a private-pay basis."
The senior center will be moving within three to six months to make room for construction of the light rail facility at the nearby Spectrum Mall. Search for a new location is underway, said Mark Shore, president and CEO of the VOSJCC. As of press time, the City of Phoenix has not yet notified the senior center of the exact date, but the center may have to move as soon as 90 days from the notification date, he said. No decision has been made about where the JCC will relocate the senior center.
Among the nearly 450 Kivel residents, about 20 percent have indicated that the kosher meal service is one reason they live there, according to Ira Shulman, Kivel's CEO and executive director.
"The majority of the residents in our independent-living apartments receive one prepared kosher meal a day, six days a week," he said. In the skilled nursing facility, all 180 residents get three kosher meals a day, seven days a week.
Currently the only facility in the northeast Valley serving seniors who want strictly kosher meals is Levy's Jewels of the Valley, an assisted-living home at 64th Street and Cactus that opened in May and can accommodate up to 10 residents.
"We have two kitchens here," said Barry Levy, owner of the 5,000-square-foot facility. "One is kosher-style and one is strictly kosher. One reason I decided to offer strictly kosher meals is that everywhere we went before we opened, people would ask, 'Are you doing kosher meals?'"
Both Kivel and the senior center are certified by the Greater Phoenix Vaad Hakashruth, the Valley's kosher-supervising agency.
Some retirement com-munities in the Phoenix area offer certified-kosher meals upon request or for special occasions, but none serve kosher meals every day on a regular basis.
Grand Court Phoenix, with both independent and assisted living, offers kosher meals for some Jewish holidays.
At Fletcher Heights Assisted Living in Peoria, Jewish residents can be provided with prepared kosher meals. "If we had residents here who wanted certified-kosher meals, I would provide them," said owner Maria Balint. "But right now we don't have any Jewish residents."
There's "a growing population of seniors in the north and northeast Valley," Shore said. "Within three to five years, we will need another option for kosher meal service for older residents in these parts of the Valley."
Shore also said that the JCC is trying to determine whether there is a greater need for home-delivered meals or for "congregant" meals, served in a single location where diners gather.
"Younger seniors generally are not attracted to con-gregant meal programs," Shore said. For home de-livery, he said, the boun-daries of the senior center are determined by Maricopa County based on how far away deliveries can be made while still keeping prepared hot meals at the proper temperature.
"We're currently looking into the concept of a van that's equipped with an oven that will allow us to cook food anywhere and keep it at a proper temperature," Shore said. That would allow his staff to deliver many more kosher meals to seniors across the Valley without having to build a new facility.
"But long-term," he said, "we need to look at both expanded home-delivery options and an additional senior center location."
In Greater Phoenix, approx-imately 20,000 Jews are between the ages of 50 and 64. As they age, the need for kosher meal service for seniors could increase significantly.
"We have a strong, vibrant Jewish community that's committed to meeting the needs of our people," Shore said. "I can't help but believe we're going to take care of seniors' needs as much as we can and as well as we can in the future. We're looking at all agencies that currently serve seniors to determine how we can cooperate and collaborate to better serve this population."
Debra Morton Gelbart is a free-lance writer based in Phoenix.
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