Leket Israel: ‘Migrant workers’ needed

by Mayer Fertig

Other volunteers and paid employees fan out, night and day, to rescue leftovers from catering facilities, restaurants and food courts. The food is distributed to more than a million and a half hungry people in Israel - including three quarters of a million children.

"It hit me when I started to get the sense from the press that it was not just the usual suspects" who were worried about their next meal, said Joseph Gitler, the founder and chairman of Leket Israel.

"I think if you spoke to your readers, they would have the sense that every poor person in Israel is from the ultra-orthodox community," he said. But as the economic troubles in the United States have spread deprivation to all parts of the Jewish community, Israel has had a similar experience.

"Coming from a Modern Orthodox background, living in my little bubble in Ra'anana, it was incomprehensible to me, especially because Israel has made such incredible economic gains in the last 20 years," Gitler said. "For better or for worse, Israel has become more capitalistic, and with that has come Western-style poverty."

Gitler, 35, worked as an attorney before he and his family made Aliyah 10 years ago; he worked in a family business before founding the organization that now also makes a million sandwiches a year for hungry children, and helps hundreds of small organizations through a food cooperative that buys food at wholesale prices.

Leket Israel has a $4.4 million dollar year budget. Factoring in the food it rescues, overhead is an ultra-low one percent; without that food factored in the overhead is still just 10 percent of the annual budget, Gitler said.

When health reports in Israel noted that many Ethiopian immigrants were beginning to develop diabetes, a new project was born.

"It seems so silly. But they come to Israel and certain kinds of food are cheap, just like in the United States," he explained. Now, a Leket Israel nutritionist runs food seminars for immigrants like the Ethiopians and "she takes them to supermarkets and says, 'What's your food budget a month? You can't afford this and that - either from a calorie standpoint or financially.'"

The difference in legal climate between the United States and Israel makes food rescue a major enterprise in Israel.

"In the United States you are talking about billions of good meals that are going to waste because people are concerned about liability," Gitler said. "In Israel the catering and the restaurant community essentially said, 'There's a problem, there's need, come today. Come yesterday.' No one ever says to me, 'What kind of tax deduction can I get?,'" or overly worries about being sued.

For more information go to the American Friends of Leket Israel website at leket.org, or e-mail info@leket.org.