Original article published in the Jewish Exponent on December 28, 2011

Opinion: Growing Income Disparity Also Equals Growth in Hunger
by Ruth S. Laibson

I am usually proud to call Philadelphia my home. But a recent study that highlights our city’s increasing income segregation contains some very disquieting facts that should challenge all of us to action.

The study, conducted by Stanford University, demonstrated dramatic growth in income segregation in the United States over the last four decades. Since 1970, both the poorest and the most affluent neighborhoods have more than doubled in size, while middle-income neighborhoods have shrunk by nearly one-third.

At a time when the disparity between the “haves” and “have-nots” is growing, the middle class is disappearing. Alarmingly, our city, which in 1970 was the 43rd most income-segregated metropolitan area in the country, has risen to third place. Even more disturbing, Philadelphia and its suburbs registered the sharpest rise in this segregation of any metropolitan area.

As the study notes: “The increasing concentration of income and wealth (and therefore of resources such as schools, parks and public services) in a small number of neighborhoods results in greater disadvantages for the remaining neighborhoods where low- and middle-income families live.”

The challenges abound. Children have fewer educational opportunities or neighborhood support services; adults facing economic hardship are far too often forced to make painful choices about how to stretch their limited dollars to cover even the basic necessities — shelter, medical care, food.

As a board member of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, one of the nation’s foremost food justice organizations, I am keenly aware of the shocking statistics about the prevalence of hunger in America. Fifty million Americans — including 17 million children — are too often unsure if or when they will have their next meal.

Nearly one in four U.S. households with children couldn’t afford enough food for themselves and their families in 2010. For households without children, 49 of 50 states reported food hardship rates higher than 10 percent in 2009-2010. In Philadelphia, one in four people struggles to put food on the table.

Charitable organizations, including MAZON’s nationwide partners on the front lines, are already doing their best to bear a heavy burden. How much more can we realistically expect them to shoulder?

Our elected officials are in the position to help alleviate this shameful situation. But with the current focus on reducing federal and state deficits, programs like SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps), that have proven instrumental in reducing hunger and promoting better nutrition for families in need, are at risk of being severely cut back.

It is not too late to change this paradigm. We must band together to help those struggling for food and slipping into a lifetime of poverty and despair. We must urge our elected officials not to balance the budget on the backs of the least fortunate among us.

No one can predict with certainty where the economy is headed, but it seems clear that things are not going to improve quickly. We cannot allow our continued hard times to justify the destruction of the lives and hopes of millions of American families.

Ruth S. Laibson, a resident of Haverford, is a board member of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

Related posts:

1. Published in j. – A Jewish Response to the Farm Bill
2. PB&J: A Jewish Teen Summit on Hunger
3. BUDGET: Threat to Food Stamps Lies Hidden in Ryan’s Plan

If you were waiting for the “right” moment,
that moment has arrived.

Hunger in America has never been more prevalent. And yet, for the first time in generations, funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) could be in jeopardy. SNAP has historically enjoyed bipartisan support and protection. But the recent stalemate about the debt ceiling, and the “supercommittee” it spawned, has put the fate of this highly effective program – and the 46 millions of Americans who rely on it – at risk.
As this threat to nutrition programs has loomed large, MAZON has embraced its leadership role within the Jewish community and in the anti-hunger field. We have taken a firm public position in published editorial articles in major newspapers across the country. We encourage you to read these articles by clicking the appropriate link below:

What they’re not saying about hunger in America
- Des Moines Register, 8/30/11

Putting Jewish values on poor Americans’ dinner tables
- j. The Jewish news weekly of Northern California, 10/6/11

Americans need supercommittee to maintain food assistance
- Detroit Free Press 11/2/11

Where not to cut the budget
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11/5/11

We will continue to fight to preserve the vital support that allows so many of our fellow Americans to put food on the table. But we also need your help!

Join us by raising your voice as an advocate for the 46 million Americans who need our help. Urge your elected officials to preserve funding for the nutrition programs that prevent mass starvation in our country. Write, email, or call to remind them that you will not stand for the budget to be balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable among us.

Together, we can transform how it is into how it should be.

Reaching out to your legislators is easy. Follow the simple steps below:

• Dial the toll-free number: 1-877-698-8228
• When prompted, enter your zip code.
• Listen to the brief instructions, and you will be patched through to your Senator’s office automatically.

