Israel poverty growing

LINDA GRADSTEIN THE MEDIA LINE

There is a family in Jerusalem with four children. The wife is a secretary, the father, who suffers from depression, cleans houses when he is feeling well. Their combined income is about $2,000 US per month, twice the minimum wage. After rent, utilities and school fees, the family is left with only $250 for food and all other expenses. They are already deeply in debt.

“These people are simply not making it,” said Chaya Devora Leibowitz, project director for Ezrat Avot, an organization that helps poor families in Jerusalem. “There is a large proportion of society here who are working and don’t have enough money for food. They are minimum-wage earners or part-time earners or people who are partially disabled.”

Ezrat Avot provides weekly food packages to 250 families like this one. On the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Pesach, the list swells to 2,500 families. The weekly packages contain canned and dry goods: flour, oil, sugar, cereal and canned vegetables. The holiday packages include chicken and wine. Leibowitz said her organization’s help is not nearly enough – many families need to look for assistance from several organizations.

Israeli government statistics say that an estimated one-quarter of all Israeli citizens, including 837,000 children, are living in poverty. Half of these poor families have no wage earner. The Meyers-JDC Brookdale Institute has found that the rate of poverty among families in Israel is the second highest of the OECD countries, and almost twice the OECD average.

In Israel, there is a large amount of “food insecurity” rather than outright hunger. Rates are higher among the ultra-Orthodox, where only 45 percent of the men work, and Arab citizens of Israel, where only 28 percent of women work.

“Food insecurity is a spectrum that describes how available and accessible healthy food is that can be obtained every day in a socially acceptable and predictable way,” explained Ken Hecht, a consultant for Mazon, a food distribution project based in Los Angeles. “In Israel, half of all cases are people who are worried about getting enough food, and half are situations of people missing meals they may need to grow.”

Hecht is in Israel researching food security for Mazon, which donates some $4 million a year in both the United States and Israel. In the United States, he said, most food aid is distributed by the government. The program that used to be called “food stamps,” and is now called SNAP, feeds 42 million people each day. Recipients are given pre-loaded cards that can be used to pay at supermarkets. In Israel, the government gives some money through the National Insurance Institute but most aid is distributed by nongovernmental organizations.

There are an estimated 400 NGOs dealing with food assistance in Israel. They try to coordinate efforts through Leket Israel, the country’s largest food bank and food-rescue organization. Ironically, despite the high rates of poverty, tons of agricultural produce rots in Israeli fields. Leket has amassed tens of thousands of volunteers to go out to the fields to gather 13 million pounds of produce each year.

Leket in Hebrew means gleaning, the biblically proscribed practice that instructs farmers to leave whatever falls to the ground as they are harvesting their fields for the poor to glean.

Leket Israel also supplies 7,000 sandwiches per day, made by volunteers and given to needy schoolchildren in 25 cities. They also collect leftover food from celebrations, such as weddings, and redistribute it to nearly 300 partner NGOs.

The need continues to grow. Mazon, in Los Angeles, hopes to increase their donations to Israel this year, and sent Hecht and his wife Christina to visit some of the agencies where aid is distributed.

“We visited an agency in Jaffa that runs an orphanage and an after-school program that also has a hot lunch,” Christina Hecht said. “I am struck by the wonderful people who are doing this work and their commitment.”

Ezrat Avot, which also runs a day centre where seniors get a daily free hot meal, has a waiting list for families who need food packages.

“People don’t like to have to ask for food; nobody wants to be a beggar,” she said. “In the Bible, being poor is compared to being dead. But I also see a tremendous amount of loving-kindness. Some of our volunteers are very wealthy and could spend all day getting their nails done and, instead, they come to help out others.”

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