Tuna Fish and The Tz'dakah Habit

SIEGEL, DANNY

TUNA FISH AND THE TZ'DAKAH HABIT How Shleppe and Laya taught the author a very important mitzvah Before leaving for the Soviet Union 11 years ago, I remember asking my friend, Rabbi Jonathan...

...With a surprised look and a bit of rachmoniss for my ignorance of the ways of the Soviets, he expounded on a thorough list of differences between the two cultures—cars and lack of cars, unicolored and multicolored buildings, phonebooks everywhere and phonebooks nowhere, food products we take for granted that would bring high prices on a black market over there...
...Even when I am away from them 1 can still see and smell the fish...
...Laya" is short for "Himalayan," long-haired like a Persian but with points like a Siamese...
...Once, standing by the shelves, I tried to figure out how many loaves of bread one five-pound bag of flour could make, and how long it could keep me alive if that were absolutely all there was left to eat in the It haunts me how Shleppe and Laya's dinner could be my own, maybe, or is, indeed, the daily fare of many people...
...Cans, tins, bags full of goodies for my friend's household pets, Shleppe and Laya...
...Leviticus Rabba 34:8) Now I am feeding the cats again, considering the texture, the smell, the color of cat-tuna...
...As I forked out a little into each of their bowls, I began to consider the specific differences between cat-tuna and human-tuna...
...mals...
...Now the message came through more clearly, and I asked myself, "Just what would it take to reduce me—what financial straits and human despair—would bring me to eat Shleppe and Laya's kind of tuna...
...Electrical appliances, tchatchkes and grocery store items on the two lists were worlds apart...
...Since that time with Shleppe and Laya a few months ago, I have discussed this project with a number of friends, all of whom seem enthusiastic about it...
...We'd let them accumulate and then take them to some food project...
...The Midrash tells us that "Rabbi Tanhum would always buy two pieces of meat and two portions of vegetables, even though he needed only one for himself...
...I recalled a story of someone involved in a food project for elderly poor Jews in New York, how he and others had discovered some people eating dog food...
...We Americans do want the best for our pets, or so the media assure us...
...Still— nightmarish as it might be—it is, nonetheless, tuna...
...I could have picked Meow Mix or Tender Vittles or any one of three or four shelves' worth in the A&P or Krogers...
...It was nosh-time, and Shleppe and Laya heard the sound of the electric can opener and came sprinting over the furniture to their bowls...
...4. For families with children of all ages, it is an ideal way of inculcating the reality of tz'dakah...
...The Tz'dakah Habit negates that: Some one, some few will benefit...
...The media are full of news items about food projects: Cook for a Friend, Grow for a Friend, outdated foodstuffs from stores delivered to foodbanks, restaurants giving over their surpluses or cooking a little extra, even a restaurant in Tel Aviv that has certain hours where all the food is free for any poor people who need it...
...A Dallas Federation group has recently adopted the grocery buying as an adjunct to its regular programs...
...She is notorious for picking up weird things and taking them to far and secret places (such as a shankbone one Passover...
...They are normal cats, sometimes nudnicky, sometimes obsessively affectionate, and nearly always on the look-out for a nosh...
...Ec-clesiastes Rabba 7:30) To whatever extent we may choose, it appears that the time is right to follow his example...
...3. Food-buying "feels" different from check-writing alone...
...One was for him, and one was for the poor...
...Not at all...
...TUNA FISH AND THE TZ'DAKAH HABIT How Shleppe and Laya taught the author a very important mitzvah Before leaving for the Soviet Union 11 years ago, I remember asking my friend, Rabbi Jonathan Porath, "How many kinds of salad dressing do they have in Russia...
...As we talk about The Tz'dakah Habit, though, we believe there are modest implications which are important to consider: 1. In the face of the massiveness of hungry thousands, individuals may feel helpless...
...There is nothing I can do to change that," they would say...
...Just like in the commercials, the cats did a good job of gobbling it down...
...Of that there is no doubt at all...
...It's not a new idea, The Tz'dakah Habit...
...I now realize that I have been collecting stories about this kind of mitzvah for about a year—ever since I visited The Ark's food pantry in Chicago: coffee, flour, canned goods, all manner of foods for the down-and-out of the Jewish community...
...probably nothing more than the fact that whatever is left over from the good parts for people goes into the cans for the cats...
...I was doing secondhand author-thinking, and even though I had been horrified by other writings on the subject, particularly Knut Hamsun's novel, Hunger, I knew my imaginings in no way approximated the reality...
...It was an unpleasant vision, frightening, a thought that recurred time and again as I read article upon article about food distribution to the poor and soup kitchens, and as I opened more and more cans for the cats in the house...
...I had already been warned by the Talmud to be on the lookout for mitzvahs-through-aniContributing editor Danny Siegel's most recent article in these pages was "Pomegranates and Other Words For Our Time," which appeared in September 1982...
...Shleppe, by the way, is a tortoise-shell with a many-toned meow...
...I flashed on bizarre pictures of miscellaneous body parts thrown into a huge grinder and other humongous machines, steel giants stuffing it all into containers for felines around the free world...
...Where Heaven and Earth Touch: An Anthology of Midrash and Halachah and Unlocked Doors: The Selected Poems of Danny Siegel, 1969-1983, will be published by Townhouse Press later this year...
...His two books...
...Cat-tuna costs less than half the price of the least expensive variety of human-tuna, and its smell is tolerable, though a little strong...
...I thought of that conversation recently: I was buying cat food...
...house...
...It haunts me how Shleppe and Laya's dinner could be my own, maybe, or is, indeed, the daily fare of many people...
...2. Since everyone shops frequently, The Tz'dakah Habit will serve as a constant reminder of our obligations to perform the mitzvah of tz'dakah...
...So says the Midrash: "The poor person does more for the homeowner than the homeowner does for the poor person...
...It is an important supplement to tz'dakah work that takes the form of money...
...It will be deeply ingrained in their way of living...
...One passage—on page 100b of the section Eruvin—specifically mentions cats...
...It happened again, while shopping...
...Furthermore, the family is tied together that much more strongly: a special shelf in the house would be set aside for the food-for-others, the food would be delivered to recipients or an agency such as the Jewish Family Service by the family-as-a-unit, the accumulating insights from the project could be discussed at the dinner table...
...They call it "The Tz'dakah Habit—and it is no more or less than that: go shopping, buy an item or two for tz'dakah, stockpile it, then distribute it either personally or through an appropriate agency...
...Again, it was frightening, particularly since I know that no one can understand hunger unless he or she has been through it personally...
...While I watched, the revelation struck...
...Thus her name...
...My friends and I do not believe this will solve all the problems of hunger in America...
...That's where the mitzvah-lesson comes into the story...
...That is the primary etiology of her name, though it is clear that her owner intended overtones of Princess Laya from Star Wars, and also one of our four foremothers...
...It was a visit that impressed me greatly, but not until 1 watched Shleppe and Laya did the extension of such a project come to mind—The Tz'dakah Habit...
...By taking a little time and making a little room week after week, for years, the benefits to the givers would be immense...
...If a four-year-old or 16-year-old goes with a parent to the store and is offered the opportunity—at frequent intervals—to make the tz'dakah selection, I imagine that years down the line the Jewish community will not have to struggle so mightily to sensitize many of its members to this mitzvah...
...I was serving a container of cat-tuna...
...My friend and I had decided that whenever we'd go grocery shopping, we'd always buy at least one item for tz'dakah: a can of fruit or vegetables, soups, whatever...

Vol. 8 • June 1983 • No. 6


 
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