A Sermon for Global Hunger Shabbat

The following material is designed to help you craft a sermon about global hunger. As you
utilize this material, please consider the following:

• Background: How knowledgeable is your community about the issue of hunger? Are
members of your community engaged in domestic anti-hunger work or committed to local
food production (such as a Community Supported Agriculture program)? Will they need
more context or less? A good place to look for additional details about causes of global
hunger is AJWS’s Fighting Hunger From the Ground Up website: www.ajws.org/hunger.
• Motivations for tikkun olam: Does your community intuitively understand the ways in
which hunger is a Jewish issue? Is your community already engaged in social justice
work?
• Enthusiasm: What motivates you to talk about global hunger with your community? Are
there personal stories or perspectives you can add to the sermon to convey this passion?
What steps have you or your community taken to end global hunger and can you share
these steps in the sermon?
• Follow-up: What would you like the outcomes of this sermon to be and have you taken
steps in advance to set them in motion? Some suggestions for future action are included
at the end of the sermon outline. You may consider choosing one or two that would be
most effective in your community and announcing your participation as part of the
sermon.

Beginnings
The following are four potential beginnings to the sermon. Please choose one or combine
elements of those that best fit your needs. Each potential beginning includes a bridge to the
stories of communities facing hunger today.

1. Parshah Connection: Shabbat Vayikra

What does it mean to give a sacrifice, to bring an offering of food to God? The concept may
seem very foreign to us today, given that we are used to offering prayers as a means of reaching
God. But for the ancient Israelites, sacrifices—animals, grain and incense—were a powerful way
to make a connection to the Divine. Our parshah this week, Vayikra, begins with a detailed
explanation of the various forms of sacrifices that the Israelites offered. One of the most
interesting aspects of the sacrifices is the way that they were tailored to each individual’s means:
if you could not afford to offer a bull, then you offered a goat or sheep. If not a sheep, then a
bird. Access to God was not limited by economic background.

In chapter 2 of Vayikra, the person bringing a grain offering to God is described as a “nefesh.” In
ancient Hebrew, a nefesh means simply a person, but starting in the rabbinic period, nefesh could
also mean a soul. The Rabbis played with this double meaning to suggest that a poor person
bringing some of her produce as a sacrifice was literally bringing part of her soul to God,
because to contribute from the sustenance of her household to God was like giving part of
herself.1 The rabbis tell the story of a poor woman who brought fine flour to the Temple as a
sacrifice. The priest sneered at her: “See what she offers! Is this really good enough to eat or
sacrifice?” He felt cheated out of the majestic meal that an offering of a goat or bull would have
given him. In a dream, he was told: “Do not despise her! It is regarded as if she had sacrificed
her own life.”2

The priest was so caught up in his own expectations, with the abundance usually signified by
animal sacrifices (and perhaps the rich portion that he as the priest would receive), that he could
not appreciate the sacrifice made by the person in front of him. What if he had been willing to
listen to the woman, to hear about all that had gone into her sacrifice? In the dream, he is
rebuked for ignoring the fact that the simple grain offering cost more to her than an offering of
meat from a wealthy person.

I think many of us can relate to getting caught up in our own reality like the priest did, even with
something positive, like tzedakah. We commit ourselves to helping others, but we do not always
stop to listen to the perspectives of those we are trying to help.

Today, over 1.1 billion people face chronic hunger in the world. To raise awareness about this
serious crisis, this weekend we are participating in a nationwide effort organized by American
Jewish World Service called Global Hunger Shabbat. I would like to take the opportunity during
this sermon to share stories with you about the experiences of communities around the world
who face chronic hunger and are working to overcome it. By listening to their stories, we can
learn about these communities and hear their perspectives. In addressing global hunger, this
process is critical. Unless we hear from those who are facing hunger, we cannot know how best
to help them meet their needs.

1
See Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, chapter 3.
2
Leviticus Rabbah 3:5.
2. Passover
During the Passover seder, we recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt. In retelling this story,
we are asked to imagine ourselves in the footsteps of our ancestors. We eat matzah to simulate
their experience of fleeing from Egypt with no time to wait for the bread to rise. We attempt to
transport ourselves back in time to experience what it felt like to be slaves, to be freed by God
and to wander in the desert.

