MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger

The Fight Against Hunger Loses a Leader and Friend

Ed Yerke-Robins — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:32:03 +0000

Photo courtesy The Global FoodBanking Network

MAZON mourns the loss of our longtime friend and colleague Bob Forney, CEO of the Global FoodBanking Network, who died suddenly on August 29. Bob has been held in high esteem by all of us in the anti-hunger community, and he will be greatly missed. Our most sincere condolences go out to his family and friends.

Bob visited our offices in September 2009. Read more about how his philosophy influenced us on our blog.

Tell Congress: Stop Raiding Food Stamp Benefits!

Barbara Bergen — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:13:36 +0000

Photo Courtesy Flickr user wallyg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/)

We need you to be the voice of the voiceless.

Last week, the Senate and House respectively passed legislation that cut funding for future SNAP/Food Stamp benefits to pay for state Medicaid and teacher retention relief. Now the Senate has passed a Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill that would result in future cuts of $14 billion to SNAP. We are asking that you urge your Congressperson to oppose raiding the SNAP fund to pay for other programs.

Below is a sample letter that you can modify to address your own representative personally. If you are not sure who your member of Congress is, you can refer to http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml.

Dear
I am writing to urge you to speak out against the provisions of the recent Senate-passed Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation that cut future SNAP/Food Stamp benefits to pay for other programs.

While I recognize that you have many priorities, the Senate bill will increase – not reduce – hunger and likely will harm the overall quality of low-income people’s diets. It is important to have a Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill that ensures that our children have access to healthier food in school, child care and out-of-school time programs but it is unacceptable to pursue these goals by cutting lifeline benefits for the poorest households in America with 40 million SNAP beneficiaries – more than half of them children. I am writing to you on behalf of the families who are not likely to speak for themselves but who need you to represent their interests and, ultimately, the interests of our nation that prides itself on its commitment to human rights and dignity.

You have an opportunity to speak in favor of, and vote for, H.R. 5504 which makes key improvements in access to and the quality of nutrition in the nation’s child nutrition programs, but also assures that the House does not fund such steps forward by cutting the SNAP program that is the nation’s first-line defense against hunger and food insecurity. Please put this on the top of your legislative priorities.

Thank you for your attention to and consideration of this matter.

Very truly yours,

Join us to Honor MAZON’s Founder Leonard Fein Oct. 24 in New York

Ed Yerke-Robins — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:09:54 +0000

Download the full invitation in PDF format here.

“Let us launch a Jewish campaign against hunger. 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. Henceforward, as in olden times, let us set aside a portion of our joy to feed the hungry.”
Leonard Fein, Moment Magazine, April 1985

These inspirational words have fueled MAZON’s efforts for 25 years. In recognition of Leonard Fein’s remarkable influence, we are proud to announce the launch of MAZON’s Founder’s Fund and honor him with a luncheon at Central Synagogue in New York on Sunday, October 24th 2010.

“In Israel, the rates of poverty – especially for children – are even higher than they are here at home. Through the Founder’s Fund, our hope is to leverage our grant-making in Israel, encouraging both greater government and private sector commitment to ending the scandal of hunger there. We have been instrumental in launching Israel’s principal food bank, and we continue to provide both funding and counsel to the groups and agencies that are engaged with hunger there. The Founder’s Fund will help ensure that this commitment is an enduring priority of MAZON.”
Leonard Fein, July 2010

To RSVP to the luncheon, or make a donation towards the Founder’s Fund, please use this reply card (downloadable in PDF or high resolution JPEG).

Shirley Sherrod, Black Farmers & MAZON

Leonard Fein — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:17:36 +0000

Courtesy Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund

It would be an absurd overstatement to say that we were friends, but it is true that some 20 years ago, along with Irv Cramer, then the executive director of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, I spent the better part of a week traveling through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, a trip organized for us by Shirley and Charles Sherrod. Ms. Sherrod was, at the time, director of the Georgia State Office of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, a job she held for 24 years until, just a year ago, she was named U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Georgia State Director. Charles Sherrod, her husband, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a hero of the early stirring of the civil rights movement, in Albany, Georgia, was her partner in the founding of “New Communities,” an effort (modeled in part on the Israeli kibbutzim they visited in 1968) intended to generate cooperative farms, principally for Black farmers.