Once you’ve been connected to the first office, deliver this message:

Please weigh in with the Super Committee personally and urge them to reject any proposals that would cut anti-hunger programs like SNAP, TEFAP, CSFP, or WIC or other child nutrition programs during the deficit reduction process. Our nation cannot afford to increase hunger in America.

After the call, stay on the line. You will be automatically connected to your remaining legislators’ offices.

Related posts:

1. House passes Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act!
2. BUDGET: Threat to Food Stamps Lies Hidden in Ryan’s Plan
3. More Than A Shame – A Scandal!

MAZON is a proud partner in Food Day: Monday, October 24, 2011. There are lots of ways to get involved – check it out!

Today: you can sign a petition urging Congress to support Food Day’s goals:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

On Monday – you can attend an event! There are tons of events scheduled to happen all over the country, designed to encourage conversation about what’s right and wrong with our diets and whole food system and how to fix them. The easiest way to find a way to participate is to visit foodday.org, search using the interactive map.

Anytime – you can find curriculum, videos and lots of other Food Day resources by clicking here.

It should be a great day – hope you’ll find a way to get involved!

Related posts:

1. You are invited to the Fair Food launch party!
2. TAKE ACTION: Tell Rep. Cynthia Davis to Support the Summer Food Service Program in Missouri
3. Twitter For Food

Please urge your Senator to sign on to this letter from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), which asks that SNAP and other low-income programs be protected in any deficit plan.

Related posts:

1. 2012 funding debate: Speak out now against nutrition cuts!
2. An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi
3. Hunger Action Day

Original article published October 6, 2011 by Susan Freudenheim, managing editor of the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles, CA. Reprinted with permission.

Are you hungry?

Chances are you’re only a short reach away from your next meal or snack. If you’re reading this on Yom Kippur, your wait is probably longer. But either way, when you say you’re hungry, you probably know where your next meal will come from.

On Yom Kippur, we fast to focus our minds. We give up food for 25 hours as a mitzvah, but it is also our choice.

That’s not the situation for more than 50 million Americans — right now, one in six Americans is living with food insecurity — which means they either are constantly at risk of being without their next meal or living with disrupted food patterns. This shocking number comes from a study just released by Feeding America, a food-relief organization. These people do not choose to be hungry.

And here are some even more stark statistics:

• 17 million of America’s children live with food insecurity.
• Only 10 percent of the 50 million are homeless.
• About 36 percent of food-insecure families include one working adult.

This problem is rampant in a country that prides itself on being one of the most affluent in the world.

Just over a week ago, an episode of the TV sitcom “Modern Family” showed Cameron and Mitchell indulging in extreme dieting. Deprived, they become depraved; crazy — really crazy. Champagne problems, really, because of course eventually they go off their diet. (Never mind how.) But the picture is real: Imagine having to live without nourishment.

A letter to the editor in last Saturday’s New York Times responded to a columnist who suggested that the $5 per person per day provided by the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps) is not ideal, “but enough to survive.”

The letter writer, a food-pantry director in Harlem, noted: “To survive on food stamps — let alone prepare nourishing meals — is nearly impossible.” In her pantry, people who receive SNAP benefits cook their beans from scratch yet still can’t get through the month without help. This is just as true in Los Angeles, as Julie Gruenbaum Fax reported in a story about SOVA in these pages last week.

I was thinking about all this as I approached my Yom Kippur fast, so I called my friend Abby Leibman, who in March became president and CEO of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, the L.A.-based national nonprofit that works to prevent and alleviate hunger among all peoples. Leibman is a longtime social justice activist in the Jewish community, the one-time founding director of the Women’s Law Center and always an advocate for those who are most vulnerable. Leibman’s charge with MAZON is to increase its visibility, as well as its impact, she said. Founded in 1985, MAZON currently grants a total of about $3 million annually to 300 organizations nationally and worldwide, including food banks, food pantries, kosher programs and home-delivered programs for the food insecure. It also promotes advocacy and education related to hunger issues. Leibman said she hopes to double MAZON’s annual budget of about $5 million “so we can re-grant more money, and also do things on a systemic basis.”

The latest news about hunger in America is not news to people in her work, she said. But her own fresh eye has helped her take a sharper look at the terminology. For example, people often talk about food pantries like SOVA as part of the “emergency food system,” but it’s hardly just for emergencies anymore. For too many people, food pantries have become “the safety net that allows them to survive,” Leibman said. Since the downturn that began in 2008, we have seen a sharp rise in the number of people classified as poor, even as some in Congress are attacking the necessity of the government’s SNAP program. That SNAP needs to continue seems obvious. But, still, that’s not enough.