Towards the beginning of the Passover seder, it is traditional to uncover the matzah and say, “Ha
lachma anya—this is the bread of poverty that our ancestors ate when they were slaves in Egypt.
Let all who are hungry come and eat.” I would like to propose that this Passover, we use matzah
not only to remind ourselves of the poverty and slavery our ancestors faced in Egypt, but also to
remind us of the over 1.1 billion people who face hunger today.

To raise awareness about this serious crisis, this weekend we are participating in a nationwide
effort organized by American Jewish World Service called Global Hunger Shabbat. I would like
to take the opportunity during this sermon to share stories with you about the experiences of
communities around the world who face chronic hunger and are working to overcome it. We
learn from Passover that storytelling is a powerful tool of transportation. By listening to their
stories, we can learn about these communities and hear their perspectives. In addressing global
hunger, this process is critical. Unless we hear from those who are facing hunger, we cannot
know how best to help them meet their needs.

3. An Informal Story
At a Jewish summer camp, a counselor was teaching her campers about the importance of
donating food to feed those facing hunger. One little girl—maybe she was six or seven—got very
upset. If people were hungry, she argued, wasn’t it because they had spent all of their money?
Didn’t they deserve to be hungry? Her counselor explained that it was more complicated than
that. Sometimes people didn’t have enough to eat because their salaries didn’t cover the rising
cost of food, or because they had to spend most of their money on rent or medicine. Sometimes
people were hungry because the food they planted did not grow; it rained too much or too little,
or it was too cold or too hot. As the counselor talked, she wasn’t sure her camper understood.

Over time, it has been hard for the counselor to shake her feeling that she did not give an
adequate answer to the girl’s question. She sought out a better answer, learning about the
complexities of global hunger. She learned that hunger today is not a problem stemming from a
lack of food, but from the absence of an equitable system to ensure that even the world’s poorest
communities can achieve food security—either by growing food themselves or having fair access
to the marketplace. The counselor also understood that it didn’t only matter that she wanted to
help, she had to learn about the most effective ways to make a difference directly from those
affected by hunger. And so she began to listen to the stories of people who were living with
hunger in different places around the world—to hear what caused their food insecurity and what
they identified as ways to solve it.

Today, over 1.1 billion people face chronic hunger in the world. To raise awareness about this
serious crisis, this weekend we are participating in a nationwide effort organized by American
Jewish World Service called Global Hunger Shabbat. I would like to take the opportunity during
this sermon to share stories with you about the experiences of communities around the world
who face chronic hunger and are working to overcome it. By listening to their stories, we can
learn about these communities and hear their perspectives. In addressing global hunger, this
process is critical. Unless we hear from those who are facing hunger, we cannot know how best
to help them meet their needs.

4. The Jewish Approach to Achieving Self-sufficiency

How do you give tzedakah? What giving priorities come first and what do you see as the goal of
giving? I would bet that if we went around the room, we might hear a variety of answers. Some
of us like to give where we know our gift will have a real impact. Some of us want to have a
personal connection to our recipients. Some reasons for giving are very practical, and others are
extremely personal. Does Jewish tradition gives us any guidelines in helping us decide how to
give tzedakah?

The Rambam (Maimonides) defined different levels of tzedakah in his legal code the Mishneh
Torah in the section called “Laws of Giving to the Poor” (Chapter 10:7-14). He wrote:

The highest degree, exceeded by none, is that of the person who assists a poor
person by providing him with a gift or a loan or by accepting him into a business
partnership or by helping him find employment—in a word, by putting him where
he can dispense with other people’s aid. With reference to such aid, it is said,
“You shall strengthen him…” (Leviticus 25:35), which means strengthen him in
such a manner that his falling into want is prevented.

Rambam argues that self-sufficiency is the highest level of tzedekah, enabling the recipient to
move past dependency on aid. This is especially true with one of the most urgent issues of our
day—global hunger. Over 1.1 billion people face hunger today. Providing food aid and donations
is critical in ensuring survival in some cases, but ultimately will not solve food insecurity in the
long term. But helping people achieve self-sufficiency—far more than ensuring they have food
on their table just tonight—is an essential and distinctive part of the Jewish solution to hunger.
We must help those facing hunger to move beyond dependency, reaching a state of self-
sufficiency in which they are truly “strengthened.” Our challenge and our responsibility is to
give in a way that provides people with the means to help themselves.