Shirley Sherrod is, of course, the suddenly famous woman who was summarily fired from her government position, much to what very quickly turned out to be the appropriate embarrassment of the government, the news media and even some of the Fox news opinionators. The snippet of her 40 minute March talk that was originally distributed was swiftly shown to be a misleading fraud, suggesting a view Sherrod had actually and explicitly disowned. But by the time the fraud was revealed, the bus of false witness had already left the station. Instead, Sherrod herself was disowned by the Department of Agriculture and the NAACP. And there was evening and there was morning and there was evening and there was redemption, the fraud revealed in all its inciteful tawdriness, then the transformation of an alleged racist into a martyr and then into something of a heroine.

What were Cramer and I doing on her turf? We came to learn something about the condition of Black farmers, a dwindling category long the victims of racism – racism not only as a cultural phenomenon but also, sadly, as government policy. In 1988, MAZON had granted the Federation of Southern Cooperatives $20,000, a huge sum from what was then still a fledgling organization. We wanted to see for ourselves, up close, how the Federation worked, and to what effect.

Courtesy Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund

We came, we saw, we learned, and we were very deeply moved. Days and nights of listening to the farmers’ stories, their stories of what they’d experienced – bankruptcies, foreclosures, the studied indifference to their needs on the part of the relevant government agencies – and their stories of a longed-for tomorrow, when they would truck their produce to poor neighborhoods in big cities and establish there farmers’ markets. We were received with the eager hospitality that so often characterizes poor people, marked by a level of personal dignity we’d not anticipated.

MAZON was (and remains) exceedingly careful in the distribution of its resources. But based on our trip and backed by the enthusiastic endorsements of local and national experts, we granted the Federation a total of $123,000 more between 1990 and 2003 – and then, in the aftermath of Katrina, an additional $45,000. I cannot say how many family farms we helped save or how much hope we helped sustain, nor even how much dislocation and distress we helped relieve. I can say that in 1910, 218,000 Black farmers were working 18 million acres of land but that by 1992, there were just 18,000 farmers left, working just 2.3 million acres. As far as we could tell, these were not at all the losers, those who hadn’t had the energy or the smarts to move north; these were people with honest dirt on their hands, people who knew and worked and loved the land, farmers not by inertia but by choice. And, for generations, farmers betrayed, separate and decisively unequal; farmers who had never sat with respectful representatives of a Jewish organization eager to offer assistance in their daily struggle.

The storied black-Jewish alliance that had meant so much in the early 1960s had by then withered quite substantially. In 1966, SNCC chose “black power” as its path and expelled its white members. (Whereupon Charles Sherrod quit the organization, in 1967 earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, then returned to Albany, where, in 1976, he was elected to the Albany City Council, serving until 1990.) I permit myself to hope that Shirley and Charles, as do Irv Cramer and I, remember warmly our time together. If our country is to have the kind of conversation about race it so clearly must have, such memories are a powerful resource.

Leonard Fein is MAZON’s founder, and remains active on our board.

Team MAZON Bowls to Strike Out Hunger

Shirley Davidoff — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:08 +0000

In 2009, a group of Dallas young professionals started the Battle of the Jewish YP’s: Young Professionals Bowling League to bring Jewish young professionals together from across the Dallas Jewish Community. Last summer, the bowling teams were based on synagogue affiliation. This summer, bowlers were asked to choose their own teams and a Jewish organization to bowl for, with prize money going to the winning team’s organization.

Leanne Hall, Melanie Finkelstein, Nicole Deutsch, Caryn Statman, Elana Zimelman, and Ross Cravens chose to bowl for MAZON because of the incredible work MAZON does to prevent and alleviate hunger among all people. The team hopes to use the bowling league to raise both money and awareness for this worthy organization.

