Hunger Seder Focuses on Ending Hunger in Los Angeles

On March 24, Valley Beth Shalom (VBS) hosted a Hunger Seder in conjunction with MAZON, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Sinai Temple, the Jewish Federation’s Fed Up With Hunger program and others. According to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Los Angeles event was one of more than 40 hunger and child nutrition seders held in more than 30 cities across the country.

Focusing on the Pesach directive, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” the seder’s purpose was to educate and stimulate action on hunger issues.

“Hunger is basically an epidemic in Los Angeles,” Rabbi Noah Zvi Farkas of VBS said. “We have an unfortunate title as the hunger capital of the United States. One in eight Angelenos is food insecure, and one in 10 is using food banks.”

During the seder, participants learned about issues like food insecurity. The karpas blessing focused on food deserts, where there are few grocery stores and communities turn instead to fast-food outlets and convenience stores. In East Los Angeles, for example, grocery stores provide less than 2 percent of food distribution.

Attendees were challenged to shave $10 off the cost of making chicken matzah ball soup in order to keep to a food-stamp budget of $21.50 per day for a family of four, less than $1.80 per person per meal. Only 53 percent of the 1.47 million people in Los Angeles eligible for food stamps are enrolled in the program; the low enrollment costs the county $2.9 billion, because every $1 in food stamps results in $1.84 in economic activity, according to Jonathan Matz of Progressive Jewish Alliance.

In reading the seder’s Four Questions, L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz started by asking, “What does it mean to be hungry in America?” The recitation of the plagues included “the single mother who gives the last bits of food in the house to her child, while she goes hungry,” and “Dayenu” was repurposed to ask whether what most people do to help alleviate hunger is enough.

Scott Minkow of The Federation’s Fed Up With Hunger program told the group that Federation has been developing a blueprint to end hunger in Los Angeles, which is now being reviewed by the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Fed Up With Hunger’s participation is the advocacy piece of the seder,” Minkow explained, hoping to empower people to act on pending legislation.

The evening ended with the afikomen as a call to advocacy. Needed first is support for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, including an additional $1 billion a year to expand the program. Participants were also encouraged to become food security advocates, to lobby the grocery industry to bring more food choices to lower-income communities and to make personal connections with people who are hungry by volunteering.