In This Generation, A Fifth Question

...But Jews as Jews...

...if just half the potential amount were actually raised, $6 million...

...And let that council include the ablest and most trustworthy representatives of all our organizations, of all our disparate parts...

...Will people agree to participate...

...That is not the "will" of prediction, but of injunction: The hungry will eat because we will see to it that they have food...

...she tells me there is need for fifty such as she...

...Henceforward, as in olden times, let us set aside a portion of our joy to feed the hungry...

...Let those who care about such things join with others, of whatever faith or people, and together act on their convictions...

...A FIFTH QUESTION the hungry had names and faces: They were neighbors down on their luck or the stranger come to town...

...But why hunger, and not disease, or war...

...Nor is the burden thus placed on the caterers especially onerous...

...Nor did a man named Hana bar Hanilai, who kept an inn in Babylonia that had, we are told, four doors open on four sides (following the examples of Abraham and Job...

...The move from heady rhetoric to grungy detail is inevitably somewhat disconcerting, for now we must deal with all the difficult elements of a proposal that means to move beyond inspiration, that means actually to end in feeding hungry people...

...But they are not, and while we may labor with one hand to try to expand governments' sense of responsibility, shall we not labor with the other to defend those whom governments have chosen not to protect...

...And the hungry would be left-as they are-to fend for themselves...

...WHEN THE WORDS OF WELCOME WERE FIRST SPOKEN...

...Some of what is raised will go to Jews who suffer hunger, for we are obliged to care for those closest to us...

...For the poor cannot be hostages to this political belief or to that...

...Can we unite on this, across our denominational lines, across our political boundaries...

...Isaiah 58:10-11...

...we are talking about a voluntary surcharge of $120...

...One source estimates that the American Jewish community, in the aggregate, spends-gulp-$400 million a year on catered functions...

...Were that to be our teaching, the Judaism we seek to defend would come to be seen by its adherents and practitioners as a Judaism of the periphery, a Judaism come to address the residual questions and to meet the lesser challenges of our lives and times...

...Drawing on all our resources-our wealth and our wisdom, our customs and our competencies, our memories and our dreams-let us create an old/new tradition...

...Moreover, elasticity of budget typically increases as cost of function increases...

...There is a particular aesthetic to a mechanism that asks those who profit from purveying food to lend a hand in battling hunger...

...Were this to be a pervasive condition, caterers would-legitimately-balk at participating in the program...

...WHICH IS TO ASK, IS THERE NOT MORE WE CAN DO TO FEED THE HUNGRY...

...Why should caterers agree to participate...

...For the fact is that we do better when we organize ourselves to do good than when we leave the doing of good to our individual energies...

...ARE ALREADY TOO WEAK TO RISE UP AND MAKE THEIR WAY TO WHERE WE ARE...

...TOO WEAK EVEN TO HEAROURINVTTATION...

...Imagine an "affair"-a wedding, a bar or bat mitzvah party-that costs say, $4,000...

...Yes, in numbers that will grow as time goes on, as the tradition becomes established...

...Is that a significant sum in the war against hunger...

...And if, after all, more complex solutions, such as a "progressive" surcharge, ranging, say, from two to five percent, are required, then let us invent them...

...See what happens when you start slogging through the swamp of detail...

...Still, and while recognizing mat this program is not intended as a tax on caterers, the arithmetic shows that a caterer who now realizes a profit of 10 percent will, at worst-that is, if everyone "cancels the canapeV'-realize a profit of 9.7 percent...

...All the rhetoric, the inspiring stuff, gets left behind, and soon you have to work to remember why you entered the swamp...

...Nor, for that matter, ought the goal of societal harmony be deprecated as "merely" of tactical interest...

...This is not about guilt, but about the appreciation of good fortune and a way to share it...

...Three percent would mean $12 million...

...and let them be the agents of its transmission to a new council that will allocate the dollars thus raised...

...And every single one of them, as of all the hungry-yes, one hundred percent of them-was created in the image of God, is no less in God's sight than any one of us...

...let the caterers add this voluntary tax-deductible surcharge to their invoice...

...But Abraham, from whom we first learned hospitality, did not stop to ask whether his visitors were Jews before he welcomed and fed them...

...Among them perhaps the most compelling is that we ought to avoid the suggestion that when we confront the great and urgent problems of humankind, be they the problems of hunger or of the proliferation of nuclear weapons or of the earth's ecology, we must be mute as Jews...

...Now and then, to be sure, a caterer may encounter a client whose budget is so inelastic that an agreement to pay the surcharge will come at the caterer's expense...

...their thirst is not slaked by our gentle sentiment...

...What to do...

...Though Ethiopia is but a half-day's journey from New York, its people live on the other side of a whirlwind...

...Can the amounts raised make a difference...

...And whoever went in hungry went out full...

...hence not less than one-third, but no more than two-thirds, to others in need...

...I have no more than $4,000 to spend on this function, but I want to participate in the campaign against hunger, so please cancel $120 worth of the canapes we were talking about...

...Their tasks are merely to make the information available to their prospective clients, and then to handle the billing, receipt and transfer of funds, incidental to their regular billing practice...

...We would be left with trivial pursuits-and an intolerable distortion of Jewish understandings...