Team MAZON has the most ruach (spirit) of any team in the league. The team has consistently been at the top of the league, and has already won prize money for MAZON by having the highest handicap games on two occasions. Team MAZON’s goal is to have fun, knock down as many pins as possible, and hopefully take home first place to donate the prize money to MAZON.

Save the Date: Honoring MAZON’s Founder Leonard Fein on Oct. 24

Ed Yerke-Robins — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:23:53 +0000

Sunday, October 24th, 2010
Central Synagogue, New York, New York
Luncheon 12:30PM
Honoring MAZON’s Founder, Leonard Fein

More details to come!

MAZON Joins Crowdrise for Simcha & Tzedakah Projects

Ivan Porto — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:06:29 +0000

One of the greatest simchas in life comes from sharing with others. For the past 25 years, MAZON has partnered with families across the country to bring a bit of joy from a birth, bar/bat mitzvah or wedding into the lives of people at risk of hunger. With nearly 15% of Americans living in food-insecure households, our work is far from over.

In our efforts to continue raising awareness and funds to eliminate hunger, MAZON has joined forces with Crowdrise, the latest fundraising & volunteering network, to launch a profile at: http://www.crowdrise.com/mazon. Crowdrise makes it easier than ever to share your lifecycle events and tzedakah projects with the world. Simply sign up, create a project and select MAZON as recipient of the money that is raised. Crowdrise empowers you to tell your story in your own words, post pictures and video, and share your project on Twitter and Facebook to encourage friends and family to help you reach your fundraising goal.

You don’t need to wait for a celebration to help spread the word! If you wish to contribute, MAZON has created a project for our “Hunger Doesn’t Take A Summer Vacation” Campaign. The money raised will be used to help the 30 million children who rely on free or reduced school lunch. To see the project’s profile and make a donation, visit: http://www.crowdrise.com/hungerdoesnttakeasum/fundraiser/mazon. Create a Crowdrise account by August 15th and we could win a $236 donation to feed hungry kids year-round!

The special moments in our lives provide us with two opportunities: to get lots of gifts and cake, and to give something back as well. By asking your friends and family members to support MAZON on Crowdrise, you can give yourself the opportunity to help millions of people who suffer from hunger all over our nation.

MAZON Attends an Inspiring IMC Luncheon

Innocentia Riker — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:52:07 +0000

Photo Courtesy International Medical Corps

On May 25, Innocentia Riker and Elaine Himelfarb, program officers with MAZON, attended a “Women to Women Luncheon” hosted by a longtime grantee: The International Medical Corps (IMC). The event was a compelling gathering of over 200 amazing women commemorating IMC’s 25 years of relentless humanitarian relief work around the globe. IMC’s recent and ongoing work in Haiti was highlighted through the words of Jocelyn Jean-Baptiste a nurse living in Phoenix, originally from Haiti and working in the field. Her harrowing account reminded all of us how strong the human spirit is, but above all, how our collective strength can help rebuild Haiti no matter how devastating the February earthquake was. She also pointed out how IMC’s long-term efforts make a tremendous difference, not only in Haiti, but around the world as well. This kind of sustainable approach is what makes IMC so unique. In the wake of emergency response, International Medical Corps always lays the foundation for long-term recovery and self-reliance in countries where they are involved.

Nancy Aossey, IMC President & CEO, shared IMC’s extraordinary history and work over the past 25 years. She also commented on a growing and innovative segment of IMC’s work: mental health support and post-traumatic stress treatment—another unique aspect of IMC’s emergency work.

What a better way to ensure recovery and self-reliance than building up the mind and psychosocial support!