Many of us have picked up a bag to fill with food to bring to the synagogue sometime during this season, to contribute supplies for the local pantry. And if you’ve filled that bag already, more than likely you did so with food that travels easily and won’t spoil. Pasta, rice, cereal, canned goods. All this is sustenance, but not all that it takes to survive.

MAZON — which Charity Navigator has just raised to four stars, its highest rating for philanthropies — has just begun a promising new initiative to explore ways to distribute more fresh foods. Created in partnership with Kaiser Permanente, the program is called “Healthy Options/Healthy Meals” and is initially funding 12 food banks around the nation, helping them explore ways to make healthy and nutritious food more available to populations with specific needs, such as the elderly.

Leibman said she also wants to create an innovation fund at MAZON. After 25 years in the business, MAZON’s staff knows what works now, but they are looking for new ideas. For that, Leibman said, she needs to raise $1 million “to find and fund organizations doing something really unique. To give real seed money to get something off the ground.”

The challenge in pulling in new money like that is that, unlike some other kinds of charities, there’s nothing sexy about hunger, she said. But it’s not going away anytime soon. So it’s important to remember, “There are people who face life challenges that we can’t imagine and that we haven’t had to experience,” Leibman said. One in six Americans does.

And without knowing where that next meal is coming from, it’s hard to imagine how to move on. “I believe nobody can improve their life if they’re hungry,” Leibman said.

“It’s not brand new, but just think what it must be like to be living with it.”

Related posts:

1. MAZON welcomes Abby J. Leibman as President & CEO
2. MAZON and Healthy Options, Healthy Meals featured on The Huffington Post
3. Think again

May God give us the health and strength to follow through on our ideas to make this a better world.

No related posts.

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Marvin Gentry

Several donors have inquired about MAZON’s ability to provide relief to people in tornado-stricken areas. MAZON does have grantees and partners in the South who are in a position to provide aid. Should you wish to donate to help the victims of the tornadoes, please click here for a special donation form dedicated to this emergency appeal. We will ensure that your donation reaches those who need it most.

Related posts:

1. MAZON responds to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan
2. MAZON responds to the crisis in East Africa
3. MAZON Mission to South Africa, Days 1 & 2

Original article written by Susie Davidson and published in the Jewish Advocate on 2/18/11. Reprinted with permission. For more from The Jewish Advocate, subscribe at www.thejewishadvocate.com

At the Temple Isaiah dinner for Mazon (from left): Alicia McGee, LEFTY advisor; Rabbi Howard Jaffe; Cantor Lisa Doob; Rabbi Carey Brown; Rachel Bodony, dinner organizer; and Emily Messinger, director of high school and youth programs.

Rachel Bodony organized a multi-course dinner for 270, raised $13,500 and helped make history Saturday night.

Not bad for a high school junior.

Bodony chaired a dinner for Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, held at Temple Isaiah in Lexington. It marked the 25th year that the synagogue’s high school youth group, LEFTY, has sponsored the fundraiser. And she had plenty of help, including 70 teen volunteers.

Mazon (food in Hebrew) is a national nonprofit that provides more than $4 million a year in hunger relief. It was founded in 1985 by writer and educator Leonard Fein, whose syndicated column appears in the Advocate.

Its premise was simple: What if groups donated the equivalent of 3 percent of the cost of their celebrations to help feed the hungry?

One of the first groups to sign on was the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY), of which LEFTY is a member.

“The Mazon dinner is the longest-running continuous event in Mazon history,” said Mazon trustee David Napell, who usually speaks at the Isaiah dinner but was unable this year because of the weather.

“Aside from the money raised, it is one of the finest consciousness- raising events I have ever seen, with parents and synagogue both teaching through doing, to build children’s character and understanding of social justice.”

LEFTY, whose members are teens in grades 9-12, serves as a social group and a vehicle for promoting Jewish values and traditions. Isaiah’s group is one of NFTY’s largest and most active. Its other annual events include a High Holiday food drive, Mitzvah Day and the Walk for Hunger.

“NFTY has been a valued member of Mazon, and LEFTY has been remarkable,” said Fein, who attended the Lexington dinner.

Indeed, LEFTY’s page on Isaiah’s site boasts that the chapter has contributed more to Mazon than has any other synagogue in North America.

