On a recent morning in Borough Park, a man in his fifties walked into the Met Council’s Brooklyn hub – a 12,500-square-foot facility on 13th Avenue and 16th Street – and found David Greenfield, the organization’s CEO, on the floor. The man had come to thank him. He was nearing the end of a 16-week technology training course the organization offers free of charge, and for the first time in two years, he had started getting job interviews.

“He said, ‘I’m just finishing your 16-week course, and I haven’t gotten an interview in two years. I had a gap in my system that created a lot of issues, and this is the first time, because I took the tech course and I have the skills now, that I’m actually getting job interviews,’” Greenfield recounted, in an exclusive interview with Belaaz. “He hadn’t gotten a job yet. But he was getting job interviews. That, to me, is a great example of offering people skills and hope and how you turn people’s lives around.”

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, known as Met Council, is a New York-based Jewish nonprofit that focuses on food, housing and helping people train for and find careers. It operates a large kosher food network, assisting more than 325,000 people last year. Under Greenfield, who became CEO in 2018, the organization has incorporated AI into its operations to expand capacity.

Greenfield says the organization has invested “well over a million dollars” in AI over the past year alone, structured across three distinct tracks: staff training, departmental AI budgets, and curated technology partnerships with outside companies.

A core component of this strategy focuses on employee training. Every week, the organization pays its staff for two hours of AI training on company time. By the end of this year, every Met Council employee will have accumulated 108 hours of training in tools including Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude.

“We’re committed to giving them this tool so they can be better at their work,” Greenfield said, “less time on paperwork and more time actually helping clients.”

The stated goal is to reduce the time caseworkers spend on administrative tasks like benefits enrollment, allowing them to focus on direct client interaction. Met Council employs social workers, Yiddish and Russian speakers, and local community members.

“We shouldn’t be run like a traditional tzedaka organization,” he said. “We should be running like a business, and we should make sure we have the best tools like any other business would. Any Fortune 500 company today is investing in AI, and we think we should be doing the same.”

The organization notes that this technology is not being used to reduce headcount. “We are not laying off any of our staff, and we’re committed to keeping our staff,” Greenfield said flatly. “If we keep our staff and give them AI tools, we think we have superstaff. That’s really what our focus is on.”

Regarding efficiency, Greenfield notes that while AI handles a significant portion of certain tasks, human oversight remains necessary. “It doesn’t take you to zero time,” he acknowledged. “But it gets you pretty close.”

The organization has also updated its food pantry distribution model. “For literally thousands of years, the system of food is: you get what you get,” Greenfield said. “We’ve revolutionized that system.”

Through an online platform called Market by Met Council, clients are assigned a point allotment based on household size and can select specific foods. The orders are then packed at a fulfillment hub and delivered, reducing wait times and unwanted food waste.

In late 2025, the organization opened a 22,000-square-foot warehouse in Brooklyn that utilizes AI for logistics.

“It’s so successful, Harvard Business School did a study that they published last year on Market Met Council,” Greenfield said. “They now teach it in their MBA classes -a class on how organizations can use technology and artificial intelligence to improve old-school processes.”

Software manages routing for the delivery of 20 million pounds of kosher food annually and monitors inventory across multiple pantry sites. “We can tell you which pantries need more food and less food, which have specific needs,” Greenfield said. “Different communities want different foods.”

A current pilot program incorporates dietary restrictions into the ordering system. “If you try to order something with high sodium and we know you’re on a low-sodium diet, we’ll flag it and say, ‘Hey, are you really sure you want this? Because last week you told us you wanted a low-sodium diet,’” Greenfield said.

A nurse reviews these nutritional flags to monitor for accuracy. “The best AI systems today are 95 percent accurate,” he said, “but you still need that five percent touch, which is human.” Met Council is also working with a Palo Alto-based company on a tool to streamline the benefits screening process.

“AI is very good at taking complicated data and distilling that information so that it could be readily usable,” Greenfield said. “That’s not a text tool. That’s really an AI usage.”

Met Council also partnered with DoorDash this Passover season to facilitate its Holocaust survivor food program, which serves over 2,000 individuals annually in the New York area. For homebound clients without internet access, staff place orders via iPad, and DoorDash drivers handle the deliveries.

“In the old days, or even what other organizations are doing, you probably drop off a box of food. What happened to the box? Nobody knows. In a multifamily house, did someone pick it up? Did the food get ruined?” Greenfield said. “This solves all of those questions. The entire experience is seamless, and it makes sure things are much more efficient.”

This partnership is part of a broader strategy of utilizing existing platforms, with each of Met Council’s ten service departments receiving a dedicated AI budget.

Greenfield projects the number of people served will increase from 325,000 last year to 400,000 this year.

“What we’re doing with the free time is we’re helping more people in more communities than ever before,” he said. “The AI has allowed us to have more reach and help more people, and to do it much faster than we ever were able to before.”

The organization has recently expanded services into Rockland County, Westchester, Long Island, and Albany, and reports reduced wait times for client service calls.

During Pesach, the Brooklyn hub used scanning technology for 1,700 families picking up food, lowering average wait times from an hour in previous years to under ten minutes. “It’s really all about treating people with dignity and respect,” Greenfield said. The organization also supplied food to twenty shuls in Borough Park for direct distribution.

The Brooklyn hub houses legal aid, free loans, and workforce training. Technology courses are offered to the community on kosher computers.

Greenfield shared an example of a 19-year-old bachur who took an advanced tech course at the hub and found employment shortly after. “He’s 19 years old, and now he’s doing something, and he’s productive,” Greenfield said.

Regarding the adoption of new technology in the frum Jewish community, Greenfield noted differing perspectives.

“In our community, a lot of times when new tech comes, people are scared of it,” he said. “I think there tend to be two views: one is, let’s avoid AI; the other is, let’s completely embrace it. Our view is somewhere in the middle.”

The organization aims to balance technological efficiency with direct human interaction.
“My goal is not to have an AI bot do all the work when you reach out to Met Council,” he said. “Most of our staff are trained social workers. They understand people who are going through a tough time. They understand what the challenges are like. They’re from the community. They’re appropriate. We have people who speak Yiddish, Russian. Different communities have different needs. We want to make sure we’re servicing everybody.”