A call on American Jewry to support the observance of World Food Day, October 16, was made today by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The call was issued by Henry Taub, president of the JDC and Ralph Goldnan, executive vice president, and noted that there were now more than 300 American sponsoring agencies of World Food Day.
According to the JDC, almost every American community organizes some food-related events during the pre-Thanksgiving period. “Some have ecumenical services or a synagogue or a church may hold a ‘foodless meal’ with the money not spent being donated to some food-related charity.” The JDC urged Jewish communities to make these observances an important part of the local calendar.
Taub and Goldman noted that feeding the hungry has been a vital part of JDC work overseas since it come into existence in 1914. “Its first challenge was to combat starvation among the Jews in Eastern Europe who were trapped between the opposing armies in World War I.”
“Hardly had one emergency subsided, ” they observed, “when others arose. After World War I, hostilities between the Russians and the Poles again caught the Jewish communities in the cross-fire. Uprooted from their homes, in flight to avoid the fighting, tens of thousands of Jews roamed the land in rags and starving. The JDC sent doctors, nurses, social workers, and tons of food and clothing.”
Before, during and after World War II, “hunger was a constant threat to Jewish communities overseas, in Germany when the Jews were thrown out of work, behind the German lines during the war, and after the war in the D.P. camps throughout Europe where Jews were trying to reassemble their lives, ” the two men said. “At one time 250,000 survivors were being fed by the JDC.”
At present the JDC and other international agencies are especially concerned about the famine afflicting the sub-Sahara countries in Africa. Many hundreds of thousands of people are facing starvation, including the Falashas, the Black Jews of Ethiopia.
“Starvation is, regrettably, a fact of life and all people who care about people are urged to help bring this disaster to an end,” Taub and Goldnan said. “We can all help by focusing attention on this issue through World Food Day.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
