Ready or not, here I go...

Just about a month ago, in the midst of the Jewish holiday season, I received an e-mail from Rabbi Steven Gutow of the JCPA, asking me to join him in taking the Food Stamp Challenge. I'm still not sure what in this e-mail, among the dozens I receive for worthy causes, caught my attention. Of course, issues of poverty and hunger in America are important, but so are many other issues and I haven't committed to take personal action on many of those. Perhaps it was my personal angst over the Occupy movements (I agree with the problem they identify, but am still waiting for them to suggest a solution), perhaps it was the proximity to the holiday of Sukkot, where we celebrate the harvest but also read the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) questioning the meaning of life.  Maybe it was just post Yom Kippur guilt.  Whatever it was about the initial e-mail, the more I researched this idea, the more important it became to take Rabbi Gutow up on his solicitation to join the challenge.

The basics of the challenge are simple - try to live on $31.50 per week per person for one week to better understand the lives of people who rely entirely on Food Stamps (or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - SNAP - as it is formally called).

The reality of trying to take the Challenge required several considerations:

• Should I do it alone, or with my whole family? (After discussing it with my wife and my kids, we decided that it would be better if I do it alone, as my children are still relatively young. However, doing it alone further reduces the amount of variety I could have in my diet, as I lose out on economies of scale.)
• When should I do it? (My biggest concern with timing was thinking about various celebrations that were on the calendar.  The Challenge asks those taking it not to eat free food at events and I didn't want to avoid celebrations nor did I want to reduce the joy of the celebration by attending and not participating. I chose the week of November 13-19th, 2011, since I didn't have much on the calendar this week.)
• Did I really think I could do it? (Despite some recent success with weight loss and adherence to the strictures of kashrut, I have generally not been successful at maintaining discipline about what I eat. Several people encouraged me to try it anyway - that failure to keep to it is a valuable lesson as well.)

After working out these and other questions, I also asked a couple of friends who follow some of these issues more closely to make sure that the statistics were authentic and that the Challenge was worthwhile.  One friend (a liberal) who works on these issues for a government agency assured me that the Challenge is worthwhile.  She did note, however, that the $31.50 was based on an average, and people who received this level of funding have additional sources of income to contribute to their food budget. Still, she said the difference was not huge.  Another friend (a conservative) said that the statistics are reliable as far as he knows and that most conservatives would acknowledge the level of funding for food assistance for the truly needy is inadequate. (I subsequently did find one conservative blog that questioned the statistic - but even his numbers end up at $38.50 per person per week. A significant difference if one is looking at percentages, but not so much in terms of real dollars and purchasing power for food.)  Both encouraged me to do it.

Finally, I wanted to make sure that what I was doing would have an impact beyond my personal experience.   As it turns out, the pulpit rabbi at my congregation was out of town on November 19th and was happy to have me speak about my experience at Shabbat services that morning.

Having run out of excuses (and told enough people that I was going to do it), I am nervously ready to embark upon this Challenge.  I will try to write a post each day to document my experience.