Breaking Bread in a Broken Nation
What would it mean if our policies, our prayers, and our daily choices treated hunger as a matter of justice, not charity?
“For the poor shall never cease out of the land … you shall open your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in your land.” — Deuteronomy 15:11
Food in all our faith traditions is considered a blessing, one derived from G-d and completed by humans and which begins most meals. Many Jews across the world recite their short blessing for food, with a few words that try to make the world whole:
Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz Blessed are You, the Lord our G-d, who brings forth bread from the earth.
I’ve said that blessing thousands of times, usually very quickly, as someone quite hungry before eating. On Friday night, at the start of the Sabbath meal, this prayer is elevated as we eat a freshly baked, warm loaf of bread called challah.
Our challah, made weekly by “Nat,” my 96-year-old mother-in-law, is slightly sweet, egg-enriched, and brushed with egg wash for a golden crust. Nat’s challah is legendary. Portions are given to whoever is at our table, to restaurant patrons or servers if we are eating out, or to families at the continuing-care center where she lives. After saying the blessing, we dip a piece of challah in salt to remind us that every table is a small altar, a covenant that endures to preserve holiness when gratitude is spoken aloud.
Outside our small circle of blessing, the world looks heavier. Millions of families in the United States must choose between rent and dinner; many seniors stretch medications instead of groceries. The salt on our table can preserve memory, but it cannot keep hunger from spreading.
Recently, as the U.S. government shutdown unfolded, we were reminded again how fragile food security remains. I meet people every week in clinic for whom the bread may come late or who go to bed hungry. Hunger rarely announces itself though; rather, it hides behind a polite “I’m ok.”
A few months ago, I saw a patient for a colleague who needed a refill of his blood-pressure medicine. He said little at first, and the renewal would have taken two minutes. I stopped typing though, looked up for a moment, and then asked about his life, work, and family.
He told me he was unemployed because of arthritis, that his vision was poor from cataracts, that his monthly Social Security check was $1,100 his rent $600, and he often had little left for food. He slept in his car at a friend’s house and showered once a week.
He carried a book with him, fifty torn pages from a Bible, that he gladly let me hold. After meeting with a social worker who connected him with local food pantries and the county council on aging, I gave him twenty dollars for food and two new books from our “library,” thanking him for trusting us enough to come. It was something, but it felt so small.
Literature has long understood what medicine thinks it is rediscovering. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck wrote that “in the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy for the vintage.” Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle showed families who packed meat they could never afford to eat. Richard Wright’s Native Son turned a stolen loaf into a symbol of America’s moral failure.
Those writers understood that hunger erodes the body and spirit. It hollows the stomach and erodes trust in neighbors, institutions, and government. Out of those same decades of hunger and despair, the country began to build programs meant to keep empty tables from becoming a national shame.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) feeds more than forty million Americans each month. Nearly two-thirds of beneficiaries are children, seniors, or people with disabilities. It is, in its essence, our nation’s collective hamotzi, a covenant that no one should be left without daily bread. Every SNAP dollar generates about $1.60 in local economic activity, much of it at neighborhood grocery stores and farmers’ markets. When government policy ensures that families can eat, it becomes not bureaucracy but a moral instrument, a way our nation turns faith into daily bread.
SNAP, food stamps, and food pantries are often spoken of as the same, but they are not. SNAP is a federal entitlement program, an economic lifeline administered through debit-like cards that allow families to choose their groceries. Food stamps were the older paper form, now largely gone. Food pantries, by contrast, are voluntary efforts, acts of generosity and local trust. While both matter, one is a right of citizenship and the other a reflection of community conscience.
Cutting back on or severe disruption of SNAP, by shutdown, neglect, or political trimming, is as draconian as it is ignorant. It is as if some believe poverty can be cured by ignoring hunger. Hunger is not a character flaw; it is a policy choice.
Food insecurity has now become a recognized measure of community health and moral well-being. It shows up in the faces we see every day: the single mother skipping dinner so her children can eat, the veteran rationing groceries until his disability check arrives, the elderly patient whose “noncompliance” with medication is really malnutrition in disguise.