“These kids put on a terrific evening,” Fein said from his home in Boston. “Mazon now allocates something north of $4 million a year, and the way you reach that is not with four $1 million gifts – you raise it with many $100 gifts, and a $10,000 or $20,000 gift from a bunch of kids who are learning about tikkun olam and what people can accomplish. I think it’s thrilling.”

The dinner was prepared, served and entirely organized by LEFTY members. Members of the congregation – such as the musicians of The Titanics and a lighting designer – also pitched in this year.

“One anonymous couple donated all the food for the first 10 years, and now another has stepped up to do the same,” Bodony said from her home in Lexington.

Other contributions included flowers from Whole Foods in Woburn, additional food from Wilson Farms and bread by Iggy’s. Aside from the decorations, which the temple paid for, “everything is donated so that we can give all the money we get to Mazon,” she said.

LEFTY teens sign up for food prep, room setup and wait staff shifts, and help run the kitchen. Bodony said that meetings, which began last summer, increased to three times a week during the final two weeks. She works with Emily Messinger, director of Tichon Isaiah and Youth Programs, and LEFTY president Sarah Fishman, among others.

Bodony kept track of all the RSVPs at her home in Lexington. She also arranged seating, coordinated table settings, created the color scheme (“lavender and white, with hints of green”), met with Whole Foods about the flowers and delegated duties for the big night, she said. “It is team-led,” Bodony said, “and is really very professional, and executed very well.”

At the dinner, she spoke, as did Fein and Isaiah Rabbi Howard Jaffe.

“They have demonstrated to us how we can have a win-win-win experience like this every year,” Jaffe said of the LEFTY volunteers. “We all get to enjoy a wonderful, upbeat, social evening with excellent food, music, and dancing; our teens get the opportunity to produce an event like this; and all of us do so raising thousands and thousands of dollars, along with much-needed raising of consciousness.”

What motivated Bodony to get so involved? “It’s one concrete thing that I could plan, and would happen, and would be mine,” she said.

Bodony, who celebrated her bat mizvah at Isaiah, spent a semester in Israel as part of NFTY’s International Exchange. “In Israel, we did a lot of community service, and I cooked and served in a soup kitchen in Jerusalem,” she said.

One other veteran volunteer can’t go without mention: the chef. Temple member Bruce Lynn has created the menus and cooked since the beginning.

This year’s dinner had a southwestern theme: salad with lime and avocado; black beans, tomato, red onions, cheddar cheese, red pepper, roasted corn, cilantro and cumin lime vinaigrette with sour cream and tortilla crunch; appetizer/nosh of smoked and steamed salmon roulettes; braised chicken with beets and Moroccan spices; and a vegetarian dish of couscous with squash, turnips, zucchini, chickpeas, onions, Moroccan spices and vegetarian broth. Dessert was a chocolate truffle, butter cookies, and lemon-buttermilk panna cotta with berries.

We are honored to receive their support and so proud of their remarkable effort. Congratulations to everyone involved  for hosting such a successful event and a resounding thank you from MAZON and all the hungry people we represent.

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1. LEFTY Youth Raise $20K In Annual MAZON Dinner
2. Join us to Honor MAZON’s Founder Leonard Fein Oct. 24 in New York
3. Creative Fundraising at Synagogues!

Rashi and Leonard (Leibel) Fein

This past Sunday, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger marked its 25th Anniversary with a luncheon honoring its founder, Leonard (Leibel) Fein. It was a beautiful day in New York City, and the room was filled with guests eager to express their respect and sincere admiration for all that MAZON and Leibel have accomplished . Leibel’s brother Rashi provided his introduction – a touching tribute to a man who has served as a pillar of the Jewish community for over 35 years:

A few years ago, I had occasion to offer some public remarks about my brother, Leibel. It was an evening affair and there was a certain levity to the occasion. The wine flowed and so did the humor. But here we are on a Sunday afternoon. Humor? It is not an accident that Saturday Night Live is not televised as Sunday Afternoon Live. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that my remarks today will be of a serious nature.
There is much that I could tell you about Leibel. But much of what I could tell, many of you already know, and that which you don’t, though interesting, most probably is unimportant. So I will not read from a who’s who and I will not tell you of Leibel’s many accomplishments. Instead I will introduce Leibel by telling you a story about Rabbi Menaham Mendel of Linsk.

