UPDATE BELOW Lakewood, NJ – Late Thursday afternoon, officials of the Monmouth County Health Department descended upon the Lakewood Tomchei Shabbos distribution facility situated off Squankum Road in Howell NJ, just north of the Lakewood – Howell border. Howell police cordoned off the entire property as officials sought to impound the many hundreds of thousands of dollars in food supplies stocked inside the facility. It was only through the quick intervention and extensive negotiations of prominent local askonim that the officials conceded to allow the bulk of the stock to immediately be moved out of the county’s jurisdiction. The department still confiscated over $10,000.00 worth of Pesach staples.
Howell township officials have been to the facility many times in the past and were well aware of Tomchei Shabbos’s operations at the site. It remains unclear what prompted the Health Department to act so excessively shuttering the operation based on some apparent technicalities. The emergency transporting and of all the supplies and the repurchasing of the items confiscated is estimated run the organization close to $25,000.00.
Anyone wishing to help Tomchei Shabbos offset this catastrophic crisis just days before Yom Tov is urged to click HERE and donate generously through the organization’s online secure server. Please Help!
UPDATE: YWN just spoke with Reb Yossi Schreiber of Tomchei Shabbos. Rabbi Schreiber informed us that upon further negotiations, the health officials released much of the confiscated food including hundreds of cases of bulk apples. The loss of the remaining food is now estimated at approximately $3,000.00 in addition to expenses for transporting the entire stock to Lakewood.
He said that the closure came at a critical time, just as thousands of parcels were about to be loaded up by volunteers for distribution and hundreds of families were counting on these packages for their Yom Tov preparations. Rabbi Schreiber thanked Rabbi Yonason Sanders for graciously offering the spacious Bais Tova sparking lot as an emergency relocation site for Tomchei Shabbos. He also expressed admiration for scores of volunteers who immediately upon hearing about the crisis, rented trucks and drove down to the headquarters to assist with the transport. “It’s amazing how just a few hours later we were Boruch Hashem able to have everything up and running again,” he said.
The organization is humbled by the YWN readers’ warm and generous outpouring of support in response to the crisis.
(Dov Gordon – YWN)
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27 Responses
Were the premises unclean? Or was it just some permit or something? Are there any updates to this story?
Why did the authorities do it?
its an Obamanation
What were they doing wrong? Were they warned? Please give more details to the story. Thanks
This sounds like they were treating it like a drug bust! What could they possibly have been doing? What are “apparent technicalities”
Oh Boy! This does not look good! Government crackdowns on religious organizations. I think this type of behavior is scary. Makes me feel very, very concerned about our security here.
why would they do such a thing, more details please!
Need more details. This story makes zero sense to me.
I did get the reason for the health violation ??
non refridgerated Chickens, or what exactly?
i meant i didn’t get the reasons for the seizure from the details of the article, as written.
the health dept said being that they are food distribution they need to have health inspections. they wanted to quarintine the food for a few days until they could inspect the food. no violations were isuued.
The problem was that the health department wanted the food to be held until they inspect it to verify that the food is fresh . There were no health violations found . All the food was released besides the eggs(which were delivered 2 hours prior to the inspectors showing up) since they are highly perishable . They will be released after they are inspected sometime next week . By then they will be unusable since Tomchei Shabbos doesn’t have refrigerators big enough to store them until inspection. Typical Howell story this would never happen by any non jewish food bank , or for that matter by any of the dozens of Pesach food distributions around the tri state area. The perfectly fresh and delicous food was B’H distributed from Lakewood without any further incident.
I cant brelive that people are questioning tomchei shabbos. ts is moiser nefesh that people should have food!
Ludicrous , the food was delivered that day what in the world does the health dept need to check out . What more can I say Howell Township at it’s best. BTW I heard that all the food was given out that night in Lakewood. The no gooders will never win.
For those of you who see this as Obama, or anyone else, displaying antisemitism, please realize that these things happen constantly to organizations, restaurants, schools, etc. and while it is unfourtunate, it was done with the health and concern for the good of the whole.
It should be noted that this wasnt coming from ‘Howell’ – only from Monmouth County. The cops at the scene were actually amazed at the unmatched Kiddush hashem of Tomchei Shabbos. Where do you find anything near this? Mee Kiamcho Yisroel? Hopefully, like we will say Peasach – matzilainu meeyodom – the exposure will help TS help more people until IYH the geulah comes BBA!!
“…it was done with the health and concern for the good of the whole.”–NO.17
WHAT A FOOLISH, NAIVE, INEXPERIENCED COMMENT.
The Government doesn’t need any real reason to make life A Kafkaesque hell for anyone it chooses.
This is a matter of ill-will. Some nasty, mean-spirited officials could not bear the sight of such a massive Chesed operation, solely for the benfit of Jews.
So, they came up with some innocuous-sounding excuse to conduct a RAZIA–a “rulebook slowdown,” that would, effectively, cripple the operation.
the health dept has no business there its a private organization its like them coming into your house to inspect that your food is fresh.even if the food was laden with salmonella they have no business being there and they should be sued
It was a huge kiddush hashem last night as 100’s of people waited approx 1-1 1/2 hours on line to do deliveries on this busy night before pesach!!
Tomchei Shabbos recipients, being predominantly white, are the wrong color in our new era of Hope and Change.
If this doesn’t smack of open anti-Semitism then I don’t what does, would they raid a church giving out food for the homeless? I think not.
(“How do you know there were not any real health violations? in which case it was for everybodies benefit.Comment by azi”)
YOU’RE SO RIGHT, AZI.
LET’S CLOSE DOWN TOMCHEI SHABBOS, BEFORE THEY KILL US ALL!
to # 18 then why would moving it to Lakewood be any better???
exciting to see that so many of those great askanim on the scene are YW readers as seen by so many comments
they want to make sure that whenever there’s a frum jew in the media, he’s seen doing something immoral – it truly seems that way. Whenever you see an article in the secular media featuring a frum jew, it’s always some crime or other wrongdoing – it’s even worse in eretz yisroel. Oh, and the other times it always has to do with some idiot which they see ‘breaking tradition'(america loves changing into different tzuros, to use the maharal’s apt terminology), they hate it when people stay true to their beliefs – honesty, it’s either crime, or controversy(like when frum women put on pants and wear guns(both assur) as ‘policewomen’, or when rabbis visit batei avodah zara, or when the pope visits a shul, or when the mitzvah of yibbum is made into a movie starring a prutzah, etc..) I cant imagine how someone could not see a bias in the media against frumkite.
I started to read the comments, then decided not to after about number 10. Is there anything that we, especially out of town, need to know, beyond an address to make donations to? Please include it in the article in an update. Thanks!
Anyone defending Monmouth County is just like the Ayno yodeah lishoel and M.C. is the Rosha. Did anyone ever complain about T.S.’s food in all the years it has been open? Not that I know of! Their concern for the Jewish public is a smoke screen for their anti-semitism. When is the last time they inspected a goyishe food bank -let alone confiscated anything?