Ray: Hello and welcome to Christian Friends of Leket. I’m really excited that we’re being joined by the founder of Leket Israel, Joseph Gitler. Originally from the New York area, he made Aliyah in the year 2000 and just felt that he wanted to make a contribution to Israel and to Israelis in need. And he is the voluntary chairman of Leket Israel, the National Food Bank. Joseph, great to have you.
Joseph: Very excited to be here. Thank you for the opportunity, Ray.
Ray: So, let’s begin. Leket, it’s an unusual word to our Christian community. Leket, what’s it about? What’s it mean? Fill us in.
Joseph: Okay, you got it. So, Leket, it’s a Hebrew word. It’s one of three Hebrew words which I’ll say—Leket, Shikhah, and Pe’ah. These were biblical commandments that commanded farmers, who were the business people of ancient times, how they needed to take care of the poor. So I’m sure people remember, you know, certain crops would fall off the wagon, you couldn’t pick them up. You had to leave them for the poor. You had to leave a corner of your field for the poor. All those types of holy work that God commanded on his people to do. And so we’ve modernized that for the modern economy, for the Western economy where we create so much food, more than enough to feed everyone, but yet we still have so many people struggling to put the right food on their table. So we simply tell those who have food, “Hey friends, instead of letting it go in the trash, ending up in landfills, let’s make sure that that feeds our brothers and sisters.”
Ray: Excellent. So I think that most of our audience would be familiar with the life of Ruth, this gentile woman who said to her Jewish mother-in-law, “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people.” So it’s biblical nature, biblically motivated. The mitzvah, the commandment of Leket to help the needy, and like you say, Leket Israel is kind of a modern adaptation of that ancient commandment. So, um, I think most people have an image of Israel and high-tech, Israel’s military prowess. How can it possibly be that there’s poverty in Israel? I mean, is this Israel’s best-kept secret, do you think?
Joseph: Listen, it’s really interesting the way you ask the question because this is a kind of issue that most people want to keep secret. You know, if you speak to politicians, they don’t want to talk about this. They want to talk about high-tech. They want to talk about military. They want to talk about the beaches. And I can understand that.
But conflict causes poverty, housing prices are skyrocketing, monopolies cause increasing prices at the checkout. At the end of the day, Israel is a very small country surrounded, you know, in a hostile neighborhood, we’ll call it that. And so what it means is what should be a marketplace of tens if not hundreds of millions if we would have peace in the neighborhood is actually a market of 10 million people. And so that causes a lot of stress on the system and too many Israelis have been left behind. You know, we hear statistics of poverty in Israel – anywhere from 1 to 2 million people who need help. In Leket’s case, we help them with food. But anyone who’s nutritionally insecure struggles to make decisions as to what to do with their limited incomes.
Ray: So, Leket Israel is a food rescue organization and the food is in Israel. You know, so many people think the food is everywhere.
Joseph: Yeah, the food, if we’re talking about Israel, but if we think worldwide, there’s enough food to feed everyone. Unfortunately, a lot of the food is in the wrong places. What I mean by that is, you know, I can’t have an issue with the fact that the United States and Canada produce way more food than they need. They’re trying to sell it abroad, they’re trying to sell it in their borders. And we’re the same in Israel. We’re fortunate. We have a wonderful farming community. We have a wonderful catering community. We have a wonderful manufacturing community. And we just simply produce more food than is needed, but with too many people who can’t afford all that food. And that’s where we come into the picture. We’ve basically made a very simple equation, and that is on the one hand there’s all this food going to waste, and on the other, the people who have the food are very happy to make sure it ends up in the mouths of needy people. And so that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s a real simple equation, especially when it doesn’t come with what kind of risk am I at if there’s food poisoning? What kind of tax deduction can I get? What I’ve seen is 22 years of purity of people just saying there’s a stress in Israel, there are people in need, how can we help? And that’s just a beautiful thing to wake up to every morning.
Ray: Wow. Excellent. That’s exciting. So, like you say, it’s a simple equation. Lots of food in Israel, but yet there are some Israelis that are hungry. So, it’s just a matter of getting that food onto the table of people that need it. However, logistically, making it happen is not quite as simple.
Joseph: No, it’s complicated and expensive. But when I say expensive, the value of the food is so much greater than the cost of running the operation. That’s part of the beauty of what we’re doing. So we have refrigerated trucks traversing the country by day and night, picking up excess meals from hotels and army bases and corporate cafeterias and then distributing it that on the same day to charities like homeless shelters, after-school clubs for kids, centers for Holocaust survivors and the elderly, making sure that they get high-quality hot meals that people had just paid a lot of money for but were excess. And then in addition, back to the name Leket, a far larger project is the work we do with farmers, where we work directly with them and with kibbutzim and retailers to make sure that excess produce doesn’t go to waste. And the amounts are just staggering. This year we hope to distribute about 75 million pounds of fruits and vegetables, and we think we could be doing five to 10 times more than that if and when we have the budget to make that a reality.
Ray: Wow. Yeah. I remember on one of my visits to Israel visiting a farm and hundreds of volunteers filling up the truck. The truck is full of produce and getting ready to head back to the logistics center. But at the same time, there was still produce on the ground that needed to be gleaned. So, you know, there’s only so much we can do, but thank God the organization has grown so much, but there’s still so much more to be done.
Joseph: I try not to get caught up in what we don’t do and try to focus on what we are doing. But yes, my mantra for many years was “no schnitzel left behind.” And what I meant by that was I want to get to every last piece of wasted food. I know that’s not possible, but we always need a north star. And by having a north star like that, you’re constantly pushing ahead and pushing ahead. And that’s really what Leket has been doing for years. Ray, you’ve been part of the Leket family for many years and you’ve seen, I can’t even remember anymore what we looked like as an organization when you started with us and here we are today. This monster. And I wish it wasn’t the case. I wish we didn’t have to do that. But we have no choice because even in non-emergency times, which we’ve been in a lot of emergency for the last two years, there’s a lot of people struggling to make ends meet. And that only gets exacerbated during times of emergency. And so we’ve been able to not just help people 365 days a year when things are normal, but ramp up dramatically when things are even more difficult than the normal in Israel.
Ray: Wow. So Leket Israel, the National Food Bank, worldwide a leading food rescue organization?
Joseph: Most definitely. Most definitely we are a leader. The beauty of our world is we teach others but we also learn from others. It’s a sharing world, it’s a caring world. We’re not in the business world. And so, you know, we’ve met partner agencies and learned from them throughout the world. We’ve had people visiting us. I’ve visited operations like ours throughout the world and everything’s nuanced. Everyone does things a little differently, but we certainly are leaders and I’m very proud of that.
Ray: Wow. Excellent. Well, it’s, I’m thrilled to be a part of it, albeit a small part, but it’s been very exciting. So we encourage Christians who see the regathering of the people back to the land of Israel as a fulfillment of God’s ancient prophetic promises to your people. And I encourage Christians, don’t just be a student of prophecy, be a part of it. Be a part of what’s happening in Israel in a tangible way. So check out the link below, christianfriendsleket.org. Find out more about what we’re doing to assist Israel’s needy and you can be a part. Thank you very much, Joseph. Great seeing you once again and just sharing a little bit of what’s happening in Israel.
Joseph: Thank you, Ray. Love to all and may we soon merit peace and the return of our hostages and soldiers safe and sound.
Ray: Amen.