You’ve seen the pictures. Some Hollywood celebrity or tech billionaire steps off a private jet, rides a motorcade to the United Nations, and delivers a speech about how the rest of us need to do better. Save the planet. Reduce waste. Think of the children. Then they fly home to a mansion with a carbon footprint the size of a small town. The applause is deafening. The impact is zero.
Friends, I want to tell you about something different.
A few weeks ago, at the United Nations’ International Day of Zero Waste, a man named Nitzan Arani — not a celebrity, not a billionaire, not someone with a publicist or a clothing line — stood before that assembly as Israel’s Economic and Social Affairs representative. No entourage. No cameras following him around. Just a diplomat doing his job, armed with facts and data provided in part by Leket Israel, the Holy Land’s largest food rescue organization.
And what he presented put every private-jet-flying, mansion-dwelling, lecture-giving celebrity to shame.
Not with words. With results.
He told that assembly plainly: Leket Israel, “Israel’s main food rescue organization, works directly with farmers, retailers, and institutional kitchens to recover surplus food at scale.” No jargon. No buzzwords. Just a clear description of people doing hard, unglamorous work so that food doesn’t end up in a landfill while families go hungry.
And then the numbers: “In 2025, it rescued over two million prepared meals and distributed almost 34,000 tons of food, reaching over half a million citizens.”
Let that land for a moment. Two million meals. Thirty-four thousand tons. Half a million people fed. Not pledged. Not promised. Not announced at a gala with a champagne toast. Done.
Now I want you to think about that contrast. On one side, you’ve got a culture of celebrities who want to be seen caring. They show up at the UN, they make their speeches, they get their photos taken, and they go home having changed absolutely nothing. It’s performance. It’s vanity. Ecclesiastes has a word for it — hevel. Vapor. Chasing the wind.
On the other side, you’ve got a modest Israeli representative standing in that same building — a building that has voted to condemn his country more times than any other nation on earth — and he’s not asking for applause. He’s presenting what Israel has actually done. A 13% per capita reduction in food waste over the past decade. National legislation requiring public institutions to donate surplus food. A plan to cut food waste by 50%. Technologies developed in Israel that are now feeding people on every continent.
That’s not virtue signaling, friends. That’s virtue.
The Commandment They Don’t Know They’re Watching
Here’s what none of those diplomats probably understood. What Israel presented in that room wasn’t a government program dreamed up by a committee. It flows from something written into the soul of the Jewish people thousands of years ago.
The organization at the heart of this work is called Leket. That word comes from Leviticus 19:9–10:
“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”
This is a mitzvah — a divine commandment. Not a suggestion. Not a best practice. An order from the Creator of the universe. God looked at His people and said: the harvest is Mine, and you will leave part of it for those who have nothing.
Now, every one of you knows where this commandment leads. It leads to a field in Bethlehem, where a young Moabite widow named Ruth gathers grain behind the reapers. It leads to Boaz, who doesn’t just tolerate her presence — he protects her, provides for her, and ultimately redeems her. And that union produces a lineage that runs through King David all the way to a manger in that same little town, where our Savior was born.
The gleaning commandment isn’t a footnote in Scripture. It’s a thread in the rope that holds the whole story together.
And when Leket Israel rescues food from a commercial kitchen in Tel Aviv and puts it on the table of a struggling family in Be’er Sheva, they are pulling on that same thread. Different century. Same obedience.
There’s a second biblical principle at work here too — Bal Tashchit, meaning “do not destroy,” from Deuteronomy 20:19. Even in war, God told Israel not to cut down fruit trees. Even when it would have been militarily convenient. The Creator said: I made these things, and you don’t get to waste them. If you’ve ever preached or heard a sermon on the Parable of the Talents, you understand this in your bones. We are stewards, not owners. Everything belongs to Him, and He will ask us what we did with it.
Innovation as Obedience
What really sets Israel apart from the celebrity lecture circuit is that they didn’t just show up with a sob story and an appeal for donations. They showed up with solutions — practical, working technologies rooted in that same spirit of stewardship.
As Arani told the assembly, “Israel-developed technologies are addressing food waste across the value chain.” And then he walked them through it — the whole chain, from field to table to what happens after.
“Early in the chain, innovations in shelf life extension, including natural edible coatings, are extending the freshness of perishable goods and reducing spoilage.” Think about that. Israeli scientists figured out how to put a natural, edible coating on produce that keeps it fresh longer. Not chemicals. Not plastic wrap. Something you can eat. That’s ingenuity in the service of the Creator’s command: do not waste what I have given you.
