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Roundup

The Jewish Response To Hunger

Robert Sklar

Editor

W

hat's the Jewish community's
national response to hunger?
It's MAZON. The national
organization allocates Jewish community
contributions to prevent and fight hunger
among people of all faiths and back-
grounds and, of course, in Israel, where
more than a third of all kids don't have
enough to eat.
Hunger and the
financial inability to
buy enough food are
soaring in America
because of the econom-
ic recession as well as
because of poverty and
other economic factors.
"The good news is
Joel Jacob
that if we are able to
get the government to play the necessary
leadership role and then have charities
and businesses fill in the gaps, we can
end this problem in a few years': said
West Bloomfield businessman Joel Jacob,
chairman of MAZON: A Jewish Response
to Hunger.
He speaks around the country at syna-
gogues to spread the MAZON message.
He spoke last Friday at Temple Israel in
West Bloomfield.

Building Freeze Protesters
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Thousands of West
Bank settlers and their supporters con-
verged on Jerusalem to protest the govern-
ment's serious consideration of renewing
the settlement construction freeze.
The protesters demonstrated Sunday
outside the Prime Minister's Office carry-
ing signs reading "We will not give up this
land" and "Build houses, plant trees, our
answer to the freeze."
Municipal offices in communities across
the West Bank went on strike Sunday, and
many schools were closed. The commu-
nities bused in residents, many of them
students, for the protest.
"He who says he is looking out for
Israel's security and at the same time
offering to return to the 1967 borders
is basically telling Israel to return to
the borders which Abba Eban called
the Auschwitz borders': National
Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau of the
Yisrael Beiteinu Party told the demonstra-
tors. "Such a demand should be rejected."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
reportedly is poised to freeze construc-
tion in the settlements, excluding eastern
Jerusalem, for an additional 90 days fol-

10 November 25 • 2010

Today, 50 million Americans, including
17 million kids, live in households rife
with hunger or unable to fully afford the
food their families need, known in gov-
ernment circles as "food insecurity."
Hunger, Jacob emphasized, is not just a
Third World problem, which is why num-
bers are up at American food pantries
and soup kitchens.
"Our collective mental images of hun-
ger are usually of African children with
protruding ribs and bloated bellies, sur-
rounded by flies and Angelina Jolie, sitting
in parched, cracked dirt.
"While the problem isn't quite that bad
here yet, the truth is that millions of our
neighbors are now forced to ration food,
choose between food and medicine, and
skip meals."
Combating hunger and food insecurity
is an important goal in itself, but it's also a
sound investment, Jacob said.
"Tons of data': he said, "prove that hun-
gry children learn less effectively, hungry
workers work less productively and food
insecurity costs the nation tens of billions
of dollars annually in health care costs."
A study by Harvard University's School
of Public Health found that domestic
hunger and food insecurity cost the
American economy $90 billion annu-
ally. "Given the massive increase in food
insecurity since then:' Jacob said, "leading

anti-hunger advocate Joel Berg has updat-
ed those calculations to conclude that the
cost of domestic hunger to our economy
now likely exceeds $124 billion."
Because people who are hungry can't
afford the most nutritious food, and
because healthful food often doesn't exist
in low-income neighborhoods, hunger and
obesity are flip sides of the same malnutri-
tion coin. "Obesity-related deaths cause
millions of deaths per year, but we can't
solve this problem until we also solve the
hunger problem': Jacob said.
That's where MAZON comes into play.
Each year, it grants $4 million to 300
carefully screened hunger-relief agencies,
including emergency food providers, food
banks and advocacy groups that seek long-
term solutions to hunger.
MAZON, Hebrew for "food': not only
provides for people who are hungry, but
also addresses the systemic causes of hun-
ger and poverty, domestically and globally.
"Although grants are provided to many
organizations serving the Jewish poor, in
keeping with the best of Jewish tradition,
MAZON believes it is important to respond
to all who are in need': Jacob said.
"While MAZON certainly does sup-
port nonprofit organizations that directly
feed people, it places significant focus
on helping organizations that help enroll
eligible families in government nutrition

