Hunger Should not be Palatable

By the time many of you read this column, you will have pushed away from the table, perhaps wishing that you had consumed less food with family and friends on Thanksgiving.

There is a joke about people who prepare a Shabbat meal every week having little sympathy for those who stress about a once-a-year Thanksgiving feast.

Thanksgiving, like many holidays, religious and secular, is based on a measure of myth. What is less of a myth is the penchant of columnists at this time of year to succumb and take the path of least resistance by writing a Thanksgiving-based column.

Which is where you find me, after I realized that the deadline to file this column was a week earlier than I thought.

In the spirit of the holiday, one of the things that I am thankful for is the reception I have received when invited to talk about “A Life of the Party,” my first book, most recently to the book club at Congregation Or Hadash.

In this work of historical fiction, I created a scene, set on the upper west side of Manhattan in the first decade of the 20th century, in which a young Jewish girl commits a remarkable act of tzedekah, giving her winter coat to a woman begging on a bitterly cold and windy December day in New York City.

The girl, Amy, was scurrying home after being dispatched by her mother to a bakery to purchase treats for their Shabbat dinner, when she “noticed the figure of a woman huddled beside the stone stairs of a church attempting to shield herself from the wind.”

The woman “had one gloved hand outstretched, seeking charity, but kept her head bowed so that neither donor nor recipient would have to look directly at each other; nor would those averting their eyes as they scurried past see her face and feel guilt for ignoring her plight. ‘Please,’ the woman called out in a halting voice, ‘please, for my children. We need help to pay our rent.’”

In a previous professional lifetime, I researched stories about food banks and food pantries.

One thing I heard over and over from people who operated food pantries, and from some of their clients, was that many recipients cast their eyes downward, as if that would lessen the shame they felt for needing such assistance.

Pantry operators told me how they could see in the eyes of recipients the struggle to accept help being, in this case, a bag or box of foodstuffs.

Thanksgiving is the time of year when the public seems to pay the greatest attention to the issue of hunger. This also is when food banks and food pantries often make their largest public appeal for financial donations.

Hunger — or food insecurity, a more palatable term — has been in the news lately even more than usual, because of the suspension of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits during the recent 43-day federal government shutdown.

According to the Pew Research Center, between October 2024 and May 2025, an average 42.4 million people in 22.7 million households nationally received SNAP benefits.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that, based on county data, as of June, 1.3 million Georgians, in 705,000 households — about 12 percent of the state’s population — received SNAP benefits. In May, the average recipient household in Georgia received $384, slightly more than the national average of $350 per household.

According to 2024 data from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 69 percent of SNAP recipients in Georgia were families with children and 28 percent were families that included an older adult or someone disabled, while 37 percent were families with a working adult.

There are numerous efforts, religious and secular, throughout Atlanta that address this problem.

In the Jewish community, one center of such work is Jewish Family & Career Services of Atlanta. In fiscal year 2025 (July 2024 to June 2025), the Kosher Food Pantry distributed 33,000 pounds of food to 591 households.

As you box up those Thanksgiving leftovers or check your refrigerator to see what leftovers are available for a snack, take a moment to consider your good fortune and remember that not everyone in the community shares in this bounty.

JF&CS’s list of its most needed non-perishable items includes soups, breakfast foods (cereal, oatmeal, grits), canned meats (tuna, chicken, sardines), canned fruit or fruit cups, and white rice. To that, add spices and seasonings and healthy snacks.

Chanukah begins at sunset on Dec. 14. If you give gifts to mark the holiday, think about donating money, a grocery gift card, or non-perishable food items to the JF&CS pantry. If you have questions, email foodpantry@jfcsatl.org or call JF&CS at 770-677-9300.