Pesach is fast approaching, and as we’ve regularly reminded you here on the RACblog, the holiday is a great time to draw parallels between our history and the present. We’ve provided you some ways to integrate social action into your Seder; earlier this week, a high school student from Arkansas told you about his confirmation class’ project to address current hunger issues in conjunction with traditional Passover themes.
Today, JTA published an op-ed by Rabbi Elliott A. Kleinman, chief programming officer of the Union for Reform Judaism and a board member of Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger. The piece, titled “At Passover, a plea for the Child Nutrition Bill,” addresses
the modern-day plague of hunger, especially among children. He writes:
…It is the specifics of the seder’s message of freedom from hunger
that cries out to us from across this land of plenty in which so many
don’t have even enough food to eat. The need to eat is the most basic
of human needs. It is a need so vital that we must say that no one who
is hungry can be considered free in any sense of the word.For the Americans who live in poverty and for whom hunger is
the defining feature of daily subsistence, hunger is enslavement. For
when all your emotional and physical resources and energy must be
channeled into the quest for basic sustenance, nothing is left over for
anything else – nothing left to give to your children, nothing left
over for education, nothing left over to look around at the rest of the
world, nothing left to find the means to move out of slavery.And it is the epitome of cynicism to proclaim that access to
adequate nutrition is not at the core of poverty in the United States
today.As with most of society’s ills and failures, children suffer the most. They are dependent on adults for whatever they receive.
For Jews, taking care of our children and the children of our
communities is a moral imperative. Psalm 82: 3-4 calls upon us to
“defend the poor and the orphan; deal justly with the poor and the
destitute, and to rescue the weak and the needy.”So it is appropriate at Passover time and our call to the hungry among
us that we also raise our voices to Congress to re-authorize the Child
Nutrition Bill. This bill funds free and reduced-price lunches in our
public schools, summer and afterschool food programs, free breakfast
programs and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and
Children (WIC), which provides vital nutritious foods to new mothers,
infants and children up to age 5. Food that is made available staves
off serious health and social problems that occur later in life as a
result of poor nutrition during the key developmental years.
Read the rest
of Rabbi Kleinman’s op-ed here and let us know what you think. How will
you use this Pesach to raise awareness of child hunger and to advocate
for laws that will ensure no child goes hungry?
We encourage you to host a Child Nutrition Seder of your own, or to use our simple one-page insert to incorporate elements of advocacy and awareness into your traditional Seder. You can also write to Congress
now in support of the Child Nutrition Bill – and encourage your
friends, family members and fellow congregants to do the same. Learn
more at www.rac.org/childnutrition.