assistance programs and effectively fight
hunger at its root causes."
MAZON is supported by 100,000
donors.
Jewish tradition teaches us that, when
it comes to helping others, we must act
not only with our hearts, but with our
heads as well. Donating time and money
must do more than make us feel good; it
must be effective in solving the problem.
Our Jewish faith teaches us that the high-
est form of charity is to help sustain a
person before they become impoverished.
To that end, Jacob noted President
Obama's pledge to end child hunger by
2015 as a first step to ending all hunger
in America. Jacob urged enactment of a
new, better funded federal child nutrition
bill that increases the availability and
improves the quality of school meals. He
urged American Jews to advocate against
hunger and press their members of
Congress.
"When Americans have banded togeth-
er in the past': Jacob said, "we've solved
major social problems. We ended slavery.
We ended legal child labor. Now it's time
to end hunger in America.
"With your donations and activism,
we can conduct the work and build the
movement necessary to wipe out hunger
here once and for all. The Jewish tradition
demands no less." E

lowing a 10-month freeze that ended on
Sept. 26.
The United States reportedly has offered
Israel incentives to agree to the additional
freeze. They include a gift of an additional
20 F-35 stealth fighter jets, in addition to
the 20 Israel already has committed to buy
at a cost of $3 billion, a promise to veto
anti-Israel motions in international bodies
and security guarantees.

Forum Focus:
increased Campus
Safeguards
Against Anti-
Semitism
Current and prospec-
tive college students
and their families and
Susan
concerned Jewish
Tuchman
alumni and university
donors are encouraged to attend a commu-
nity forum Wednesday, Dec. 8, on campus
anti-Semitism and the changes announced
by the U.S. Department of Education to
extend Title VI Civil Rights safeguards to
protect Jewish students.
The free program will begin at 7:30 p.m.
at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.
Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist
Organization of America's Center for Law
and Justice, will keynote the program.
Tuchman spearheaded a six-year cam-
paign to ensure that U.S. civil rights laws are
vigorously applied and enforced to protect
Jewish students from harassment, intimida-
tion, discrimination and bias increasingly
prevalent on campus and in the classroom.
The presidents and administration from

Michigan public colleges and universities
with significant Jewish enrollment, alumni
and benefactors have been invited to par-
ticipate in this event. They have been asked
to share what policies and protocols are in
place and what changes are being made to
conform with the new guidelines articulated
by the Department of Education to guaran-
tee Title VI protections to Jewish students.
The program is the second in a series
of ZOA community education presentations
examining the alarming rise in anti-Sem-
itism on college campuses. At the kickoff
program in October, Kenneth Marcus,
former head of the U.S. Department of
Education's Office for Civil Rights, present-
ed a portrait of the dynamics contributing
to the escalation of campus anti-Semitism.
Prior to the start of the Dec. 8 pro-
gram, Tuchman will brief educators and
university officials on the enforcement
responsibilities ensuing from the Education
Department's new guidelines.
ZOA Michigan Region is co-spon-
soring the event with StandWithUs/
Michigan and Temple Beth El's Israel Chai
Committee. RSVP to the local ZOA office:
(248) 282-0088.

Mike Tyson
Kosher Dining
NEW YORK (JTA) --
Mike Tyson reportedly
is planning to launch
a chain of high-end
kosher restaurants.
The former heavy-
Mike Tyson
weight boxing champ
is in talks with businessman Moshe
Malamud, owner of the Franklin Mint and
chairman of the Asian technology ser-
vice provider emaimai, to break into the
kosher-food business, the New York Post
reported last Friday.
"They discussed the concept as well as
the name, but nothing was finalized': a
representative of the kosher Manhattan

Roundup on page 12