Elizabeth, NJ – In an effort to better understand the financial hardships faced by members of his parent body, the associate dean of a New Jersey yeshiva took part in a food stamp challenge, limiting himself to a $30 food budget for one week.
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Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz of the Jewish Educational Center in Elizabeth was one New Jersey figure, including a dozen state senators and assembly members, who participated in the challenge spearheaded by the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey.
“The idea behind the challenge was to become more sensitive to the needs of others,” Rabbi Teitz told VIN News. “In our school, if someone can’t afford full tuition, their application goes to the tuition committee. If their situation is beyond what the board is authorized to deal with, the application comes to me. I am the one who gets the applications of people on food stamps and I am the one who decides how much they should be paying in tuition. It seemed only right that I spend a week living in their shoes.”
Rabbi Teitz elected to take on the challenge, which ran from September 8th to September 14th, on his own, not including his wife and five children in his week-long experiment. Armed with a budget of just $30, Rabbi Teitz ventured to the local Super Stop and Shop to buy food for the week.
“That is the store that is closest to the depressed neighborhoods in the area,” explained Rabbi Teitz. “This is where a significant number of people who live below the poverty line shop and I wanted to shop where they shopped.”
Rabbi Teitz shopped the store’s sales coming home with a box of whole wheat matza, a loaf of whole wheat bread, a box of Cheerios, two pounds of pasta, a two pound bag of rice, four cans of tuna, a bag of baby carrots, four tomatoes, two apples, one cucumber, a quart of milk and the largest head of romaine lettuce he could find in the store. All told his bill came to $25.85, leaving him with just $4.15 left to buy food for Shabbos.
While challenge participants were told they could use basic spices and condiments they already had in their homes, Rabbi Teitz quickly discovered just how difficult dealing with an extremely limited food budget can be.
“Four days into the challenge I realized that the only cooking I had done was to boil water for pasta,” said Rabbi Teitz. “I couldn’t make any real recipes because I didn’t have the building blocks I would normally use. All I used from my kitchen was ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, onion and garlic. I didn’t use the basil from my yard or the other spices I would normally use to make things taste good. The food was very bland.”
Rabbi Teitz found he got frequent headaches because of the lack of protein. Asked if he found himself hungry during the week he emphatically responded, “oh, yes.”
Preparing for Shabbos presented its own set of challenges. Rabbi Teitz bought four chicken drumsticks for $3.77, which became the basis of his Shabbos chicken soup, made only from chicken, water, spices and baby carrots.
“I couldn’t afford an onion or even a head of garlic,” said Rabbi Teitz, who saved those four drumsticks for his two Shabbos entrees.
With no money in his budget at all for beverages of any sort, Rabbi Teitz had no grape juice or wine for Shabbos.
“I would have made kiddush on matza but since my wife and my children were not part of the challenge, I used grape juice instead,” reported Rabbi Teitz. “Shabbos morning there was a kiddush in shul and I brought my matza with me so that I could wash there. I would have just heard havadala in shul, but for the sake of my family I did use grape juice at home for havdala.”
Spending Shabbos with such limited provisions was an eye opener for Rabbi Teitz.
“It struck me that it would be so helpful for people who are poor to be invited for a Shabbos meal because it would save them so much money on their budget,” observed Rabbi Teitz. “But many of those people will say no to an invitation because they are embarrassed that they can’t reciprocate.”
Instead, Rabbi Teitz suggested calculating the cost of a Shabbos meal and donating that amount to a local kosher food pantry.
“It is a less undignified way to help people of limited means,” said Rabbi Teitz. “It can’t be dignified to go to a food pantry no matter how nice it is. There are people who will accept help publicly, not because they aren’t embarrassed, but because seeing their childrens’ hungry faces hurts even more.”
Fresh off his week-long challenge, Rabbi Teitz, whose final supper on the food challenge was matza with lettuce and mustard and an apple, feels that he has gained a greater sensitivity for parents who are having difficulty making ends meet.