To raise awareness about the crisis of global hunger, this weekend we are participating in a
nationwide effort organized by American Jewish World Service called Global Hunger Shabbat.
The first step to helping people become self-sufficient is to come to deeply understand the
problem that they are facing. I would like to take the opportunity during this sermon to share
stories with you about the experiences of communities around the world who face chronic
hunger and are working to overcome it. By listening to their stories, we can learn about these
communities and hear their perspectives. In addressing global hunger, this process is critical.
Unless we hear from those who are facing hunger, we cannot know how best to help them
achieve self-sufficiency. And the timing could not be more urgent.

Telling the story of hunger today: The stories of grassroots solutions to hunger
(Note to the person giving the sermon: Three different AJWS grantees—all community-based
organizations that were founded by communities which themselves experienced hunger—are
highlighted to “tell the story of hunger.” Please feel free to shorten or adapt them as necessary.
The story of each grantee is told underneath the name of the organization.)

Kilili Self-Help Project (KSHP), Kenya

In Kenya, there is a farmer responsible for feeding her large extended family from the earnings
of a small farm. For decades, the crops she grew were enough to pay for food, clothing, medicine
and other basic needs. But in recent years, it has been harder and harder to earn a living from that
small farm. In some years, like this past one, the problem is worsened by drought, but in general,
small farms are failing in Kenya because of an intangible threat: free trade agreements between
Kenya and countries like our own. Free trade has brought an influx of cheap imports into
developing countries. Nations like the U.S., whose governments subsidize staples like wheat and
corn, export their crops in bulk and sell them at rock-bottom prices in places like Kenya.

You might think that cheap food would make it easier for this farmer to feed her family, but it
has the opposite effect. The subsidized imports are sold so cheaply at her local marketplace that
she can’t compete with their prices when she attempts to sell her own crops. All around her, she
sees many of her fellow small-scale farmers, who used to be able to feed themselves and their
communities, giving up—their farms abandoned or incorporated into industrial farms to grow
cash crops (such as coffee, tea and flowers) for export. Today, Kenyan farmers grow only 50
percent of the food necessary to feed the country’s 35 million citizens. This becomes disastrous
when the imports are suddenly no longer cheap, like what happened in 2008 when the global
price of food skyrocketed. Without local agriculture to serve as a fallback, people go hungry.

Luckily, this farmer became part of a community effort to reduce dependence on foreign imports.
Members of her community founded Kilili Self-Help Project, or KSHP, to help local farmers
reestablish local, organic sustainable farms to fill the gap in food production. Since 1989, Kilili
has worked with more than 100,000 local growers. With its help, communities learn to feed
themselves sustainably and more nutritiously by introducing ecologically sound farming methods
that improve the soil over the long term and enable them to grow more food. These organic
farming techniques actually produce more food than conventional farming and use less water,
another scarce resource in Kenya. Using these methods increases yields and decreases the cost of
farming, enabling local farmers to compete with imported foods.

More than half of those helped by KSHP are women, like the subject in this story. She now earns
more than $100 a month from her farm, enough to feed and sustain her family. Likewise, another
KSHP farmer said: “We didn’t know that farming can be done without spending so much money.
We have always thought that without money, we cannot do farming. We have found that we can
make our own fertilizers and grow our own seeds.”

Their experiences are not unique. KSHP has empowered farmers to achieve food security for
themselves and their communities. Their families are fed nutritiously and their health has
improved, raising the standard of living for the communities where they live. Groups like KSHP
are helping communities all over the world respond to the changed agricultural economy that
they now face. This is an important part of the solution to ending global hunger today.

Association for Community Development of the Cienaga Grande (ASPROCIG), Colombia

The Embera-Katio people have lived along the Sinu River in Northern Colombia for generations.
It provided them with a way to travel, a source of irrigation and drinking water, and plentiful
food. They imagined that they would always be able to sustain themselves from this life-giving
river. They lived lives of relative prosperity, built on the values of sustainability and
environmental stewardship promoted by their care of the river.
But the construction of a huge megaproject—the Urra Dam—shattered this fragile ecosystem.
Built in 2000 by a consortium of foreign companies and supported by local landowners, the dam
flooded over 7,400 hectares of indigenous-occupied land, engulfing crops, homes and sacred
sites, and displaced over 2,800 people. The impact was devastating: The local fish population,
unable to swim upriver to spawn, died out, eliminating the primary source of local protein.
Severe flooding and drought caused by the river’s new course impeded traditional farming
methods. As a result, tens of thousands of people were at risk of extreme hunger and starvation.
Even worse, the people live in fear of the construction of a new, larger dam being planned by the
Colombian government, threatening what land the indigenous inhabitants have managed to
salvage.

