26
Friday, December 27, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
WHAT'S in
fi MIME?
EVERYTHING!
SErViOUZ
PIAN CO
NEWS
A Levy From Parties
Would Aid The Hungry
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BY ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
"We want to build a bridge bet-
ween consumption and compas-
sion," said Irving Cramer. We
want to add to peoples' joy. And we
want, of course, to feed the hun-
gry.
"
Cramer is head of Mazon, a new
group formed as a Jewish re-
sponse to world-wide hunger. The
organization, whose name means
"sustenance" in Hebrew, was
created last July. It is now recruit-
ing volunteers around the coun-
try. Cramer said Mazon will use a
novel way of raising funds — a
self-imposed levy on Jewish rites
to increase Jews'
of passage
awareness of hunger and to bols-
ter their presence in the field of
hunger relief. Jews and non-Jews
in the U.S. and elsewhere will be
aided.
The impetus for Mazon came
from an article in the April, 1985
issue ofMoment a Jewish monthly
magazine with a modest circula-
tion. Recalling the talmudic in-
junction that Jewish homes at
Passover time be open to "all who
are hungry," Moment's editor,
Leonard Fein, proposed that the
generosity of this spirit be incor-
porated into an organization dedi-
cated to feeding the under-
privileged around the world.
With 40,000 children around
the globe dying of hunger each
day and public attention becom-
ing more focused on the problem
of starvation, FeiA's suggestion
was well-timed. He urged that no
priority for those receiving aid
from his new group be placed on
their religion, their government,
or their political philosophies.
Funding, he suggested, would
come from a voluntary three per-
cent surcharge on the expenses of
such events as bar and bat
mitzvahs and weddings.
"Let us set aside a portion of our
joy to feed the hungry," wrote
Fein.
The response to Fein's idea led
to Mazon's formation. Headquar-
terd in Los Angeles, its 27-
member board of directors is
chaired by Theodore Mann, presi-
dent of the American Jewish Con-
gress, and includes former U.S.
Rep. Bella Abzug, author Charles
Silberman, actor Ed Asner and
Rabbi Irving Greenberg, head of
the National Jewish Resource
Center.
Irving Cramer, the executive
director of Mazon since July, told
The Jewish News that virtually
all the organizations working in
the field of hunger relief are
either Christian or have no religi-
ous affiliation.
"As individual Jews," said
Cramer, "we care much about
hunger because such concerns
were in the tradition of individual
Jews. But Jewish institutions
generally did not address hunger
because they had many concerns
that the broader community did
not have."
The three percent figures was
not arbitrarily chosen, said
Cramer. "We tossed around sev-
eral numbers — five percent, ten
percent. Three percent was cho-
sen because it takes away from
people the ability to say they can't
afford to give. If someone spends
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$10,000 on a bar mitzvah, another
$300 to Mazon doesn't make much
difference."
Mazon's potential for raising
funds is significant. With Ameri-
can Jews reportedly spending be-
tween $500 million and $800 mill-
ion yearly on catered affairs,
Mazon could conceivably raise
$24 million. Realistically,
though, Cramer expects funds to
come from about one-third of the
Jewish affairs held annually. This
will total about $6 million, he
said.
Such a relatively small sum
could be effective, said Cramer.
He noted that the budget of
Oxfam America, one of the more
effective agencies in the world-
wide battle against hunger, is be-
tween $5 and $6 million.
Mazon now has volunteers in 20
cities. They are asking local rab-
bis and their congregations to
participate in the project. A par-
ticipating rabbi would ask con-
gregants planning a wedding or a
bar mitzvah, for instance, to par-
A self-imposed levy
on Jewish rites of
passage would
increase hunger
awareness and
bolster relief
ticipate in Mazon. By next June,
Mazon hopes to have 100 par-
ticipating congregations around
the country.
"We want Mazon to be a bridge
between the vast consumption of
some of these events," said
Cramer, and decency, humanity
and compassion." Contributors to
Mazon may elect to place on tables
at their affairs a small card that
states, "We are pleased to share
our good fortune with Mazon, a
Jewish response to hunger."
By early May, Cramer expects
Mazon will distribute its first
grants to projects that fight
hunger. So far, he said, the re-
sponse to Mazon has been posi-
tive. A father in California who
was reluctantly spending $25,000
on his daughter's wedding said
contributing three percent of the
affair's cost to mazon helped give
the event "some sense." In the in-
vitation to her belated bat
mitzvah, a wealthy thirty-year-
old Toronto woman asked guests
to make a donation to Mazon in-
stead of giving her a gift. The
woman was already contributing
three percent of the affair's cost to
Mazon.
Cramer did not expect that Ma-
zon's goals of raising Jews' con-
sciousness about hunger will
cause them to have less lavish af-
fairs. "Can we change the fact
that people are giving circuses?"
he asked, referring to current
styles of bar and bat mitzvahs and
Jewish weddings. "Certainly not.
But we do want them to have a
contemporary way to express
Jewish compassion. And we want
to do this in a way that is intrusive
to the event."
L