“When I see those applications sitting on my desk now, I look at them with a different eye,” said Rabbi Teitz.
While he has not yet shared the insights he gained over the week with the students, Rabbi Teitz hopes to do so shortly.
“I came to several realizations,” said Rabbi Teitz. “There really isn’t much that you can do with $30 and for people who live like this, there is no escape. I did this for just one week, but for some people this is their how they live their lives. If they are not careful and they misspend at the end of the month they just don’t eat.”
This is ridicules, Food stamps are a supplementary program. It isn’t, and has never been intended to be used as primary food buying, that’s what welfare is for. I cant stand when politicians and the such twist programs for their own social experiments.
Dear Rabbi Teitz….
I hope your challenge living off $30.00 a week on food you probably didn’t go to the country for 9 weeks at a cost of 12-15,000 dollars, you did NOT go to Miron with your wife for Lag Bomer or to hungary and Poland to all Kivrei Tzadikim.You also did NOT make a Bar Mitzveh for $25,000 or a wedding for $125,000 and i am sure your wife does NOT shop on Lee avenue or 13th Ave for shoes and clothing……
Yossi,
and your point is ?????
I thought the point of food stamps was to supplement the individual or family income, not to provide them with all the money to buy food. So yes, $30 a week is not enough to live on solely.
An Orthodox family of 4-5 can not live on less than 100G a year.
This needs to be taught in every High School to let children know the importance of making a living.
Before graduating from HS every student should know what a budget is and know the basics of running a household.
Hahaha i like this! Which part of the corrupt political system doesn’t this rabbi understand?? The ones receiving foodstamps are the ones that have the most money-get all the benefits the govt is willing to give. The ones that really WORK are the ones struggling!
I believe the numbers are wrong, it is closer to $7 or $10 per day unless there is other income
It must be a good amount because I see so much overpriced nosh being purchased, so much Israeli and imported chocolate. if money is tight use plain potato chips or food instead of nosh.
I wonder how so many can collect while there are trips to Meron, Miami etc.
I applaud Rabbi Teitz –
He is trying to live the principle of “al tadin es chavercha ad shetagia bmkomo”
Maybe we all should!
A terrific lesson to be shared with his student body.
my brother just told me that he would get a job, but after the loss in benefits (health care etc) and paying a babysitter, it doesn’t pay. so he will just continue to sit at home.
its the middle class that supports everyone. wish i could go on a nice vacation every year
Funny how no matter who you talk to in the community will say the same thing…they deny almost everyone for scholarship. This whole caring about those less fortunate is a big farse. You don’t have to be a genius to know that you can’t live on $30 a week including shabbos…maybe Teitz should cut his insane $300k a year salary and give some of it to those who can’t afford the astronomical tuition costs of the JEC. Definitely would have been a nice gesture over the 5 year recession…. But no, his salary stays the same. Oh yeah and because they have the monopoly on local schools there is no other competition that could even possibly force them to lower the costs….win win for the Teitz dynasty…lose lose for the rest of us….maybe if I don’t eat for the entire year I will be able to afford my $50,000 tuition bill…for 4 kids.
Most of the people I know who have food stamps & other things from the welfare/EBT program seem to live very nicely. I remember seeing neighbors getting packages from Tomchei Shabbos on top of it & go to the country for the entire summer (and the wife didn’t work). So while it’s very nice that Rabbi Teitz tries to put himself into the shoes of those who are food stamps, he is still missing the point. With all the connivery going on in “our” world, there are plenty who are really struggling & because they make $50 too much a year, they aren’t eligible for Medicaid type programs & therefore go without insurance hoping that they won’t need it. When my husband was laid off a number of years ago, we tried to get help from HEAP and food stamps just until he was called back to work & we were denied–after all we made “too much”money (mir zenin reicher mentchen). All he was making was $1600 a month on unemployment plus the little bit that I was making. You try to pay tuition, food, rent, heat, electricity, and clothes for kids who are growing on that. W’re supposed to be better & more honest as yidden, but if you say anything the response–everyone does it. For Shame
Food stamps is supposed to SUPPLEMENT!! It was never meant to be the sole source of food. Plus, most on SNAP (supplemental nutrition aid program) are on other programs: Medicaid, WIC, heap, TANF (which is supposed to be temporary which it isn’t) plus more all tax free- I wonder why I bother to work. Especially when the guy in front of me is paying with EBT for his steak, fancy snacks, soft drinks ….and has a new suit on and a Borsalino while his wife wears a $2000 sheitel, a giant rock on her finger, and after I pay my groceries and go to the parking lot and see them putting their purchases in a nice car.