“During storage and distribution, companies replace static expiration labels with dynamic freshness indicators, allowing food quality to be assessed in real time.” You know how much perfectly good food gets thrown away because of a printed date on a package? Israel said: we can do better than that. Let’s actually measure whether the food is still good, instead of guessing.
“At the point of sale, data-driven platforms enable retailers and distributors to better match supply and demand through dynamic pricing.” In plain language — use technology to make sure the right amount of food goes to the right places, and price it so it moves instead of sitting on a shelf until it’s thrown out.
“At the end of the value chain, waste-to-energy solutions are transforming organic waste into usable outputs.” Even what can’t be saved gets redeemed. Turned into energy. Nothing wasted. Friends, that’s Bal Tashchit — “do not destroy” — engineered into an entire national food system.
And here’s the part that should make every one of us who stands with Israel proud. Arani told the assembly that these solutions are “not only being deployed in Israel, but also in a range of international settings, from advanced supply chains to regions where infrastructure gaps lead to significant post-harvest food loss.”
Read that again. Israel is sending these technologies to developing nations — places where families lose enormous amounts of food simply because they lack the infrastructure to store and transport it. Israel is feeding the world, including parts of the world that vote against her at that very same institution every single year.
That’s not irony. That’s Genesis 12:3: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
While the World Lectures, Israel Delivers
Arani closed his remarks with a line that, in a room full of bloviating diplomats, was almost radical in its simplicity: “Reducing food waste is one of the most immediate and scalable opportunities to strengthen food security and resource efficiency. Israel is committed to advancing practical, result-driven solutions.”
Practical. Result-driven. Not aspirational. Not theoretical. Not “we hope to” or “we pledge to” or “we call upon the international community to.” Israel is committed. Present tense. Already doing it.
Compare that to the celebrities and billionaires who fly to these events to deliver sweeping moral pronouncements. They “call on world leaders.” They “raise awareness.” They “start conversations.” And then they fly home on a private jet that burns more fuel in a single trip than most families use in a year. The gap between their words and their lives is wide enough to drive a convoy of Leket Israel food rescue trucks through.
Israel showed up to that podium with two million rescued meals, 34,000 tons of food distributed, half a million people fed, and technologies being shared with the world. And Arani’s final words? Simply: “I thank you.”
That’s it. No self-congratulation. No plea for a standing ovation. Just a quiet “thank you” and he sat down.
Why This Is Our Story Too
Now let me speak to you directly — to those of you who pray for Israel, who give to organizations that bless the Jewish people, who have stood with the Holy Land when it wasn’t popular and when it cost you something.
This is the fruit of the values we share.
When we talk about standing with Israel, we don’t mean it in some abstract, bumper-sticker way. We mean this. We mean a nation that takes the Word of God seriously enough to build an entire food rescue infrastructure around a commandment from Leviticus. We mean a people who, when invited to speak at an institution that routinely slanders them, don’t show up with grievances — they show up with two million rescued meals and say, “Here’s what we’ve been doing while you were busy condemning us.”
That is the character of the nation we support. And every dollar, every prayer, every act of advocacy that flows from this community toward Israel and organizations like Leket Israel becomes part of that testimony.
Think about what your support makes possible. Not a celebrity’s feel-good moment. Not a photo opportunity. Real food on real tables for real families — the elderly, new immigrants, single mothers, children who would otherwise go hungry. Half a million people reached in a single year.
Israel is blessing the nations. And through your faithfulness, you are part of that blessing.
The Difference Between Talking and Doing
Let me close with this.
Our Lord said you will know a tree by its fruit. Not by its press releases. Not by its Instagram posts. Not by the speeches it gives from a podium. By its fruit.
The next time you see some billionaire land a Gulfstream at the UN to lecture the world about waste and sustainability, and then climb back on that plane without having fed a single hungry person — remember Nitzan Arani. Remember a modest Israeli diplomat who walked into a room full of nations that despise his country, laid down the facts of what faithful obedience actually produces, said “I thank you,” and sat down.
Two million meals. Thirty-four thousand tons of food. Half a million people fed. Technology shared freely with the world. A 3,000-year-old commandment still bearing fruit in the 21st century.
That’s not a speech. That’s a harvest.
And friends — through your prayers, your giving, and your unwavering support for Israel — you are part of that harvest. You are laboring alongside the gleaners. You are honoring the God who said, “Leave something in the field for the one who has nothing.”
May we never grow weary in that good work.
“He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and He will reward him for what he has done.” — Proverbs 19:17
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9