Satisfying The Hunger For Company

Ramaz students deliver food and good cheer to the city’s homeless.

by Michelle Bayefsky

It is 7 on a frigid Saturday night in January and a cluster of tightly huddled students begins to form outside the Ramaz Upper School on the Upper East Side. They are holding bags packed with sandwiches, snacks, drinks and winter hats and scarves to give to the homeless. They chat quietly, their breath hanging in the air as they speak. They are keenly aware that as cold as the evening is for them, it is much colder for the people that they will meet — people who live in insulated cardboard boxes on the New York City streets.

The Ramaz Upper School participates in a program called New York City Midnight Run, which provides the homeless with the few essentials needed for survival

such as food, warm clothing and hygienic supplies. The Ramaz group is not directly affiliated with the larger organization (see midnightrun.org), but supports the same cause and strives to achieve its goal of forging “a bond between housed and homeless people by establishing a foundation of sharing and caring.”

On at least two Saturday nights each month during the winter approximately 20 students meet at the school with chaperone DeeDee Benel, head of the program. They follow a planned route that includes stops at churches, public spaces and street corners where they converse with homeless men and women and give them packages they have each prepared from their own homes. The students do not receive many instructions; they are told only to be polite, unhurried, and not to hand out packages without talking to the people beforehand for fear of offending them. It is not only the mission and the charitable nature of the program that is important, however. It is also an exceptional chance for students to gain a greater understanding of issues facing our society from the perspectives of people they would otherwise not likely engage in conversation.

Ramaz owes its involvement in the program to staff director, DeeDee Benel. She realized that Ramaz students could not join the Midnight Run organization because they could not be on the streets at midnight and was keen that Ramaz support the homeless in whatever way they could. She attained permission from the program to use their title so that homeless men and women would trust the Ramaz group, open up and accept the packages. It is not the giving, but the conversing that is at the center of the program.
“It’s more than food, it’s a hunger for company and interaction,” Ms. Benel said. “And from the students’ perspective, they listen to stories and drink them in. They become aware of a community that was as distant from them as Mars.”

When I decided to participate in the program I had many questions. How does a person end up on the street? How could it ever come to that? I wanted to know why the shelters were not being used and whether there were job opportunities. I discovered that many of these issues were subjects that homeless people also want to discuss.

The Midnight Run program encourages students to ask the people they meet about their lives, where they sleep and what they need. They learn about their backgrounds and immediate wants, like personal hygiene items such as toothpaste and deodorant. They don’t want to look like a homeless person.

Some people on the streets say they work but cannot afford a living space on a minimum-wage salary even with supplementary odd jobs. Often conversation shifts to the conditions in the city’s shelters. “They don’t like the shelters because they are frequented by people who have served prison time and there is a lot of crime,” said sophomore Rebecca Halff, co-president of Midnight Run at Ramaz. “There are fights over beds and they are afraid their shoes will be taken during the night.” The shelters are also dirty and unpleasant places for the inhabitants. Many people feel safer on the streets where their belongings and their space, be that the steps of a church or a block of pavement, are respected.

“Despite their hardships many are very strong believers in God,” said co-president and sophomore Ethan Stein. “They have faith and optimism.” They tell the students about God sending them help and warning them to stay in school and commit to an education. Over the months, some Ramaz students have formed relationships with several of the people that they meet. For example, in the winter Halff bought and delivered a new pair of shoes to a man who lives on the steps of a Manhattan church because he had requested them. This man told Halff the story of his life and in so doing, answered my long-pondered question about how a person becomes homeless.

“John,” as I will call him so he remains anonymous, is a cheerful man in his late 50s or early 60s with a sense of humor. He used to work as a doorman. His downward spiral began when he took the temporary job of painting an apartment in the building where he worked and the superintendent, who according to John had an agenda of his own, fired him on the basis that getting paid for this extra work was a violation of his contract.
John could not find another job, partly due to his age, and eventually lost his apartment. He now lives in a long complex of cardboard boxes insulated with newspaper that he has playfully divided into “Downtown” and “Uptown.” His family does not know that he is homeless and ironically, his son works around the corner from where his father sleeps. Unfortunately, as I learned in my conversations, shame and secrecy is not unique to John and homelessness is an issue more complicated than the combination of bad shelters and low minimum wage.

When I first spoke to a homeless man I was nervous that I would not know what to say but I found that he was sociable and open. Now when I pass homeless men or women on the street I no longer wonder simply about the sequence of events that resulted in their homelessness. I think about their families and the homeless people’s attitudes towards society.

Thawing on the way home from that Saturday night adventure we began to understand that homeless people are not that different from people with homes and they have something to teach us about the human spirit and our place in the world. John does not have a solid roof over his head, but he is cheerful, conversational and even hopeful. Most important, he wants — and deserves — to retain his dignity and a place in the larger community of New York City.

If you are interested in participating in the Midnight Run project or starting a chapter at your school, contact the official organization at their Web site (midnightrun.org) for advice and routes to follow and start looking for fellow students who would like to share in the learning and giving experience. n

Michelle Bayefsky is a sophomore at Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization