Rego Park Kosher Restaurant Helps Keep Hospital Workers Fed

REGO PARK, QUEENS — When nursing student Eytan Israelov had to give up an internship opportunity to protect his growing family from the coronavirus pandemic, he wanted to find some other way to help.

Israelov knew he'd found his cause after he stumbled across a Facebook post by a Brooklyn hospital worker who needed help finding kosher food — a problem to which he could relate.

"When I was at my clinical sites ... we really had a limit in what kosher food was around us," he told Patch in a phone interview.

So he teamed up with his father, Rafael, who runs the kosher restaurant Ganey Orly in Rego Park, and leapt into action.

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Israelov launched a fundraiser on Facebook and delivered his first batch of meals on March 30 to kosher-keeping workers at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

The father-son duo has since distributed their homemade kosher meals to about 250 health care workers across New York City and expanded the initiative to include those who don't keep kosher, according to Israelov.

As of Monday, their fundraiser had raised $5,000 from 68 donors. They plan to feed 1,000 hospital staffers by the end of the month.

"I just want to push to do more and more as long as this crisis lasts," Israelov told Patch.

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This article originally appeared on the Forest Hills Patch