Do you believe Israel’s next generation of defenders should grow up undernourished?
Of course not. Yet shockingly, more than one in three Israeli children, 1.2 million of them, go undernourished. A child raised short of iron, protein and calcium becomes an adult with a weaker body and a slower mind, less fit for the uniform and the work Israel will need from him.
Picture a mother in Tel Aviv. She is up before six to pack lunches and on her feet at work by eight, and her husband takes every extra shift he can get. These families are “the new poor”, two-income households that were managing before the war. Two full-time minimum-wage paychecks come to 12,495 shekels (just $3,960 USD) a month, and a family needs 14,139 ($4,479 USD) to live on – a gap of $519 USD.
It is not enough for her growing son.
He is nine, and he is trying just as hard. He goes to school with a slice of bread in his bag, and he is far from alone. When Leket Israel surveyed 675 parents of elementary school children last year, one in five had stopped putting healthy food in the lunchbox altogether because of the price. He wants to make the soccer team, so he runs every recess until his legs give out. They give out before the other boys’ because a diet of bread and pasta is short of iron, and a child short of iron carries less oxygen in his blood and tires first.
He sits in the front row to learn. But the high carb, low nutrient diet his family can afford makes him lose his concentration quickly. As such his grades suffer, and he is forced to hear his teachers call him ‘lazy’ and ‘restless’. The worst part is according to the World Health Organization, this will lead to permanent problems into adulthood.
Put fruit and vegetables in front of him every day, with the protein and calcium the dietitians teach his mother to set beside them, and his legs carry him the full length of the field, his shoulders start to build toward the pack they will one day carry, and his mind stays on the lesson long enough to learn it. Feed him properly and he can become the officer or the engineer Israel is going to need. Leave him hungry and Israel gets a recruit with less to give and a student always one step behind.
Now, multiply him by 1.2 million. Those children are the soldiers, engineers, farmers and teachers of Israel in 2045, and a nation is exactly as strong as the children it raises.
Do we believe God still has a plan for Israel?
Of course we do!
Then can we let the generation that will carry it grow up weak?
“That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; That our daughters may be as pillars, Sculptured in palace style; That our barns may be full, Supplying all kinds of produce.” Psalm 144:12-13 NKJV
God needs these children to grow up strong, for Israel’s defense and for her prosperity. That is why Leket Israel provides, through a program called Leket Briut. Briut is the Hebrew word for health.
Every two weeks that mother walks into her son’s school and picks up a box – about 26 pounds – of fresh fruit and vegetables rescued from Israel’s farms. The gleanings of the field God commands in Leviticus 19 be left for the poor. The tomatoes she put back on the shelf go into the pot that night!
Leket’s registered dietitians teach the family how to select and prepare the best nutritious foods. So not only do we provide the family with food for their children, but teach them how to make each of their dollars stretch further in the shopping cart.
By spring he runs the full length of the field, his hand goes up and stays up, and his teacher has stopped writing “restless”.
Does it work beyond one family? Let’s look at the school year just finished.
Leket Briut ran in ten elementary schools. 2,105 families picked up 35,641 boxes, 943,000 pounds of produce that would otherwise have gone to waste. Leket Israel surveyed 964 of those families at the start of the year and again at the end: 30% said their children were eating more vegetables, 31% more fruit, and by the end of the year 84% were consistently putting vegetables on the dinner table. Those families cooked those dinners. The box made them affordable.
One father in the program, Oleg, has seven people at home,
“My daughter calls me and says, ‘Dad, the boxes are here! Come pick them up!’ They’re full of fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables we couldn’t otherwise afford. Now she’s excited to eat foods she wouldn’t even touch before.”
And 83% of all the families in those ten schools took part, so nobody points at a boy as the poor kid who gets the box. Every child in the school eats better, so every child in the school grows.
This school year Leket Briut grows to twelve schools, in towns like Jaffa, Lod and Kiryat Gat. Two of the new schools are on the conflict line, in communities hit directly by the war, where the children who have lived closest to Israel’s enemies most need to grow up strong. Leket’s goal is 51,140 boxes by the end of this school year.
That mother is fighting for her children. That boy is fighting to grow. The one thing they cannot do for themselves is afford fresh food, and that is exactly the thing we can do for them.
Hasn’t God given us the responsibility to nourish these future guardians of Israel?
Christians like you fill those boxes, and every box builds the bone and muscle of a child who will one day guard Israel’s borders, and the mind of one who will one day run her hospitals, her farms and her companies!
Shalom,
Raymond MacDonald