It is said that Rabbi Menaham Mendel of Linsk once stated: “On Shabbat Hagadol – the Shabbat before Pesach – it is customary for rabbis to discuss Jewish law. I will do so by quoting Maimonides who ruled that at the seder even the poorest person must eat matzo and must drink four cups of wine. That is the law. Yet Maimonides also reminded us that under Torah law cheating and swindling is forbidden at all times and under all circumstances. So,” continued Rabbi Menaham Mendel of Minsk, “we are confronted by a dilemma: what should a poor person do if she or he cannot afford to buy matzo and wine honestly and yet is forbidden to do so dishonestly? Must one violate a law and if so which law?

Rabbi Menaham Mendel continued, “I must tell you that acting alone neither the poor person nor our greatest rabbis and scholars can reconcile the contradiction or resolve the question posed by Maimonides. But there is an answer and a way out. The community, acting together, can reconcile the texts. How? A city can do so if the inhabitants thereof contribute to the Passover fund to help all who need help. Then the poor person can have the matzo and wine and have them honestly.”

A nice – no, an important – story. Those who have been paying attention surely can guess why I tell it, why I call on Jessie and Rachel, Leibel’s daughters, to read it at our Pesach seder, and why after they and others have done so, I ask Leibel to lead us in ho-lachmo-any inviting all who are hungry to come and eat.

Because, because Leibel conceived of and created MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, which is today’s answer to the dilemma posed by Maimonides. Through MAZON the community can act together to provide food to the hungry so that they can feed themselves and their children without having to steal the loaf of bread and the bottle of milk. By its twenty-fifth anniversary, MAZON raised $50 million dollars in the fight against hunger. Of course, it hasn’t solved – and by itself cannot solve – the problem of hunger, but it has made a difference in dramatic situations like Darfur, after the tsunami, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and in countless situations where hunger is not an acute, but a chronic condition. And all this because one person had an idea and got others to join in acting on it. And I stress the last words for they are the key. After all, all of us have ideas. All would write a letter to the editor. All of us would do many things, but just don’t quite get around to doing them, to acting on our ideals and ideas, to translating our wishes into reality.

But Leibel did. And so we are here to recognize Leibel’s vision, his translation of vision into action, and his reminder that one person can make a difference.

I am proud of Leibel, proud of the various institutions and programs that he has helped bring into being” Moment Magazine, MAZON, literacy programs that exist in numerous cities across our land. It is an amazing story. But how should I introduce him. My dictionary reserves the term “entrepreneur” for those who build new enterprises in the for-profit sector; that is, a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking assuming the risk for the sake of the profit. That is not what my brother is about. Nor is he a venture capitalist, seeking out and investing in ideas generated by others. But introduce him I must, and so I supposed I can do no better than to present the 2010 version of Rabbi Menaham Mendel of Linsk, your friend and my brother, Leibel Fein of Boston.

- Rashi Fein is professor of Economics of Medicine, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School.

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1. Join us to Honor MAZON’s Founder Leonard Fein Oct. 24 in New York
2. Save the Date: Honoring MAZON’s Founder Leonard Fein on Oct. 24
3. MAZON at 25: Reflections From Our Founder

When Jason Soll started preparing for his bar mitzvah in 2003, he had a clear goal in mind, and it wasn’t developing a deeper connection to his Judaism. What he wanted, really, was an MP4 video player. “I had my heart set on it,” Soll, a self-described gadget freak, recalled the other day. Along with studying his parasha, he made a wish list, but as the big day approached, he noticed that at least a few of the items on it already felt passé, even before he’d gotten his hands on them. “I suddenly realized that I have no material needs in terms of living a healthy and enriched life, and all the things I wanted were going to be obsolete in a matter of months,” said Soll, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio. So instead of requesting gizmos, he sent a letter asking his guests to contribute to a fund he set up through the Columbus Jewish Foundation—and, for good measure, threatened to return any presents anyone tried to give him on the side. The result was a $24,000 seed fund that Soll, now an unusually eloquent 20-year-old junior at Claremont McKenna College, periodically draws on to donate to causes as varied as humanitarian relief after the 2008 Chengdu earthquake in China and Magen David Adom, the Israeli emergency service.