At the University of North Carolina Department of Family Medicine, where I work, we ask a question at every visit: “Do you ever worry about running out of food before you have money to buy more?” It’s a small addition to a checklist already crowded with vital signs and quality indicators, but it changes the encounter. A hungry body heals slowly; a hungry mind cannot focus. And when a patient answers “yes”, the visit becomes not only about diagnosis but also about dignity.
We didn’t start asking because it sounded compassionate; we started because the evidence demanded it. Over the past decade, study after study has shown that food insecurity is as predictive of poor health as smoking or obesity.
One elderly woman I see lives alone in a small apartment thirty miles from our office. Her pantry is almost bare by the third week of each month, but she insists she is fine. She is not. Her blood pressure rises, her weight falls, and her anxiety deepens. Medical problems tell one story; her refrigerator tells another.
The idea is simple even if radical: if we can measure food insecurity, we can respond, not with judgment but with systems of support. Each “yes” tells a story bigger than one visit. In that moment, medicine shifts from measurement to witnessing, from treating symptoms to acknowledging the broader life behind them. No clinic can solve hunger alone, but together they help change how care is delivered. Across the country, more than 1,400 community health centers care for over thirty million Americans who might otherwise go unseen. In these clinics, medicine and meaning meet not in theory but in practice.
Once diagnosed, clinicians can link patients to hospital-based food pantries, community gardens, “Food is Medicine” prescription programs, and food-box deliveries for patients with chronic disease. Hospitals can partner with local farms or grocery co-ops.
When we began screening, we discovered what those working in shelters already knew: hunger was not rare. It was hiding in plain sight, in retirees, in single parents working two jobs, in college students juggling rent and tuition. We had always measured the pulse of the body. Now we are learning to measure the pulse of the household.
Faith-based institutions have long led these efforts by moral example, by serving food every day to those in need. Programs like Meals on Wheels remind us that a meal delivered to a doorstep can be as healing as any prescription. In our own community, PORCH turns generosity into routine, as neighbors leave food on porches each month, and volunteers move it to pantries within hours. It’s what shared responsibility looks like at street level.
Feeding those that are hungry is Tzedakah (Justice in Hebrew), an obligation.
Hunger should never be red or blue. Feeding those that are hungry is Tzedakah (Justice in Hebrew), an obligation. When we prevent hunger, we strengthen both our moral fabric and our public health, proof that compassion is the most practical policy we have. It is the common work that can still unite a divided nation.
As all faiths say blessings over bread, they acknowledge dependence not on government but on one another, and on the G-d who makes the rain fall and the wheat rise. Bread and hunger are never only about food. They remind us we belong to a community; they are about the holiness of caring.
Finally, food insecurity does not stop at our borders. Children suffering from hunger in war torn regions across the globe, in multiple countries including Somalia, Gaza, and Sudan, need help. When natural disasters cause ports to close or crops to wash away, as seen most recently in Jamaica, communities depend on relief programs to survive. Groups such as Food For The Poor and World Central Kitchen work daily to deliver meals, repair farms, and rebuild food systems across the globe. In all cases, our moral obligation remains the same: to feed and to heal without labels. The covenant to feed the hungry is a shared vulnerability.
My father used to tell me, “Adam, worry about things you can do something about.” Hunger is one of those things we all can and must do something about each day.
One Minute for Moral Action: (Because reflection without action is unfinished prayer.)
· Call or email your representative to urge protection of SNAP benefits.
· Donate $10 to a local food pantry or to MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger
· Add two extra items to your grocery cart weekly to give to those who are hungry or homeless
· Share a meal or coffee with someone who often eats alone
· Invite someone from a different political party for coffee or tea
· Call about volunteer opportunities with PORCH or Meals on Wheels
· Support international hunger relief through Food For The Poor or World Central Kitchen
I write these reflections to invite dialogue at the intersection of medicine, faith, and moral life. I welcome your stories of where you’ve seen hunger, justice, or healing in your own community.
What would it mean if our policies, our prayers, and our daily choices treated hunger as a matter of justice, not charity?
Another provocative and inspiring post, Adam. I really value your unique perspective and voice.
Really enjoyed reading this and especially the section at the end. “What would it mean if our policies, our prayers, and our daily choices treated hunger as a matter of justice, not charity?”
Thanks for writing and sharing