Beth Am Synagogue in Baltimore opened the Byron McKenney-Powell Free Community Market on Aug. 28 with a blast of the shofar by Rav Daniel Burg.
The food pantry was named after Byron McKenney-Powell, a Beth Am congregant who passed away last year at the age of 34. McKenney-Powell had been involved with food distribution projects ever since he was younger, alongside his mother, Desiree Williams, and the rest of his family.
“Desiree and her family [were] able to come [to the opening] and the city councilman was able to come. Rabbi Burg and Rabbi Tyler [Dratch] came and blew the shofar, and former Afghan neighbors were there and other neighbors,” Evan Serpick, one of the community market’s organizers, said. “[The opening] was really lovely. It felt very meaningful and [Williams] got very emotional. The Jewish liaison for the mayor’s office came and gave a proclamation to Desiree honoring Byron on the creation of the market.”
Serpick said that the synagogue working with food distribution in the neighborhood goes back to the start of COVID, when there was concern about people having access to food because of issues with the supply chain.
“Very early on in COVID, like in 2020, there were a lot of disruptions in the supply chain so there was a lot of food scarcity,” Serpick said. “Particularly in Reservoir Hill, where Beth Am is, there was a lot of concern about people having access to fresh [produce] so we actually started a weekly food distribution at Beth Am just to support neighbors.”
The weekly food distribution was eventually funded by Baltimore City, but at the beginning of this year, Serpick said they found out funding was going to be cut and they would only be receiving distribution materials once a month.
“It had been weekly for several years and it had really been a lifeline for a lot of our neighborhood residents,” Serpick said. “Especially around 2022, we had an influx of Afghan refugees moving to the neighborhood into apartments right around the corner from us and [the food distribution] became a real lifeline for them. They would wait outside and the food we were getting was distributed instantaneously. We would get 100 boxes of produce a week and it was gone within 15, 20 minutes.”
For Beth Am, supplies were already limited, so the synagogue wanted to find a way to expand its operation instead of allowing it to be cut by the lack of funding.
“We started to think about how we could continue to serve the neighborhood and maybe do it more efficiently,” Serpick explained. “That’s when we came up with this idea of creating a free market that had a wider range of foods, that would be open longer hours.”
The organizers started by reaching out to the Maryland Food Bank to become a distribution site. According to Serpick, the synagogue had to demonstrate there being a need in the neighborhood and pass an inspection of where they planned to store the food.
Then, the synagogue received a grant from the African American Mayors Association for $13,000, according to Serpick, which allowed it to hire a part-time market manager.
For McKenney-Powell’s mother, whose family has been members of Beth Am for over 20 years, having her son’s name attached to the market, she said, was healing.
“I’m crying now just thinking about what that means to have that attached to him, and how healing it is, emunah-wise, because his death was unexpected,” Williams said. “And to know that does not get to define who he was because it wasn’t who he was. Whether he was out giving out bags or he was dancing with the Torah on Eutaw Street, [that] was him.”
According to his mother, she and much of the community were unaware of his charity work until his shiva, when a close friend he had been working with gave a speech.
“I was shocked,” Williams told Baltimore Jewish Times. “It was very heartwarming, knowing that mitzvah was him. It was a part of who he was and that he continued it and so it was suggested that [the food market] be named after him once we, as a community, realized that he was out here doing this work unbeknownst to anyone for this very community.”
The community market is open every Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to noon, but the synagogue’s food cabinet can be accessed 24/7.
