Shabbat Gathering: Mazon: Fixing hunger through policy.

Dear Chevra, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 963 5113 1550
Password: 1989
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

Hunger in the U.S., and the world, is a shonda. We have enough food to go around for everyone. Everyone. But the food isn’t distributed in a fair way. According to the U.S. government, one in six children in the U.S. faces hunger, and for many, school meals are a lifeline and may be the only healthy meal that they receive on some days. And that’s just children. Too many adults and seniors also go hungry of course.

Cracker Barrel turkey and dressing.

My own Thanksgiving is thanks to Cracker Barrel take out and has been for the past three years. I’m not complaining. Mom and I don’t have the appetite to justify a whole roasted turkey and all the fixings, and we can afford to buy the take out. I’m assuming that most of us reading this have enjoyed a fair to good (maybe even great) Thanksgiving and have not been dealing with hunger. (I pray so.) But that’s not the case for far too much of America and there’s a Jewish organization, Mazon, that helps meet the need for families from every background.

Mazon is a different type of organization fighting hunger. Instead of collecting money and distributing it to the hungry, Mazon looks to the root cause of hunger, the system of food distribution that's inequitable and focused on profits instead of people. Mazon is trying to change that and deserves your attention.

(Most of what follows is mostly cribbed from the Mazon website.)

What is Mazon?

For more than 37 years, Mazon has been committed to ensuring that vulnerable people have access to the resources they need to put food on the table. Mazon is a leading voice in the anti-hunger field, developing strategic initiatives focused on communities that are at particular risk of hunger and have often been overlooked. It is a Jewish organization, but it doesn’t focus on Jewish communities. Instead, it’s focused on hunger across the board.

Founding.

Mazon was founded by Leonard Fein (z’’l), Theodore Mann (z’’l), and Irv Cramer in 1985. Their motivation to create this new organization was simple: to build a bridge between the relative abundance of the American Jewish community and the desperate need felt by millions of hungry people.

What it does.

Mazon provides training and resources to anti-hunger organizations in the most food insecure states in the U.S., maintaining a network of hundreds of partners and developing strategic initiatives to advance policies that end hunger and the systems that allow it to persist. It also educates and engages individuals and communities about the scope of hunger and how we can work together to end it.

Beyond charity.

Mazon believes that the problem of hunger can’t be cured by charitable programs alone. Instead, it focuses on public policy to ensure that state and federal programs are sufficient to meet the need. Mazon has been a leader in the national anti-hunger field, building consensus among the U.S. emergency food system that structural change, and working toward that change, is a legitimate — and necessary — means of advancing an anti-hunger agenda. Mazon accomplishes this not only by providing critical funding, but also by enabling hunger relief agencies to embrace public policy efforts as central to their mission.

One of Mazon's many new initiatives is The Hunger Museum: Mazon’s new entirely-digital project to help everyone understand the history of hunger in America.

When you consider your tzedekah, please consider Mazon as a possible recipient of your generosity.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Gut Shabbes!

All my love,
brian.

PS

As someone who named his first daughter Ananda (Sanskrit for ‘ultimate bliss’) and his second daughter Batya (Hebrew for ‘daughter of G-d’) I know something about giving children names that no one can pronounce. I recently came across this article, No One Can Pronounce My Daughter’s Very Jewish Name. I’m Ok With That, from Kveller, about the parents to blame who have to shoulder that burden.