Hunger As Food For Thought (Yom Kippur Morning 5775, October 4, 2014)
I want to ask forgiveness in advance for the sermon I am about to give this morning while you are fasting. Those of you who know me know that it has become my trademark to mention food in my Yom Kippur sermons. It started out as unintentional years ago, but today’s sermons, all three of them, have food in them. Forgive me.
In his book, Seasons of the Mind (p. 32-4, 2001), Rabbi Bernard Raskas z”l cites four reasons to fast on Yom Kippur:
1- As a sign of contrition for the sins we have done
2- As an indication of self-discipline
3- To enable us to focus on the spiritual
4- To awaken compassion in us
I would add a fifth for my young Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, as fasting is a rite of passage for them. It really becomes a ritual where they transition from childhood to adulthood in a meaningful, and committed way. Listening to me talk about food while you are fasting gives you credit for the first three, but in so many ways, I find the fourth the most compelling and the most in line with this morning’s haftarah from Isaiah 58:3-7: “Is this the fast that I desire?” We fast to awaken compassion in us.
Our adult education theme this year is entitled, “Food for Thought.” You will be handed the menu of this year’s activities as you leave the sanctuary this morning. I came up with the theme after 30 people signed up to come to my house on Shavuot for blintzes and study. I figured I was on to something: Jews love learning, but we love learning more when there is food involved, so let’s spend the year focusing on our relationship with food, and on what food teaches us about our religion, history and culture throughout the ages. And then, our wonderful student rabbi, Bess Wohlner, created a menu of topics for our members this summer, kicking off with wings provided by Gary Cohen. Every Wednesday night in July, the Temple was packed with people, in the middle of the summer in Fairfax Station. After that, we knew “Food for Thought” was going to be a hit.
But, then we sat at the Adult Ed/LIFE committee with a quandary. How could we continue our tradition of introducing our adult education topic this Yom Kippur, when it is the one day that we fast out of 365 days of the year. Our brilliant committee decided that our afternoon study would have a menu, but be entitled “No Food for Thought”/ Food for the Soul – quandary solved. I do hope you take advantage of this afternoon’s buffet of learning.
What is fasting? Fasting for Jews is the quintessential Yom Kippur observance and sacrifice. We don’t eat or drink from sundown to sundown. For some the lack of food pales in sacrifice to the lack of caffeine, which is why napping at the afternoon service with sunglasses on is such a popular pastime.
For most of Jewish history, there were many fast days throughout the year. And there were many times that our ancestors went hungry without any designated fast day at all. For us, fasting on a day other than Yom Kippur is a medical requirement before an invasive procedure or surgery, often involving anesthesia. We are not in the habit of fasting to get in touch with our spiritual selves.
But, there are millions of people all over the world, including this great nation, who do fast regularly, because they are living with food insecurity every day. Too many go hungry by necessity not choice. And the most tragic statistics involve how many children go hungry in our country and our world, and how many people lack fresh water to drink, leading to disease and deadly consequences.
Some facts:
Ø 1 out of 6 Americans does not have access to enough food, many of them children and seniors, and perhaps the most troubling statistic is that only 5% of them are homeless. Most hungry Americans are the working poor. 16 million children are food insecure in our country and many more are not in the statistics, because they are fed at school, or by someone other than their family.
Ø 1 out of 4 hungry Americans has been educated beyond High School, so even education doesn’t guarantee that you will not go hungry.
Ø 49 million Americans don’t have the resources to secure enough food.
Ø 2 billion people in our world are hungry.
Ø There are more hungry people in the world today than there were people on the planet in 200 years ago.
Ø Perhaps the most sobering: During the time it takes for me to deliver this sermon, 200 to 2000 people on this planet will die of hunger and malnutrition related diseases.
The Talmud explains that each Jewish community must establish a public fund to provide food for the hungry, and our sages explain that feeding the hungry is one of our most important responsibilities on earth. The Midrash to Psalm 118:17“I shall not die, but live and proclaim the works of the Lord” teaches: “When you are asked in the world to come, ‘What was your work?’ and you answer: ‘I fed the hungry,’ you will be told: ‘This is the gate of the Lord, enter into it, you who have fed the hungry.'”
Our Jewish perspective is that God gave us a planet with enough food to feed everyone. We have a distribution problem. Think locally. Go into the Lorton Giant down the block, and see a store filled with more food than all of us in Lorton, Fairfax Station, and Burke could possibly eat, if we tried to consume it all. And then, come with me to LCAC (Lorton Community Action Center) just four miles further down the road. When they picked up last week, they had no more cereal on the shelves.
LCAC feeds the working poor, people with children, and about 30 military families who are also the working poor among us. Hunger is not just in Africa and Asia. Hunger is in our backyard. And poverty and food insecurity even afflicts all too many workers in the food chain, from the family farm, to the packing plants, to the factories, to the restaurants. In a world abundant with plenty, no one should need healthy food to nourish brain and body.
