Rabbi Joel Pitkowsky, a vocal leader in efforts to end hunger and a decades-long MAZON supporter, began his first week as chair of the organization’s Board of Directors.
He succeeds Liz Kanter Groskind, whose wisdom and experience helped successfully steer MAZON through the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rabbi Pitkowsky, who is also the rabbi at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, assumes this new role amid a hunger crisis in which one in four people in the United States are facing food insecurity — more than any other period in the country’s history since the Great Depression.
“I first became involved with MAZON over 30 years ago, motivated by my Jewish values to reach for the world that should be and imagine how we can live in a country where no one experiences the injustice of hunger,” said Rabbi Joel Pitkowsky, MAZON’s Board Chair. “I am looking forward to the opportunity to deepen my commitment to MAZON’s powerful network of congregations, clergy, and policy experts as Board Chair. Our voices and our work are more important than ever, as even more people are struggling with food insecurity as a result of this devastating pandemic. I am grateful for the leadership, vision, and service of my friend and colleague, Liz Kanter Groskind, and I hope to learn from her example as we move forward to the next stages of ending hunger.”
“Rabbi Pitkowsky is a visionary leader and anti-hunger champion,” said Abby J. Leibman, MAZON’s President & CEO. “I look forward to working with him as MAZON’s Board Chair to meet both the tremendous challenges facing those who struggle with hunger, and to seize the opportunities to make meaningful and lasting change. Rabbi Pitkowsky brings years of commitment to our work and a depth of humanity and understanding that are invaluable to MAZON as we anticipate the work ahead of us.”
Rabbi Pitkowsky will serve as chair of the Board of Directors alongside Vice Chair Morgan Powell, Treasurer Carolyn Schwarz Tisdale, and Secretary Randall Lewis.
MAZON’s Board of Directors comprises leading members of the American Jewish community. They are teachers and corporate executives, lawyers and rabbis, medical professionals and philanthropists, and they all are passionate about ending hunger and changing how it is to how it should be.