Jamison Pitalua was among the people displaced by the dam. He is now a member of the
Association for Community Development of the Cienaga Grande (ASPROCIG), a local
community-based organization working alongside the farmers and fisherfolk to rebuild their
livelihoods. He describes the organization’s work as follows:

We understand our lands to be dependent on a permanent relationship between the

culture of the local people—farmers, women, men, indigenous persons, children and
youths—and the natural environment. For us our land is not just a geographic space, but
rather a zone of life, where all walks of life can coexist. We propose that alternative rural
development is a lifestyle that will defend our resources and our way of life.

To defend that way of life, ASPROCIG’s model uses proven local traditional practices to
conserve the remaining natural resources. They work with farmers and fisherfolk to install
drainage and irrigation systems and to reintroduce plants and fish that have disappeared. Since
2003, ASPROCIG has changed the lives of thousands of people, building over one hundred new
farming systems just this year, and empowering the community leadership to run those farms.
ASPROCIG has also participated in the creation of a Bureau of Labor and a Standing Committee
on Human Rights in the regional government in order to better protect community land and
water rights in the future.

Groups like ASPROCIG are working around the globe in communities whose livelihoods and
survival are threatened by industry and megaprojects like the Urra Dam. As these industrial
projects become ever more prevalent, work like ASPROCIG’s is a critical part of the fight to end
global hunger today.
Rural Organization for Social Education (ROSE), India
Mrs. Chandra is a farmer in the Pudokatti district of Tamil Nadu, India. Like many women in her
district and around the world, she faces gender discrimination that impacts her ability to farm
effectively. Local tradition impedes women from handling financial matters or owning land
independently. Gender discrimination creates an unfortunate paradox in India and in many
developing countries. Women are often the primary growers of food—in some cases responsible
for as much as 80 percent of food production—but are denied access to sustainable, independent
livelihoods because they are marginalized from land ownership, management of food production
and other decision-making processes in their villages and districts.

But in Mrs. Chandra’s district, a group of activists called the Rural Organization for Social
Education (ROSE) is working to empower marginalized women farmers. ROSE helps them form
farming collectives, and by working together, they are better able to gain access to land,
financing and agricultural inputs such as seeds. ROSE trains women as peer educators. They pass
skills and knowledge woman-to-woman to create a community of capable, confident farmers.
They learn to maximize the land and resources that they have available to them by utilizing
organic farming practices that enhance the nutrients in the soil and by making use of native plant
species that are best suited to India’s climate and weather conditions. They also learn to control
pests and raise livestock to generate income. By building networks and becoming more effective
farmers, these women not only build their capacities to provide for their families and
communities, but also become strong, credible voices for women’s rights. ROSE facilitates this
by teaching these women farmers about their legal rights, and empowering them to advocate to
the government to promote and protect these rights.

In Mrs. Chandra’s community, the benefits of ROSE’s approach are obvious. The women are
able to feed their families, producing the affordable food and income so critical to fighting
hunger at the local level. She says: “I feel this project is very important to our community, as it
has lit our hopes again for our farming operations. Now I am one of the role models in our
village, because I have practiced the techniques and had good results.” As they empower women
farmers and respond to the needs of their communities, groups like ROSE are an important part
of the solution to ending global hunger today.

Identifying the Problem

Global hunger is one of the most pressing challenges facing our world today. Every day over one
billion people go hungry. Twenty-five thousand people die each day due to malnutrition. Every
six seconds a child dies from starvation. More than 60 percent of those who are chronically
hungry are women. As Jews, we simply cannot accept a world so needlessly broken.

As the stories we’ve heard today illustrate, hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food around the
world. Hunger today is caused by trade policies that favor corporate industry over the poor, by
the disruption of local food systems and by the violation of people’s rights to their land and
water resources.3

Achieving Justice
In Deuteronomy we read: “Justice, justice, shall you pursue.”4 The language is active: we cannot
wait for justice to come; rather, we must pursue it ourselves. Now that we have heard the story of
communities working to end hunger, what can we do? We must continue to empower those
working on the ground in the fight against hunger, learn what kind of advocacy we can do here
in the United States, understand how our consumption choices affect food security around the
world and educate ourselves about the ongoing situation. Ending hunger is not an impossible
goal.