WHERE IS IT WRITTEN THAT EHRLICH =FAIR ?
“…what kind of people will keep you down to raise themselves up.”
Could you please clarify? What kind of people are those? I’ve never heard of anybody actually attempting to keep anybody else down. This is not sarcasm, I really don’t understand what you are talking about.
It’s very sad to read all these bitter jealous comments. Jews taking note of other Jews’ sheitels, jewelries, cars, suits, even what’s in others’ food carts. How does what anybody else possesses harm you? Or the reverse: how is your envy going to improve your own circumstances? Yet, the harm that your envy does to your neshama is irreparable.
By the way, seems like a number of you think that it’s so easy to game the system and live well off government assistance. If that’s the case, why don’t you try it? I don’t support doing it, but at least you would know how easy it really is.
to#19 the quote is erlich ez shverlich
Ghandi would have saved the $30 and invested. Time is not undone by greed!
On the other hand you have elderly destitute Yidden who are 100% qualified for Food Stamps and Medicaid who throw tantrums directed at their children when they suggest they apply for these benefits.
Thank goodness for Food Stamps. Reading some of these mean spirited comments during the month of Elul yet, hungry people would starve if they had to rely on these people to feed them.
No one has said it yet so I will: the Judaism of frum people is a religion for rich people. The food is more expensive, the Yeshiva tuition is ghastly, the shul dues and all the other fund raisers necessitates more money than most people earn.
Pesach food is a nightmare (shmurah matzah for $$$ a pound, a potato kugel that usually costs $4.99 suddenly costs about twice as much, etc). In the next few weeks all Shuls will have fundraisers, costly seats, membership dues, Journal Dinners etc.). And if you want to have an Etrog that is Mehudar get ready to pay through the nose
Anyone who reads this blog knows the facts. Yet we all go along with it like lemmings.
Are there any Rabbonim out there who are willing to speak up. I admire the Satmer Rebbe who has mandated more reasonable weddings. That is only a noble start. I don’t see how this rich version of Judaism can sustain itself.
I feel bad for those really short on food.
I feel bad for those that life changed well made plans and left them needy.
I feel bad for kids that see their friends allowed to buy nosh that they can not.
I also feel upset that I look at prices while many using foodstamps use them on overpriced imported nosh and gourmet chocolate. Potato ships on sale could be 4 or even 5 for a dollar. No real need for the really overpriced nosh.
Rabbi teitz is part of a group of 35 jewish leaders and 15 elected officials all taking part in this challenge as part of a project of the jewish federations of new jersey
Hello? Does anyone remember that we are in Chodesh Elul? Rosh Hashana is 2 days away? There is not reason to turn this article into a hate-fest or a medium to knock each other down. Just realize that we each have our own opinions.
That said, I don’t think Rabbi Teitz took the test while thinking that anyone in the school lives on $30 per week for food. The point of the test was to let the test taker walk a few feet in shoes of those less fortunate than him/her.
And from what Rabbi Teitz said, the goal was accomplished. Any further comments on what is done with this knowledge is pointless since Rabbi Teitz said that the knowledge will be used to help him give out scholarships from a new perspective.
That’s all this article was about. Not people “gaming the system” or fancy cars or vacations or even Rabbi Teitz’s salary.
Take this article as it was meant. As information. Not a political or religious statement.
KaSiva V’Chasima Tova to all.