Over the past decade, many Jewish schools have added mandatory “mitzvah projects” to the curriculum for their 12-year-old b’nai mitzvah students—designed in part as a counterweight to the increasing extravagance of bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, which at their most outrageous have come to include custom-built “synagogue” pavilions on the grounds of five-star resorts and, in the case of Elizabeth Brooks, a $10 million gala at Manhattan’s Rainbow Room headlined by Aerosmith and 50 Cent. Even for teens of more modest means, the remote-controlled airplanes and private telephone lines that once made for memorable gifts have given way to luxuries like strands of Mikimoto pearls—gifts that might turn into heirlooms, sure, but that can still feel disconnected from the idea of passing into adulthood. And with a new Torah cycle getting underway, a new crop of b’nai mitzvah will decide whether to not only include an element of tzedakah in their big day but perhaps to to do the once unthinkable and forgo gifts altogether in favor of increasing their charitable contributions.

“My bar mitzvah should be about me doing something for the community,” said 13-year-old Daniel Kessler, an eighth grader in Potomac, Maryland, who used his low-key luncheon last June to raise $5,000 for a seeing-eye-dog training center in Israel. Kessler was following in the footsteps of his 15-year-old brother, David, who used his own bar mitzvah luncheon two years ago to collect about 1,500 used English books for an Israeli school. “I thought my bar mitzvah isn’t about me getting things, but I really like books, so it would be good to give other people the opportunity to get the love of reading,” he explained—and while he kept the Barnes & Noble gift cards a few guests gave him along with their book donations, the handful of checks pressed on him by particularly insistent relatives and family friends went to defray the costs of shipping the library to its new home in Kfar Saba. “I really think I did something meaningful, and I’m glad.”

Lital Firestone, a 15-year-old from Rockville, Maryland, decided to go a step further and ask her guests to give not just money but time—specifically, to help serve food at a brunch for patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while she and her theater group put on a musical performance. “My bat mitzvah was seven months after my birthday, so I said, ‘Please do this in lieu of gifts,’ ” said Firestone. “I just felt like it should be a celebration of what I should be working toward as a person, and not just like another birthday party with presents.” She raised more than $3,000, more than covering the cost of sponsoring the brunch, and sent the extra funds to a program at the Tel HaShomer army base hospital that provides support to wounded Israeli soldiers.

The idea of using Jewish life-cycle events—brit milot, bar mitzvahs, weddings—to raise money or awareness for charitable causes can be traced to the founding of MAZON, the Jewish hunger-relief organization, which started in 1985 with a request that celebrants give 3 percent of the money they were spending on parties to help feed those in need. The organization now has an annual budget of about $6.5 million. “It was a way to balance out what we were spending on mitzvah celebrations,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, the author of Putting God on the Guest List, a guide to integrating spiritual traditions into the modern bar or bat mitzvah ceremony. A new wave of philanthropic organizations specifically targets b’nai mitzvah students; one Boston-based group, jchoice.org, recently launched an online registry that allows teenagers to specify the causes they’d like their guests to support in their honor. But, Salkin noted, charity can be as prone to inflation as parties. “I keep waiting for a kid to say that for his bar mitzvah project he worked out a compromise on the territories,” Salkin said, referring to contested settlements in the West Bank. “It’s like a law of physics—we’ve got to compete with each other, so instead of competing with glitz, we compete with meaning.”

For some parents, though, the logical corollary to eliminating gifts is scaling down the size of the accompanying party. “We didn’t want to contribute to this culture of excess,” said Lisa Eisen, a mother of three in a Washington suburb and national director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which focuses on Jewish youth programs. “We wanted to contribute to a culture that focuses on values and making a difference for others.” When her eldest daughter, Ariella, now 17, was preparing for her bat mitzvah, Eisen suggested she choose a charity rather than make a wish list. In the end, Ariella and her younger sister Tamar collected more than $15,000 between them for a nonprofit founded by their uncle that provides medical services in developing countries, along with money for the American Jewish World Service and a Down Syndrome group, and celebrated with low-key dessert receptions instead of full-scale dinners—and balanced even those events with donations to MAZON. Both girls carried on their volunteer work after their bat mitzvahs, and the whole family has since replaced the tradition of exchanging Hannukah gifts with picking two charity projects, one in Israel and one at home, each December, Eisen said. Now, with her 11-year-old son beginning to prepare for his bar mitzvah, Eisen said she’s hoping to replace the American-style party with a family celebration in Israel. “I want to commemorate him reaching this milestone without it being about the party and the presents,” said Eisen. “But we’ll see.”

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2. Chicago Anti-Hunger Advocacy Shabbaton
3. Sharing Love, Sharing Justice