In several weeks we will celebrate Thanksgiving, gathering with family and friends to enjoy abundant feasts and to express gratitude for the many blessings in our lives. A Midrash teaches that Abraham, who begins his journey and relationship with God in Parshat Lech Lecha, noted the connection between eating and expressing thanks long before the Pilgrims. Known for his hospitality, Abraham would receive travelers, offering them food, drink and rest. According to the Midrash, after his guests had finished their meal, he would invite them to say a blessing. When they asked what they should say, he would respond: “Blessed be the everlasting God of the world, of whose bounty we have partaken.”
Perhaps Abraham’s generosity and gratitude was influenced by his own experiences. Abraham was someone who knew, firsthand, the difficulty of not having enough food to eat. Imagine Abraham’s experience in the beginning of this week’s Parsha. After being told by God to leave his home and go to the place that God will show him; and then, shortly after hearing God’s promise to him that his descendants would inherit that land forever, a famine strikes. This famine was so bad that Abraham needed to leave his home and go to Egypt to find food. The desperation he must have felt as a result of this feminine must have been horrible. God had just promised him that he and his descendants will inherit the land that he was living in forever, yet when starvation hits, Abraham needed to leave that land to find food.
Thank God, for most of us, the experience of starvation to that degree is not something that we can relate to. But famine is real; there are people in the world today who don’t have enough food to feed their families or themselves.
This weekend, we are participating in a nationwide effort organized by American Jewish World Service called Global Hunger awareness Shabbat. The point of this program is to raise the awareness and sensitivity to this problem around the world and in our own communities. There are so many things that pull at our attention in the news and there so many worthwhile causes that we get involved in that it’s sometimes difficult to remember the simple fact that there are people in the world who don’t have enough to eat.
There are many laws in Judaism which would educate us to have sensitivity to those who don’t have enough to eat, and help alleviate that problem. Because of the way the world has changed, and our economies have changed, the society we live in is no longer based on local farmers, so we don’t follow many of the laws that are only applicable to that situation. As a result these laws don’t affect us in the same way they would’ve had they been relevant in our daily lives. Therefore, sometimes we need to make an extra effort to make sure that we do not lose the sensitivity that these mitzvoth would have instilled in us. Giving tzedakah is not enough to fully embody the sensitivity that we might be missing in not being able to perform these mitzvoth.
One example of these laws is, to leave the corners of your field uncut so that the poor people who don’t have enough food of their own can come and take from it, and to leave any sheaths of wheat which fall out of a bundle on the field for the poor. In the explanation of this Mitzvah the Talmud says (Masechet Shabbat 23a-b), “On account of [various] considerations the Torah ordered corners to be left at the edge of the field:[as a precaution] against the robbing of the poor, and against wasting the time of the poor.” What does it mean, robbing of the poor? The Gemara is showing us that it is not enough to just give charity. The mitzvah of leaving the corners for the poor person is not simply because we need to give charity, the farmer who fulfilled this commandment was still obligated in the separate commandment of tithing his income to give to the poor. This mitzvah sensitizes us to the fact that everyone in the world has a right to eat! It is our duty to help people attain this right if they are unable to do it on their own.
I was fascinated by the connection of this mitzvah to some of the facts about world hunger that I read about it in the resources that the American Jewish world service provided for this Shabbat. Did you know that there is actually enough food produced in the world to feed all of the world’s population adequately? It’s not simply a matter of disproportionate displacement of the world’s wealth and all the rich people should give more money. This issue isn’t even on the radar of the occupy Wall Street agenda. The issue is more about access to the food, and proper distribution of food by the organizations doing this work. The Gemara above was teaching us that our involvement in this mitzvah is about people’s right to eat above and beyond the charity that we give. There is enough food in the world to go around, but unlike the mitzvah of providing the corners of your field to the poor person, there is not an adequate system in organizing the way in which the food can get to the people who need it most.
Often this is because of the way that international food missions fail to understand the nature of the societies and cultures that they are providing food for. For example, I have a very good friend who has spent months living with indigenous tribes in Bolivia studying them for her doctoral dissertation in Anthropology. I remember one time she told me that the people get thousands of pounds of food from the UN, but they’re still starving be they don’t know what to do with it. The UN sends them beans; the local population has never seen a bean before. They aren’t given instructions on what to do with these beans, so the beans end up decorating people’s front lawns while their children starve. This is just one example. This is obviously a very complex situation and there will be different issues everywhere you go.
Unfortunately, hunger isn’t just a problem in the developing world. Here in Nashville, as well as many other cities, there is a situation in where people are starving and malnourished simply because of a lack of supermarkets in their neighborhood. For a poor person who works twelve hours a day and has no car it is very difficult to get healthy food for their family when there is no store which sells healthy food anywhere near their homes. Even in our own Jewish community, there are many families who qualify to receive monthly food boxes from Jewish Family services.
My goal on this Global hunger awareness Shabbat is at the very least to raise the awareness of an important issue that is often too easily overlooked. There are millions of people starving in the world, in the city and even in our own community. Thankfully, regardless of our economic difficulties, the vast majority of us do not have to worry about where our next meal will come from. But this is not the case for everyone. I ask that on this Shabbat we all take a moment to really think about it what it must have been like for Abraham to feel forced to leave Israel on account of hunger and that we realize this question really does affect people on a daily basis. It is my hope that through doing this some of us will be inspired to donate to organizations that do work to help address this problem in the developing world like American Jewish World services, or become interested in getting involved with local food banks and food justice programs, or choose to contact the Jewish Family services to find out how we can help, or be more sensitive to this issue and grateful for what we have because you never know who around is struggling with this.
The very basic outcome of the awareness to the problem is a feeling of gratitude for whatever it is that we have. Throughout this week’s Parsha Abraham models a healthy behavior of being thankful. There are a number of times in the Parsha that God makes promises to Abraham guaranteeing success to him and his offspring. After every time that God makes a promise to Abraham, Abraham immediately offers a sacrifice. Abraham’s gratitude inspired him to give something back. It is my hope that we can all be thankful for things that we have and be inspired to assist those in need.
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