Review of Masbia Soup Kitchen

Masbia

By Rabbi Lamech Somayach Meshumad Meshubach
Mashgiach Ruchin, Yeshiva Aishes Eish Hatorah
Special to MeshumadMeshubach.blogspot.com

Any reader of food porn in NYC knows that soup kitchens exist to provide sustenance to prevent the lowest rung of society from starving, then rising up to reconquer the ruling class, until now. The opening of Masbia soup kitchens in Boro Park, Williamsburgh and Midwood feed patrons with a level of luxury rarely experienced at any price, and until now, never for free.

The culinary experience is never just the food. The experience, the atmosphere and the staff can make medium food great and can bring a fabulous meal from the peak of quality to the depths of mediocrity. Masbia excels on both accounts. Unlike other religious groups that subject hungry people to long lectures of questionable logic before they are allowed to eat, Masbia only requires one to sign in and take a seat at a table by oneself. Then the staff brings out the delicious entree of the day, usually chicken leg quarters with barley soup and farfel.

At many restaurants it would be considered a problem to have the same menu for every day of the week for years on end, but not in an Orthodox Jewish restaurant. The reasoning is only logical to a person involved in that religion.

“We never want to change anything,” Said Moshe, the Kollel Jungerman who is beginning to explore the world of work by volunteering at Masbia. At the ripe age of 28 he now has his first part-time job.
“The ancient world treated women badly, so do we. The rabbis in post world war two had chicken and chulent every single week, so do we. The ancient progenitors of Judaism worshipped idols and we have photos of rabbis on the walls of our homes and synagogues. Therefore we have had the same menu every day for three years running.”

The restaurant doesn't resemble a soup kitchen in another way, it is decked out as if it were a fancy restaurant, with subdued lighting, formal behavior and waiters who bring the patrons dinner, bottles of seltzer water and the ubiquitous plate of NY pickles and sauerkraut. Instead of a mechitza dividing between the various patrons and genders eating at the restaurant, there are potted rubber plants, so it barely looks like there is a divider, it merely resembles a poor job of decorating.

However one Orthodox tradition is still very strong in this restaurant, as became obvious when this reviewer ate at the Masbia on Coney Island Avenue. A Jewish woman came in to eat because she was poor. She got her food, and an earful as the manager refused to stop berating her for the entire meal because she came to eat wearing pants. It seems that even free food comes with a price that must be extracted, whether it is in blood, flesh or money.

And this brings up the underlying fault of an enterprise of this nature. In it's essence it is communism at the worst form. The wealthy business owners of Boro Park skim millions off the Jewish community and the people of greater New York and in return they give pack pennies in the form of free food to those willing to undergo humiliation and dress a certain way for it. Then they boast they are not the only ones living well, look at this store they set up to help the people living like them, but without the money. The deepest irony is using all the money to have very large families and then neglecting the children and sending them off to me molested by yeshiva rabbis.

This deception of inequality is the root of the problem. Here exists a group of extremely wealthy individuals ignoring the extreme hardship they are causing in the people around them, or laughing at it and justifying the inequality by humiliation, and using it as a tool of indoctrination to further enslave those around them it is no longer charity. It is just another cog in the giant Orthodox propaganda machine that serves to increase the workforce of people willing to accept less pay and health benefits so the wealthy business owners can earn even more outsize profits. Why, you may ask? Because it says so somewhere in the bible, even though nobody can figure out where, because the bible never says any of that.

Yes the biggest Baal Tzedakah of Monsey sucks his fortune out of the community by way of renting commercial real estate at top dollar, causing the Jewish retailers to charge top dollar. The biggest fraudster sold treif chickens as kosher and still gives his weekly Torah lecture, only now he is retired in Jerusalem instead of Monsey.

Orthodox Judaism is a giant Ponzi scheme justified by the phrase, you just don't understand, yet. The charity is really a form of wealth transfer business, supporting people who provide “services” to the poor. But if a person is really hungry and happens to own the right type of hat or Yarmulke, it's not such bad place to boost your triglyceride fat levels for a few hours.

The casualty on your heart arteries is worse than a pogrom the National Socialist Workers Party would envy, and it won't leave you all constipated the way Passover Matzoh will. But the propaganda value would make Joesph Goebbels proud.