Taking Action
So how can we help? The stories I’ve just shared remind us that communities facing hunger can,
themselves, best articulate and advance the solutions that will meet their own needs. The three
stories I told show communities taking action to change their realities, and they are just three of
thousands. Communities around the world are organizing to claim their land and water rights,
grow food sustainably and protect their local food systems. There is a name for their movement
—it is called “food sovereignty.” Food sovereignty means that consumers have the right to
healthy and desirable food, producers have the right to grow what they want to grow, developing
countries have the right to determine their own trade and agricultural policies, and local food
systems should be prioritized over international interests. The most important part of the food
sovereignty movement is that it empowers local communities to become self-sufficient. It puts
local producers—peasant farmers, fisherfolk and indigenous people—back at the heart of
decision-making processes on food policy and efforts to alleviate hunger. This is truly the
greatest expression of Maimonides’ highest level of tzedakah: strengthening a person so that she
no longer relies on aid.
We can support the efforts of those working to achieve food sovereignty in a variety of ways.

3
For more information on the root causes of hunger, please visit www.ajws.org/hunger.
4
Deuteronomy 16:20.
(Note to the sermon giver: The Global Hunger Shabbat materials include a five-part action plan
for your community. These actions are summarized here, but we encourage you to distribute the
“Taking Action” handout at services.)

Learn & Teach: AJWS has created several resources to make it easy for you to learn and teach
others about global hunger. Visit www.ajws.org/hunger to download these resources, which
include: a “solidarity plate kit” to create an easy-to-use learning tool for the Shabbat table; a text
study to lead a discussion about hunger, tzedakah and global justice; and information about the
causes of and solutions to global hunger.

Advocate: Speak out on behalf of those experiencing hunger to those who develop U.S. policy.
Food is a human right, necessary for life. American Jewish World Service calls on policymakers
to make U.S. food aid, trade and agribusiness policies reflect that imperative, and the success of
these initiatives depends on the participation of individuals. To receive policy updates and to
learn ways that you can take action, sign up online at www.ajws.org/hunger or send back an
advocacy postcard. Note to sermon-giver: feel free to distribute the advocacy postcards to your
congregants and encourage them to complete them and mail them back to AJWS).

Give: Support the efforts of communities who are working to achieve food sovereignty. By
empowering those working on the ground to end hunger, we enable communities to help
themselves. Support organizations like American Jewish World Service that fund the efforts of
grassroots organizations around the world, like those that we heard about today, to end hunger in
their communities.

Spend Responsibly: Choose to buy ethically produced products. Small-scale farmers in

developing countries often struggle to compete in a global production and distribution system
that favors larger growers and multinational corporations. Products labeled “Fair Trade
Certified” are produced using sustainable techniques and equitable business practices that help
small-scale farmers get a leg up. The Better Beans Project, a partnership between American
Jewish World Service and Equal Exchange, is one example of a fair trade initiative that creates a
global market for these farmers and provides them with access to the financial resources they
need to operate. Use Fair Trade Certified products, such as those from the Better Beans Project,
in your home and community by visiting www.equalexchange.coop/ajws.

Serve: Volunteer locally through your own community initiatives or participate in a service
program globally with AJWS. There is no better way to learn about the complex challenges
communities face in fighting poverty and hunger than to volunteer. We can be better advocates
for policies to end hunger when we understand the root causes. Learn more about programs that
AJWS offers for teens and adults to make a difference in people’s lives and become true voices
for change.

Conclusion
The Rabbis tell the story5 that Rabbi Joshua son of Levi met the prophet Elijah and asked him,
“What day will the Messiah come?” “Go and ask him,” replied Elijah, “he is sitting at the gate of
the city among the poor lepers.” Rabbi Joshua went to greet him, saying, “Peace upon you,
Master and Teacher.” “Peace upon you, O son of Levi,” he replied. “When will you come,
Master?” asked Rabbi Joshua. “Today,” was the Messiah’s answer. When Rabbi Joshua returned
to Elijah, he complained, “He spoke falsely to me, stating he would come today, but he has not.”
Said Elijah, “He was quoting the verse from Psalms: ‘Today, if only you would hear my
voice.’”6

Like Elijah’s response to Rabbi Joshua, the solutions to global hunger are in front of us, if only
we are willing to listen closely. We know the actions we must take to show that we have heard.
As we observe Global Hunger Shabbat, may we be among those capable of saying that we heard
those voices and took up their struggle.

5
Sanhedrin 98ª.
6
Psalms 95: 7.