14 Jan EATING GARBAGE

Earlier this week, I was
standing right next to a
large trash can in a public
area when something
startling happened. A
seemingly put-together
man walked up, removed
the lid, and began to
rummage. He found a half-eaten sandwich,
pulled it out, and gobbled it down. He then
reached back in, examined the soda bottles
and cans that had been disposed of, and
found one that still had soda left. He pulled
it out and guzzled down the little ginger ale
that was left in the bottle.
I am embarrassed to admit that my first
reaction as I witnessed him literally eat
garbage right next to me was to recoil
with a sense of disgust and revulsion.
Something was incongruous about the way
he was dressed, the fact that we were in
a public, visible place, and what he was
doing. But not a moment later I caught
myself and realized – how hungry must
this man be to be willing to reach into a
trash bin in front of many other people,
pull out a half-eaten sandwich that was
contaminated with garbage, and put it in
his mouth. How thirsty must he be that he
would grab a stranger’s unfinished bottle of
ginger ale covered in someone else’s germs

and gulp it down.
The world produces enough food to feed
all of its 8 billion people, yet 822 million
people, over ten percent, are malnourished
and go hungry every day. Around 9 million

people die every year of hunger and hunger-
related diseases, yet over 1 billion meals

are wasted every day. I am hardly the first
to recognize and point out that we must do
a better job of rescuing food and getting
it into the hands of those who are hungry.
(There are amazing organizations attacking
this issue, like Leket in Israel or Shearit
HaPlate in some cities in America, but not
every community yet has such programs in
place.)
It should hurt to observe a simcha and look
out at the shmorg and Chosson’s tisch in
which so much food is leftover, untouched,
and will eventually be wasted, then find
ourselves at the main meal in which many
of the guests won’t remain even though
food was prepared for them and to consider
how many could benefit from food that will
go right into the trash. How much food is
disposed of even after eating the Shabbos
and Yom Tov leftovers a few more days?
What happens to the food from Kiddush
and Shalosh Seudos at shuls everywhere?
I wanted to help the man who had gone

through the garbage but he was gone
before I knew it. In that moment, I felt
not only tremendous compassion for him,
but enormous gratitude for myself and my
family. If you have fresh and clean food
to eat, if each time you are hungry you are
able to satiate yourself, if you don’t know
what it means to have to rummage through
garbage to put something in your belly, you
are fortunate and blessed. If you were in a
room with nine other random people from
the greater world, the chances are one of
them would be hungry and malnourished
enough to eat food out of the trash and if
it isn’t you, be grateful, say thank you each
and every day.
We are fortunate to have Torah and Halacha
that is designed to make us mindful. A
Beracha before and after we eat reminds us
to be grateful to have access to fresh and
clean food and to further express gratitude
when our belly is full and our body is
hydrated. Our rabbis teach that benefiting
from this world such as by eating without
first making a beracha is considered
me’ilah, taking sacred and holy property
for oneself. The Tosefta (Berachos 4:1)
references a verse in Tehillim (24:1), “The
earth is Hashem’s and its fullness.” If you
take and benefit from the world without first
paying with a “thank you,” you have taken
something holy and made it profane, you
have desecrated something consecrated.
We don’t need to wait for something
extraordinary to say thank you. Each and
every day, with each and every morsel of
food, there is so much to appreciate, not
take for granted, and be grateful for.
Last Shabbos, we hosted Michoel
Gottesman of Shlomit, Israel, a
community on the border of Israel, Gaza,
and Egypt. On October 7, as a member of
the community’s volunteer security team,
Michoel grabbed his weapon, put on
his vest and helmet, and went to defend
his family and his community. Shlomit
wasn’t infiltrated but the neighboring
community of Prigan was and they
desperately needed reinforcements.
Michoel and others answered the call,
the only volunteer security team that
defended a neighboring community, not
only their own. They encountered a large
group of terrorists that far outnumbered
them and were much better armed.
Tragically, four of those heroic volunteers
fell in that battle. Michoel himself was
shot. The bullet entered from his side,
in the small area not protected by the
ceramic vest. It pierced his lung, went
through his kidney and spleen, exited his
left side and shredded his upper arm. He
fell to the ground bleeding profusely and
understood there was significant damage
to his internal organs. He calculated
that he didn’t have long to live and used
what he thought was his last breath to
say Shema and to declare the unity of

Hashem’s existence.
After finishing Shema, he found that he
was still conscious, still alive but thought
that for sure, now he only had moments to
live, enough time to think or say one more
thing. What should it be? In a conversation
at our Shul he shared that after saying
Shema, he looked up to the Heavens and
said, “Thank you Hashem. Thank you for
a beautiful life. Thank you for my amazing
wife, my beautiful children, my friends and
neighbors. Thank you for all that you gave
me. If I go now, Hashem, I just want to say
thank you for everything.”
As he described what happened, I thought
to myself, what a perspective and what
an attitude. Instead of saying, “Why me,
Hashem, how could you do this,” while
lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood,
Michoel chose to look at his life and to say
thank you.
It took two hours to evacuate Michoel and
two more hours for him to be picked up
by the helicopter and taken to the hospital.
Miraculously, he survived, though he spent
many months in the hospital healing and
many surgeries to reconstruct his arm. He
continues to need rehab three times a week.
While his body will please-God heal, he will
forever carry the emotional and spiritual
injuries and trauma of that day. He lost close
friends, almost lost his life, but never lost
his sense of gratitude.
If he could express gratitude in that moment,
can’t we and shouldn’t we express gratitude
when everything is going well, when we
have food to eat, a roof over our head, and
air in our lungs? We don’t need to wait until
we think it is the last moment of our life
to say thank you for our lives, the big and
small, the ordinary and extraordinary.
When we wake up in the morning, the
very first words we say are Modeh Ani,
which literally means, “Grateful am I.”
Grammatically, it would be more correct
to say “Ani modeh, I am grateful,” but
our rabbis understood that the first word
on our lips cannot be “I.” Instead, despite
it sounding clumsy, we wake up saying
“Grateful,” and with that we set the tone for
our day, an attitude of gratitude.
With each beracha you say, be mindful to
feel grateful for the food you will eat and
committed to enable all to never go hungry.
Wake up with an attitude of gratitude and
fill each day with a sense of “Grateful am I.”