...Let us launch a Jewish campaign against hunger...

...But hunger among them, because it is specific, and because it is urgent, and because though we may not yet know what to do about the general problems of famine and starvation, we know quite well what to do about the particular men and women and children who are today about to perish...

...And for our own sake as well, as we are taught: If you offer your compassion to the hungry And satisfy the famished creature-Then shall your light shine in darkness And your gloom shall be like noonday...

...So, a deep rhetorical breath, and then on to the details: "Kol dichfin yeitei v'yeichol"-the Aramaic verse that we recite at the beginning of our Passover-is conventionally translated to mean "Let all who are hungry enter and eat...

...Would it not be deeply rewarding and refreshing and renewing, come Pesach 5746, to be able to say the words with new meaning, to know that we have found a new way to invite all who are hungry to enter and eat, a way that has saved thousands from indignity and humiliation, saved children from death, saved parents the unspeakable agony of watching their children die before them...

...The Lord will guide you always...

...The claims on our energy and good will are infinite...

...The budget of Oxfam America, one of the most effective agencies in the worldwide battle to defeat hunger, is between $5 and $6 million...

...we ought not imply that, as Jews, we can speak out only when our particular interests are directly affected...

...inside, 60 bakers were kept busy baking bread during the day, that there be enough for any who entered, and 60 more bakers worked the night through for the sake of the "bashful poor" who would not be seen asking for bread during the day...

...The classic argument was "mipnei darkei shalom—for the sake of societal harmony...

...the clients most likely to cancel are those whose orders are most modest and whose reductions therefore would have least impact on the caterer's total profits...

...To whom will the funds be distributed...

...The preferred method will be to write one check, covering both costs and surcharge, and to receive from the caterer in return (for income tax purposes) a separate receipt for the amount of the surcharge, verifying its transmission to the Jewish Campaign Against Hunger-or whatever the mechanism of distribution is named...

...But there are reasons that go beyond the tactical...

...Specifically, let us prevail on the caterers of our community to pass on to all who come to them the information that the Jewish community now urges this action on us all...

...all of these, and more...

...No statistics of the suffering...

...We are here because a friend of mine recently rented a truck from the tailgate of which twice a day she distributes the food she spends the night collecting, leavings from restaurants and supermarkets...

...So if logic and seriousness of purpose require that we organize-why not as Jews...

...Let those who would lend their voice and their hand make themselves known to us, and we shall pass their names along to those who convene to make it happen...

...Yes, I believe that it would be best were governments to be so organized that none would be hungry...

...You shall be like a watered garden, Like a spring whose waters do not fail...

...Today, the hungry are nameless and faceless...

...But the words are as readily translated less permissively: "AH the hungry will enter and eat...

...All the feasts, for there is no reason that this effort cannot extend to our public functions, and happen in the country clubs and hotels we use as well as in the synagogues and halls and homes where caterers normally work...

...while we debate political philosophies, they starve...

...So what is left is to do this thing, to begin...

...This seems like a reasonable place, then, for a quick rhetorical infusion: We are here, talking about caterers and canapes because last night, when I went to close the shades, they were there again-the new legion of the damned, those who pick through the garbage cans not for discarded toaster ovens but for crusts...

...I say this, and know that there are those who will say that there are so few of "us" that we are obliged to care only for our very own, that we have no business-at least as Jews-organizing to do good-in-general...

...Quite specifically the tradition teaches that for reasons of peace our charities must be directed to the needs of the general society (as well as to our own needs...

...But why not...

...Left to ourselves, we will find ourselves-it is inevitable-distracted, diverted...

...We have a long-standing tradition of sharing with the Jewish poor precisely at the times of our celebrations...

...How to do it...

...Opening our doors, as gracious a gesture as that be, and speaking the words, as fervent the wish they express, will not fill their bellies...

...If the fast that is required of us, the fast that is, as Isaiah has it, "favorable" in the sight of God is "to share your bread with the hungry and to take the wretched poor into your home," al achat kamah v'chamah-how much more so still-must that be so of the feasts we observe...

...The sums are scarcely overwhelming...

...No haunting evocations of the dead and dying in Africa or of the hungry in the streets of our own country, no stories of children sifting through the dirt and the sand for a seed, a leaf...

...No, not hunger instead of disease or instead of war...

...The passage reads, "Let all who are hungry...

...so, too, those who grovel for a crust in the streets and alleys of our cities...

...He will slake your thirst in parched places And give strength to your bones...

...Only two facts provide all the information that is needed: Each day, across our planet, 40,000 children die of hunger, or of infection brought on by hunger's devastation...

...So here, a place and way to start: When we have, praise God, cause for celebration, and when the form of our celebration involves breaking bread together, let us add a three percent surcharge to our simchah, and let the funds thus raised be earmarked to feed the hungry...

...If we were to help mend the world only as human beings "in general," what would be left for us to do as Jews in particular...

...Here we move from the rhetorical to the practical...

...Let there be, then, a broad guideline within which the funds will be allocated: No more than two-thirds, but not less than one-third, to the Jewish hungry...

...On $10,000-$300...

...SO, THIS YEARvA RrTH QUESTION: CAN WE FIND A WAY TO TRANSLATE RITUAL INTO REALITY...