Sharing Love, Sharing Justice

Ed Yerke-Robins — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:30:14 +0000

Courtesy Mark Bernstein & Carolyn Weiss

One year ago, Mark Bernstein and Carolyn Weiss shared their love for each other with friends and family at their wedding. They also shared their passion for tzedakah, encouraging their guests to give in their honor to MAZON instead of bring physical gifts. In fact, this pursuit is what brought the couple together. Here is their story, in their own words:

We met in the fall of 2008, while volunteering on the Obama campaign. As you can imagine, being united in a common purpose, we formed a bond and, over time, a friendship, which blossomed into something wonderful. Having both dated for so long, it was also nice to meet each other in an ‘organic’ way, without the pressure of dating. We were fortunate enough to get tickets for the Inauguration and, on January 20, 2009, after President Obama was inaugurated, we got engaged on the Capitol lawn. A very quick engagement for two overly analytical people, but after so many years of dating (I am 41 and Carolyn 39), we knew what we were looking for and had finally found our other half. We were married on June 21, 2009.

We share a commitment to making tzedakah (justice), tikkun olam (repair the world) and gemilut chasidim (acts of loving kindness) a part of our lives and included these tenets in our ketubah. In this spirit, we encouraged guests, in lieu of giving gifts, to give to one of a handful of charities we selected, including Mazon, and we were happy that a number of guests did so. It was also in this spirit that we decided to follow the Jewish tradition of donating 5% of our monetary wedding gifts to charity, and we wanted to donate to a Jewish charity. We knew Mazon’s reputation, and didn’t think twice about who would be the recipient of our donation. We want to thank Mazon for the great work it does on a daily basis to fight hunger.

- Mark Bernstein and Carolyn Weiss

Mark & Carolyn are proud Marylanders. Here are two of MAZON’s Maryland-based grantees their generosity (and yours!) helps support:

Garden Harvest: Garden Harvest utilizes a volunteer network of farms to teach sustainable, organic farming and animal rearing practices in impoverished rural communities such as Appalachia. These programs instill invaluable nutrition and life-skills education. At Garden Harvest’s own farms in Reisterstown, over 5,000 volunteers contribute 19,000 hours a year to harvest and deliver fresh, organic produce to soup kitchens, shelters and emergency food pantries all over Maryland. Visit their website for volunteer opportunities!
Maryland Hunger Solutions: Maryland Hunger Solutions works tirelessly to establish self-sustaining, healthy communities by removing barriers to access. They work closely with social service agencies to educate working families and maximize enrollment in federal nutrition programs and hunger solutions that already exist. They also seek to improve public policies that stop hunger and insure the nutrition, health, and well-being of children and families in Maryland. Help Maryland Hunger Solutions spread the word about existing nutrition programs and advocate for strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization bills that supports all needy families.

Courtesy Mark Bernstein & Carolyn Weiss

The merry union of these approaches is the key to a better world, where hungry children and needy families can feed themselves today and tomorrow. The marriage of Mark & Carolyn is another key, to a world full of love, compassion and justice. Thank you Mark & Carolyn, and mazel tov on your first anniversary!

Honor Dads & Grads with MAZON Tributes

Ed Yerke-Robins — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:00:17 +0000

Photo Courtesy Marco Kalmann (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcokalmann/)

Father’s Day is June 20th. One of our most sacred mitzvot is to honor our parents. Their labor nourishes us, their wisdom guides us, and their love nurtures us. Honor their legacy or blessed memory with a tribute donation to MAZON. Our grantees work tirelessly so that families in every community can share the opportunities our parents gave us – to feed themselves, learn and grow together.

When it comes to our own homes, there’s plenty of nachas going around at the end of the school year. Whether it’s a child, grandchild, relative, spouse or neighbor, we can’t stop kvelling at the sight of a graduate. Their heads held high, their hearts full of hope, they walk across the stage to continue a life-long journey to make the world a better place. Honor that commitment with a tribute donation to MAZON.

MAZON tributes are about the size of a standard greeting card. The front features a beautiful watercolor print, and the inside is customized with your message and signature. Unless you specifically request it, we never disclose the amount of your contribution, and include your name and return address on the envelope so your recipient knows it’s coming from you. View a sample here »

We review all tributes before printing & sending, so please allow one to three business day for processing.

Pressed for time? Want to conserve resources? Opt to email a tribute e-card. You’ll receive a copy as well, if you wish to print and hand deliver.