Dear ___________,
On Yom Kippur morning, we will hear the familiar, 2,000 year-old call to action as we chant the Haftarah from Isaiah: “This is the fast I desire…to let the oppressed go free; to share your bread with the hungry…”
This year, let us heed the call to action of our ancient prophet.
Every day, 925 million people go hungry even though there is more than enough food for all. For those of us who choose to fast as a Jewish practice, Yom Kippur is an opportunity to contemplate global injustice and to take meaningful action to help those all over the world for whom fasting is not a ritual, but a chronic reality.
This Yom Kippur, I encourage you to support American Jewish World Service’s campaign, Reflect Back: Fast Forward, by donating the “savings” of your fast—the money you would ordinarily spend on a day’s worth of food—to support AJWS’s efforts to combat hunger around the world.
Pervasive food insecurity in the developing world does not exist because of food scarcity, but because of political and economic policies that do not prioritize the world’s poor. With your gift, AJWS will expand its work to support grassroots organizations that combat these structural problems by teaching methods of sustainable farming, protecting land from degradation, securing access to water and high quality seeds, and ensuring that small-scale farmers have the means to store, market and sell their harvests.
Focusing on global hunger this Yom Kippur is a fitting way to imbue our fast with a renewed sense of urgency and commitment to Isaiah’s charge—to harness our tradition for the purpose of making the world a more just place.
