Fort Lauderdale , FL – It’s a whole new definition of comfort food.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Fort Lauderdale businessman Efi Fixler wants to make a trying time easier for observant Jews who obey the kosher dietary laws. While hospitals commonly offer kosher meals to their patients, it’s not always so easy for a patient’s visitors to find something to eat.
So Fixler came up with the concept of a Jewish Family Room — an office turned into a haven with a couch and kosher food. There’s cereal, canned foods like tuna, an assortment of cookies and crackers and frozen meals such as chicken and rice. There’s also a microwave for do-it-yourself heating.
The service is free to guests; Fixler is eating the bill himself.
The Jewish Family Room already in established in Miami-Dade County — at Jackson Memorial Hospital since last spring, and at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center since December.
Next week, the project makes its first foray into Broward County
“This is complementary of our mission to care for the spiritual and religious needs of patients and families,” said Sister Rita Levasseur of Holy Cross. “People who truly follow the kosher food rules probably wouldn’t even eat in our cafeteria because they couldn’t be sure how food was prepared, how it was stored.”
Fixler, 37, who owns a transportation company, (of Gold Coach Tours) said he came up with the idea after visiting a relative in a New York hospital at which a Jewish foundation had set up a similar room. He realized how grateful he was for the kosher food.
“Every day we stay out of the hospital is a gift to every one of us,” he said. “To be able to help somebody is well worth the effort. You’ve got to give back.”
Fixler won’t say how much he spends to provide an average total of about two dozen meals a week in the rooms, which are open 24 hours a day.
“We’re very happy when it’s not busy, let’s put it that way, but there’s always people in the hospital,” Fixler said.
Guests use the family room on the honor system. At Holy Cross, the door will be locked and the combination plastered above it — in Hebrew.
“If someone can’t read Hebrew, they can go to the nurse’s office and get the lock combination,” Sister Rita said. “If anyone asks, we’re not going to refuse them.”
Fixler said he believes in charity for all. “This helps people, since they are the support for the patient in the hospital. It gives them a bit of peace and mind — they have food, a room to rest, a place to relax.”
“I hope we’re able to do it in every hospital in South Florida.”
For more information please call 866-9-Gesher, visit http://www.GesherTzedaka.com.
WOW. Eilu devorim sh’ein lohem shiur. Bikur cholim. Mr. Fixler is building himself a beautiful heichal in Olam Haboh. Kol hakovod and hatzlocho in all your endeavors.
This is terrific, and very good of the hospital to provide the space. A little food while spending long hours in a hospital with a seriously ill loved one can be an enourmous help.
The assumption that all people who keep kosher know hebrew or know what numbers hebrew letters stand for is not accurate. My grandmothers were never taught to read hebrew because in the old days, particularly when mony was tight, girls were not taught to read hebrew. Then, they in turn didn’t teach their daughters. Also, not all people who keep kosher are orthodox.
What a terrific idea. While in NY there are still kosher establishments, or people can bring food from the yiddishe neighborhoods to the people sitting with the choila, (or even to the choila, ow much hospital food can you take) but in Florida it is practically non exsistent.
THANK YOU MR FIXLER.
Just a note, why isn’t somebody considering doing something in Miami Mount Siani Medical Center? The bikur choilim there is practically NON EXISTENT!!! (from experience!!)
Of course thank you to Mr. Fixler.
BUT we need to show massive hakaros hatov to our non jewish neigbors for allowing and inviting.
A true kiddush hashem
The cleveland clinic hospital has the same idea stocked with everything you need by a wonderful org. of the bikur chlim headed by mrs. Shapiro
I believe Mr Fixler when in NY was at NYU was enamored by the Bikur Cholim room which was built by Feivi and Tammy Klein and who finance its whole operation day to day
Chesed of New Square runs many of these rooms in various hospitals; Columbia, NY Cornell, Mount Sinai, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Hackensack, Lenox Hill, Englewood and the Catskills. It is a lifesaver.