Thank you for bringing food for the shelves of the food bank. Our food collection today is the largest of LCAC’s year, but it will be gone in days not weeks. While DC restaurants tout eating locally grown food at fancy prices, I lose sleep over how many locally grown kids lack food at any price. May our fast this day move us to buy food for the bins in our lobby everytime we go to a grocery store and to bring food every time we walk into our Temple building. Just know that I practice what I preach. I would never ask you to do something that I don’t do myself. We never shop for the Perlins without shopping for Lorton, as well. How could we do otherwise?
And whenever you make a Bar Mitzvah, wedding, or party, follow MAZON’s suggestion of giving 3% of all your food and beverage costs to the hungry. I spend a good part of my time teaching my students this Jewish value of giving tzedakah,before you buy any kind of extras for yourself, before you take a vacation, before you buy something at the mall.
Yom Kippur comes to remind us of the Jewish requirement that even a beggar with no money has to give 10% of his daily collection begging to someone less fortunate. I have been tithing, as the Torah commands, since I was 13-years-old. In fact, when we were getting engaged I told Gary that he needed to know that as a deal breaker, before we got married. It is time for Jews to start tithing again. We are supposed to give 10% to the temple and to tzedakah, for those in need (and that doesn’t include a rich alma mater, or attendance at a fancy fundraiser), before we spend a nickel on extras from an extra pair of shoes to a new iPhone 6. Thank you to everyone who has donated to my Discretionary Fund this past year. Thanks to you I bought cases of cereal and other foods to donate and was able to give to food banks, soup kitchens, and a host of charities that directly fight hunger in our midst and around the globe.
It is a tradition to put out a plate on the seder table to collect tzedakah for the hungry from those present. In Los Angeles, three restaurants making seders —Spago, Jar (one of my favorites), and Akasha — included a donation to MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, as part of their seders. And many old congregations around the world still put out plates in their lobbies for those in need. We saw a plate filled with tzedakah coins in one of the congregations we visited in Argentina this past year. In the words of Gandhi, “The only way God can appear to the hungry is in the form of bread.”
Here’s some food for thought:
Jewish Yale graduate, Joshua Malina, who played Will Bailey on West Wing and plays David Rosen on Scandal, wrote about asking friends to donate to MAZON through the Facebook app called Causes instead of giving him a birthday present last year. Instead of another chochke or gift he didn’t need, he was able to mark another year of health and blessing by collecting thousands of dollars for an organization that feeds the hungry, regardless of faith or background.
We hunger for a life of meaning. We hunger to repair our world. Consider doing Tikkun Olam this year. Use your fast to create awareness and facilitate change in our world. I think that is the fast God has in mind.
If you think about it, you hunger all year, not just today. You hunger for: Access and Acceptance, Belonging, Certainty, Dignity, Emotional Stability, Friendship, God, Health and Happiness and Hope, Integrity in Government, Justice, Kindness, Life and Love, Meaning, New Beginnings, Openness, Peace, Quietude, Respect, Security, Truth, Unconditional love, Values, Wisdom, Xbox, Youthfulness… we hunger for Zillions of things over the course of one year. There are all kinds of hunger.
Whatever we hunger for, we should all hunger to engage in Tikkun Olam, the Jewish value of repairing the world, which includes healing the sick, clothing the naked, providing shelter for the homeless, raising the poor from the chains of poverty, supporting programs to assist and give equal access to the disenfranchised and the disabled, sustaining our elderly with dignity, preserving our environment, and protecting our planet. Tikkun Olam is not about social consciousness or political party affiliation. Tikkun Olam is about the religious responsibility to be God’s partner in the ongoing work of Creation; and believe me there is work to do.
In our Blue Gates of Prayer, Shabbat morning, Service III on p. 333, we read from the meditation words we should live by, “Some spirits hunger: they long for friendship; they crave understanding; they yearn for warmth. May we in our common need and striving gain strength from one another as we share our joys, lighten each others burdens and pray for the welfare of our community.”
Last year, Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks of England wrote an article entitled, “Why Fighting Poverty and Hunger is a Religious Duty.” Rabbi Sacks began the article, which was featured on Huffington Post by writing,
“One of my favourite Jewish sayings is, ‘Many people worry about their own stomachs and the state of other people’s souls.’ The real task is to do the opposite: to worry about other people’s stomachs and the state of your own soul.” Or as Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883) used to put it: “Someone else’s material needs are my spiritual responsibility.”
On this day of Yom Kippur, as we engage in a communal fast of worldwide proportions, may we do what the rabbi suggests. May we worry about other people’s hunger, even as we seek to find spiritual nourishment for our individual souls.
Not a sermon, just food for thought.