Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Sukkot: Celebrating Bounty, Embracing Fragility

This piece originally appeared on the American Jewish World Service website.

By Rabbi David Teutsch

A few months ago I was in Senegal as the scholar for an AJWS delegation of rabbinical students. For the first time I saw for myself a level of heartbreaking poverty that until then I had known about only as a bunch of statistics—villages without electricity or safe water, without sewage and garbage disposal, without access to routine medicine or sufficient food. I played with a lively, handsome four-year-old and held him on my lap while knowing that the worms inside him would probably kill him for lack of a few doses of inexpensive medicine that are completely beyond the means of his village to provide. That child stays with me. But for a turning of the wheel. . . .

To read the full article and other work by Rabbi Teutsch, click here.

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Between Sukkot and Thanksgiving be on the look out for other stories on food issues in our own communities.  Learn more about Harvest to Harvest.

Photo by Martin LaBar, licensed under Creative Commons.

Posted by Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org, Wednesday, September 30th, 2009, 5:16 pm, Harvest to Harvest.