Day: October 20, 2017

This posting is chapter 6 from my book, “Judaismand Global Survival.” ————————- “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the chains of wickedness, to undo the bonds of oppression, and to let the crushed go free… Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?”   Isaiah 58:6-7 On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Jews fast and pray for forgiveness, a favorable judgment, and a good year. On this same day, they are told, through the words of the prophet Isaiah, that fasting, confession of sins, and prayers are not sufficient; people must also work to end oppression and provide food for the needy. Helping the hungry is fundamental in Judaism. The Talmud states, “Providing charity for poor and hungry people is as important as all the other commandments of the Torah combined.”[i] The Midrash teaches: “God says to Israel, ‘My children, whenever you give sustenance to the poor, I impute it to you as though you gave sustenance to Me… ‘ Does then God eat and drink? No, but whenever you give food to the poor, God accounts it to you as if you gave food to Him.”[ii] On Passover we are reminded not to forget the poor. Besides providing ma’ot chittim (funds for purchasing matzah and other holiday necessities) for the needy before Passover, during the Seder meal, we reach out to them: “This is the bread of affliction, which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.”[iii] We are even admonished to feed our enemies if they are in need: ” If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If your enemy is thirsty, give him water to drink.” (Proverbs 25:21) This is consistent with the rabbinic teaching that the greatest hero is a person who converts an enemy into a friend.[iv] WORLD HUNGER TODAY [This was initially written in 2001.] The magnitude of world hunger is staggering: More than a billion people, over one out of 6 people in the world, are chronically hungry.[v] The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that 21 percent of India’s population is chronically undernourished, but the situation may be far worse. Recent on-the-ground surveys indicate that 49 percent of adults and 53 percent of children in India are underweight, which is a proxy measurement for hunger.[vi] Hunger is found in the wealthier countries as well. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that in 1998, some ten percent of U. S. households were hungry, on the edge of being hungry, or threatened by hunger.[vii] Children are particularly victimized by malnutrition. Throughout the world, over 12 million children under the age of 5 die every year –about 34,000 each day — from diseases brought on or complicated by malnutrition.[viii] Each year, almost 8 million children die before their first birthday, largely due to malnutrition.[ix] Malnourishment also causes listlessness and reduced capacity for learning and work, thus perpetuating the legacy of poverty. Jeremy Rifkin summarizes the anomaly of rich people dieting and poor people starving: “While millions of Americans anguish over excess pounds, spending time, money, and emotional energy on slimming down, children in other lands are wasting away, their physical growth irreversibly stunted, their bodies racked by parasitic and opportunistic diseases, their brain growth diminished by lack of nutrients in their meager diets.”[x] Extensive hunger and malnutrition in so many parts of the world make rebellion and violence more likely. Professor Georg Borgstrom, international expert on food science, fears that “the rich world is on a direct collision course with the poor of the world… We cannot survive behind our Maginot line of missiles and bombs.”[xi] Unless the problem of global hunger is fully addressed soon, the outlook for global stability is very poor. Professor Robert Heilbroner, a noted economist, predicted that, in times of severe famine, countries like India would be sorely tempted to try nuclear blackmail.[xii] Prospects for reducing hunger are uncertain. In his book, Tough Choices — Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity,[xiii] Lester R. Brown, President of the Worldwatch Institute, states that numerous factors, including rapidly increasing world population and affluence, environmental strains, climate changes, and significant decreases in clean water, arable land, fish catches, and land productivity all threaten the world’s food security. The Worldwatch Institute believes that providing enough food for the world’s rapidly increasing population will be a critical issue for many decades. NON-CAUSES OF WORLD HUNGER There are many misconceptions about the causes of global hunger. Hunger is not caused primarily by overpopulation, bad weather, lack of technology, or the ignorance of people in poor countries.[xiv] These can all worsen the problem, but they do not cause it. Population has been growing explosively in recent years. While it took until 1830 for the world’s population to reach one billion people, In 1999 the population reached six billion and was projected to double in the next half century.[xv] Yet population, while a very serious concern that must be addressed, is not a root cause of world hunger. Africa is relatively sparsely populated, but still has much hunger. Japan and many European countries, such as Belgium and Holland, are very densely populated but have relatively few hungry people. Rather than being a cause of hunger, rapid population growth is more often a result of hunger. When infant mortality is high, due to malnutrition and disease, couples will have many children so that some will survive. In societies where there are no unemployment insurance or pension programs, children, especially males, provide the only assurance that there will be help when the parents become disabled or too old to work. Rapid population growth and hunger are common in societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people.[xvi] In these very poor, hungry countries, the cost of raising a child is very low, but the economic value of the