Shabbat Shalom and  Shanah Tovah!  You know, every year we wish each other a “Shanah Tovah”, a “good year,” and it is a nice thing to do, and we like it, but I wonder how much thought we really give to it.  Do we sense any urgency in that wish for a good year?  I expect that most of us don’t.  We say it to be warm and welcoming, but its actual message just sort of rolls off our backs.  Of course, we want a good year for ourselves and our loved ones and our friends, but even as we want it, we have also come to expect it.  For us, every year is a good year.  Our lives are secure.  We have food, we have shelter, we have clothing, we have countless possessions and money in our pockets.  So unless something unforeseen befalls us; some tragedy, some disaster - the death of a loved one, the onset of illness, some horrible accident, a loss of employment - we enter every new year basically expecting only good things to happen in our lives.

In living lives of such blessings, it is easy for us to forget that not all lives are not so blessed.  There are people in this world and there are people in this country who fervently pray that their next year will be a good one, for it has been a long time since they enjoyed a really good year.

I suspect that we all have just come from having wonderful dinners.  Our stomachs are full, and probably too full.  We enjoyed those dinners, but big dinners are nothing new to us.  Therefore it may be difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that while we are eating more than our full, there are more than 840 million people in the world today who are malnourished, with more than 153 million of them being under the age of 5.  It may be difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that 6 million children under the age of 5 die every year of malnutrition.  That is like the Nazi Holocaust year in and year out!  It may be difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that of the 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion of them live on less than $1.00 per day.

Those are all shocking statistics, but very often when we think of such severe hunger and poverty, we think of it happening is places like Africa and Asia.  Places that are foreign and far away.  But poverty and hunger are American issues as well.  The poor are among us.  Indeed in our own country 31 million people - including 12 million children - live in households that experience hunger or are at risk of hunger.  That is one in ten households in the United States.

Let me share with you the story of one of them.  Her name is Susan.  She receives $303 in food stamps and $80-$100 in child support per month.  She works 18 hours a week and is eligible for Medicaid.  These are her words:

“I am a 34 year old white working mother of two children, ages 13 and 7... I cook all the meals in my house.  I cook spaghetti or pizza at least once a week.  We always eat dinner together at the table.  I shop where I can many the money or food stamps stretch because I still have to buy paper goods, personal needs, pay bills, and take care of school needs with whatever money I have.  I have a real problem with transportation.  Sometimes friends take me or [I take] public transportation in which you can only carry so much.  Friends are okay sometimes until the dollar signs start popping up... So, next you put on your walking shoes.

“I would like for my family to have more fresh fruit and vegetables because it’s better for them.  Toward the end of the month things get tough and my children don’t get the nutritional foods they need to survive and do well in school.  I really need more child support...

“We’ve been homeless before, and it was almost impossible to survive and get shelter.  Love was all I had to truly offer my children.  I wish I had better training to establish a career to help support my family better.”

I share Susan’s story with you because I want to remind you that hunger truly is real, and that it exists in our own back yard.  And if the hungry are ever to be fed - if people like Susan are ever to receive a help­ing hand to lift them out of their suffering - then there is only one group of people who could offer that hand.  Us.  We who are blessed with so much for ourselves.

Every year I call upon our congregation to support our three major High Holy Day hunger projects.  I call upon you to walk in the CROP Walk, and or to sponsor those who do.  I call upon you to bring to this synagogue between tonight and Sukkot grocery sacks full of non-perishable food items which we will turn over to the Riverbend Foodbank.  I call upon you to take home those pledge envelopes for Mazon - those envelopes you found in your prayer books - and write a check and send it in.

Every year I call upon you to do this, but this year, my call is a bit more urgent.  It is urgent because I fear that we may be losing our sense of mission in this cause.  It may be getting old for us.  For as well as we did last year in support of these three projects, we did not do that well at all.  For example, last year we had 62 walkers participating in the CROP Walk.  While that is an impressive gathering, that still rep­resents 24 walkers less than we had the year before.  In fact, that was the smallest delegation we have sent to the CROP Walk since 1998.  Last year for CROP, we raised $2,142.00.  That, too, was down from the year before - down by an astounding $558.00.  That is the lowest amount our congregation has raised for CROP since the year 2000.

Unfortunately, the numbers for last year’s food drive are equally depressing.  Last year we collected 1,075 pounds of food for Riverbend Foodbank.  That represented 311 pounds less than the year before.  In fact, that is the least amount of food we have collected since 1994, when we gathered only 957 pounds.

Folks, we cannot ignore people like Susan and her children.  We cannot close our eyes to the annual ho­locaust of hunger among the little children of the world.  For if we do, we permit our souls to turn to stone.

Come, join us on the CROP Walk.  It is really a beautiful thing to stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends of other faiths, united in the wondrous work of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world.  In fact, we as Jews should feel a special responsibility to CROP this year, for the walk is traditionally held on the first Sunday in October.  However, this year, in deference to the Jewish community and in honor of Yom Kip­pur, they have put it off a week.  They want us there.  They need us there.  And we need to be there.

And bring in those cans and boxes.  This year, lets fill up the Library.  Do like I do.  Go to Sam’s and go crazy.  There are plenty of Susans in the Quad Cities, and they are looking to us for help.  Let us not fail them.