Food Stamp Challenge

Tomorrow after nightfall, we will recite Havdala and conclude Shabbat, and – as always – I will wish my family a shavua tov, a good week. But for me, this coming week will not be so good – or at least not so easy. Because when Shabbat ends, I will begin a week of the Food Stamp Challenge, a program organized by the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, along with a coalition of other faith-based anti-poverty groups, called Fighting Poverty with Faith. (Members include the Jewish Federations of North America and the Reform and Reconstructionist movements.)

On this challenge, participants restrict their consumption to the average food stamp benefit of $4.50 per person per day, or an average of $1.50 per meal. That’s a modest amount for a modest time period – just one week. It’s much more difficult to imagine living on that budget with no end in sight.

I myself will shrink the period by a bit and do only six days – since it seems wrong to me not to rejoice on Shabbat with appropriate celebratory meals. So from the end of this Shabbat to the beginning of the next, I will spend a grand total of $27 on food and drink.

(Hmm. I do have a wedding to celebrate on Sunday, and it’s against the rules both of etiquette and Jewish law not to celebrate with the family. I may have to add another day next week to compensate.)

I will have more to say about this exercise tomorrow morning during Shabbat services in the Ansche Chesed sanctuary, also coinciding with another fine program, the American Jewish World Service’s (AJWS) Global Hunger Shabbat. (Check out that site – good stuff there.) Hope to see you there.

Demonstrative and time-limited exercises like this cannot give a person like me any true experience of hunger and food insecurity. Because “hunger is worse than the sword,” says the Talmud [Bava Batra 8b] and I am certainly not going to die from one week on a budget. But I hope this exercise does attune me more to the experience of the 45 million Americans who receive food stamps, and the millions of American households who struggle with hunger.

I’m also undertaking this challenge to express my belief in the necessity of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – the official name of “food stamps”). This month the deficit reduction commission will release proposals on controlling federal spending; this year the farm bill will be reauthorized. Now is a time to re-affirm that the wealthiest society in history must remain committed to feeding its hungry citizens.

Keep an eye out for updates from me this week on what the food stamp challenge is like. You may want to give it a try yourself.

Author
Recent Posts

Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky

Jeremy Kalmanofsky has served as rabbi at Ansche Chesed since 2001. He loves working at this synagogue because our community embodies the best of committed Jewish life: study that stretches the mind, ritual that moves the heart, and acts of caring that improve the world. You will find him engaged in each of these areas of Jewish life at Ansche Chesed.He particularly enjoys opportunities to talk with our members about their own spiritual journeys. “My favorite line of classical prayer is P’tach Libi, open my heart,” he says. “That is what religion is meant for: opening up your heart to life.” He is grateful for the opportunities to share the special moments of your lives, whether joyous or sad.Rabbi Kalmanofsky is a diligent student, especially in the traditions of Jewish thought and mysticism, and engaged daily with Talmud.He was ordained in 1997 by the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He also studied Torah at Machon Pardes in Jerusalem, and earned a B.A. at Cornell University. He and Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky have four children: Yedidya, Hadas, Isaiah and Odelya.

Latest posts by Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky (see all)