What will Jewish preschool do with hundreds of Amazon toys it didn’t order?

A NY Chabad preschool has been inundated with Amazon deliveries of free, but overly advanced puzzles and waterslides all summer.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Amazon has been delivering toys by the hundreds from a single manufacturer all summer to a Jewish preschool in New York City that no one ordered and almost none of its children can use, the New York Post reported Saturday.

The Alef Bet preschool on East 92nd Street, run by the Chabad Hasidic group, has been inundated since June. Every few days, an Amazon delivery truck would drop off boxes, some as heavy as 27 pounds, filled with puzzles and water slides, from a toymaker called Ninostar.

The problem is that almost none of the items are age-appropriate, as from a quick look at the company website, the puzzles it sells are for much older children  And how many water slides can a single school use?

The boxes also filled the hallways, leaving no room for strollers and other baby paraphernalia, turning a positive gesture into a hindrance.

As educational director Malkie Jacob put it to the Post, “If they wanted to send us really useful things that’d be great.”

Instead, Rabbi Uriel Vigler, co-founder of the Chabad Israel Center of the Upper East Side which runs the school, and some volunteers shlepped dozens of the boxes to a nursery school down the block the day before the new school year began.

They also plan on giving away many items to the children’s parents. an, the report said.

The wooden puzzles, which glow in the dark, cost about $16 apiece on Amazon, while the slides run from some $50 to almost $90, saving families a nice bit of money in their (very) early Chanukah shopping.

When the Post asked Amazon about the unwanted largesse, a spokesperson said the deliveries would be halted.

“Within hours, we flagged these deliveries and have stopped any others from being sent to the school from this seller,” said spokesperson Branden Baribeau.

Vigler told the Post that although the toys were not needed, they were certainly more welcome than the message of hate he had received last year, when a man called Chabad to tell him, “I have a delivery for you of 1,000 German ovens.”

According to Vigler’s blog, he didn’t understand the reference immediately, and told the person he had the wrong number, but the man confirmed that he had contacted the Chabad Israel Center.

“What do you want me to do with 1,000 German ovens?” Vigler asked him.

“You know exactly what to do,” Vigler quoted him as saying, before the person abruptly hung up the phone “like a coward.”

Vigler then requested that to counter such antisemitic people who actively search out Jews to threaten and abuse, others “deliver a message of love.”

Perhaps someone listened.

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