Thousands of Bay Area Jews will show up at Yom Kippur services this year lugging grocery bags loaded with food.
This isn’t part of a mass conspiracy to break the fast.
Instead, the effort is part of the High Holidays Food Drive, an annual, growing campaign initiated by area food banks and congregations to collect tons of food for needy people throughout the region.
This year’s goal in San Francisco and Alameda counties is to assemble 18 tons of donations — enough to prepare 28,800 meals — and up from last year’s 16-ton total. Similar food drives are under way in Marin, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
“I think on Yom Kippur, when we fast all day, it’s nice to give the food to other people,” says Diane Laub, an Alameda resident who heads the social action committee at Temple Sinai in Oakland.
Last year, donations from the 900-family Reform congregation almost filled a waiting truck from the Alameda County Community Food Bank. “It was just non-stop people bringing food,” says Laub, who this year hopes to top last year’s 8,000-pound collective donation by an even ton.
“This is a big drive for us,” says Suzan Bateson, executive director of Alameda County’s food bank, which is expecting donations from eight local Jewish congregations and organizations. “It comes in the off-season time of year when we don’t traditionally get donations.”
It also comes when many already struggling families are further stretched by back-to-school expenses for their children.
“It’s such an easy way to give,” says Sally Shannon, a member of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom.
In Shannon’s case, the giving was particularly easy: the professional organizer gathered up a shopping bag of canned goods last week from a client who was cleaning out her kitchen pantry. “I said, ‘No, no, don’t throw it away. Give it to me, we’re having a food drive,'” Shannon said.
At the San Francisco Food Bank, communications manager Carolyn Rohrer expects a big response to the drive, now in its 10th year, from 18 synagogues and other Jewish organizations — up from 12 last year.
“People in San Francisco and around the country are thinking about their community,” said Rohrer. “Hunger is much more visible and people are responding to that.”
In San Francisco alone, the food bank estimates that 150,000 live daily with the threat of going hungry. This year, the JCC of San Francisco is teaching youngsters in its preschool and after-school classes such facts about hunger as it conducts its annual food drive.
For every pound of food collected, the San Francisco Food Bank also will receive a 60-cent donation from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.
The drive is scheduled around the High Holy Days for both spiritual and practical reasons. The holidays typically are a time of reflection as well as high attendance at services.
To help publicize the drive, the Oakland-based Bay Area Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life sends out brochures to synagogues describing the project and its link to Jewish ethics.
“It’s a time when the congregation is gathered as one,” said Flora Feldman, an Oakland resident who helps coordinate the drive at Temple Sinai. “I think we see it as an opportunity to do a mitzvah in unison.”
Gary Cohn, executive director of San Francisco’s Reform Congregation Emanu-El, said members were asked on Rosh Hashanah to contribute to the effort throughout this week and on Yom Kippur.
“We bring in about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of food,” says Cohn, who also serves on the food bank’s board of directors. “I think for our members, the high holidays season gives them time to think about the past year. I think the food drive helps people focus on how it’s not just about us, but about the whole world.”
New to the drive this year is Jewish Vocational and Career Counseling Service, which placed a collection barrel in its Geary Street lobby. Though many of those visiting the center may be experiencing unemployment and other economic hardships themselves, youth program coordinator Rebecca Bassin said the agency wanted to extend the mitzvah project to staff and clients alike.
At the Marin Community Food Bank, warehouse manager Dan Williams already had collected 1,300 pounds of food from Congregations Rodef Sholom in San Rafael and Kol Shofar in Tiburon.
In the South Bay, Jenny Luciano, spokeswoman for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, said 10 synagogues are participating in the seventh annual High Holy Day drive.
At Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham, the 320 families who belong to the Conservative congregation were asked at Rosh Hashanah to donate 10 pounds of food each. The drive will run through Sukkot, said administrator Jason Berger. “I think it’s something we can do,” he said. “It’s very easy to help out others in need.”