My Food Is Your Food

Well, maybe not.  One of our regional heroes is an obscure Franciscan monk in the modern lineage of St. Francis of Assisi.  The current Pope adopted his name, though like all Popes he lives in splendor.  Our regional Brother does not.  He wears a hooded brown gown.  He lives simply.  But for more than forty years he has created, headed, and expanded an agency that centralizes our reach to the city's poor.  His agency provides a small amount of child care and default housing, but its central mission has been to offer meals.  For 2022, they served more than 100,000 meals.  I had the pleasure of meeting this friar many years ago when a departing medical executive opted to have his farewell reception at the agency's dining hall.  My children's Bnai Mitzvah generated sumptuous leftovers, which I transported there the following Monday.  For the Brother to accomplish this, he needs generous partners.  No group has adopted mandatory sharing of our prosperity than our Jewish community.  As community groups are solicited to take their turns providing meals, my synagogue has three sessions scheduled in the late fall every year for decades.

While this initiative should generate overflowing support from dozens of members, it doesn't seem to.  Instead, it reinforces our congregational culture, consisting of a series of fiefdoms or cliques run by and content with its few dedicated participants.  If we have good, we need not seek more than good, that view illustrates.  We can get the food cooked and served with the people we have.  They announce from the sanctuary and newsletters a few sabbaths in advance that they could use some baked goods.  I make a contribution, Kosher and in my oven, for two of the sessions, but have never been invited to join the other ladies in the home kitchen of the chairman.  

Maybe the Brother would not want me there any more than the event chair or perhaps even our Rabbi and Rebbetzin would.  There are cultural divides, perhaps even theological ones.  When I host an event at my home, kitchen experience displayed to the max most times, my kitchen output is always plentiful and elegant.  Take as much as you want.  Since we have two Challahs for Shabbos, the guest takes one home. Understandably, the friar feels this approach detrimental.  His dining center is a place of default, not celebration.  The goal for him is part rescue of an immediate situation but also a look to a future where his current consumers can become prosperous donors, able to create, enjoy, and share their own abundance.  My food is your food, eat what you like that prevails in my dining room, does not always serve people dependent on others in the best way.  The friar limits portions.  He looks at his project as a means of temporary subsistence.  While friendships and camaraderie among regular patrons likely develop, he stops short of full satiety, fearing dependence at the expense of personal growth.

While my synagogue and I each place a high value on Kosher, that same stringency is not required for the non-Jewish residents of our city who depend on the dining center for their daily, or even periodic, lunch.  And we are told that congregational members contributing food to feed these people do not need to maintain Kosher in any way.  Much of the food is prepared in the chairwoman's kitchen.  I never inquired about its kashrut.  The food is acceptable to the recipients who need it.  Yet when I contribute, the food meets the standards of my Kosher kitchen.  Should I be willing to serve a hungry person food that I would not eat myself?  Probably not as food.  Were I to give a financial contribution, there would be no restrictions on what the recipient might opt to purchase.  As a practical matter, the mission of the assigned sessions is to provide nutrition on the terms of the recipient.  It would probably not be good congregational policy to restrict baked goods donations to those made in Kosher ovens, or even with Kosher ingredients.  My food is your food, with strings attached.  Your food is not necessarily my food.  Sometimes I am the caterer, maybe a server.  Not the diner.

Our tradition has a tale of some Smart Alec asking the sage Hillel why Hashem permitted poverty when an omnipotent God could have provided adequately for everyone.  Hillel responded that God did that so people could rise to the occasion by sharing part of their larger portion.  So that is what we do as a synagogue and I do as a peripheral volunteer for that project.  Judaism seems to prefer middles.  I bake something Kosher, varying the output.  It is always created at my peak ability.  Always something that would be a little pricey for people at economic fringes to purchase from a bakery.  Always something that I've had before, both from my kitchen and high end commercially, that I especially regarded as a treat. So I share some food, restrained by the Brother's judgment on keeping his project one of nutritional default.  But in absentia and with anonymity, I also share a piece of me.  Imagination of what to offer.  Experience as a limited foodie.  The Brother cannot restrict that.