’
With October 7th now behind us and Simchat Torah just weeks away, it is clear to most Israelis that the war we are fighting is going to drag on for a very, very long time. A year? Several years? It’s impossible to know, though for an array of reasons, “another year” seems very, very optimistic.
But what we do know is that the burden of this war is going to affect almost everyone. Young people (except for Haredim, obviously) are being called for what feels like impossibly long stretches of reserve service. Their businesses are struggling, their marriages are being impacted, the effect on their children will likely be profound. Soldiers still in their “regular service” are being called on to fight in ways that has not been true in Israel for many, many years. The economy is proving resilient, but no one has any doubt that we’re headed for turbulent times. Even before the fighting in Lebanon began, the Bank of Israel was estimating that the war would cost Israel $65B between 2023 and 2025.
How long can all this go on? How long will Israel’s most mobile citizens remain committed to living here?
Part of the answer depends on how much young Israelis—and not so young Israelis—believe that this is a society worthy of their extraordinary dedication and sacrifice. In other words, Israel’s being an exemplary society is not a “nice to have” or an “important to have.” It’s make or break, a vital precondition to there being a society here in which Israel’s best, most talented—and thus most mobile—will want to stay and raise children and grandchildren for the long haul.
With that in mind, we will be turning our attention to some of the people who are doing extraordinary things to make this a society worthy of its citizens’ devotion.
In today’s podcast, we meet Joseph Gitler, Founder and Chairman of Leket, Israel’s largest food organization, which serves about 220,000 Israelis each week. We hear about the idea behind Leket, its extraordinary growth before October 7, and the ways in which Leket has had to pivot to meet new kinds of demands in the last year.
Joseph Gitler is the Founder and Chairman of Leket Israel, the country’s largest food-rescue organization founded in 2003. Today, Leket has 100 employees and tens of thousands of volunteers. Leket distributes over 55 million pounds of produce and perishable goods to Israel’s socio-economic periphery through its partnerships with close to 300 non-profit organizations, reaching more than 220,000 people in need each week.
Since the outbreak of the war, Leket has been especially focused on assisting the Israeli agriculture sector and farmers around the country. They have sent around 100,000 volunteers to help farmers and have provided loans and financial assistance as needed.
Joseph and his family made Aliyah in 2000.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read.
It's always been a purpose of Israel from the Inside, long before judicial reform and long before this terrible war, to focus on some of the extraordinary people who make up the mosaic of Israeli life, and to point to the incredible work that they do, which I think is a critical part of the nature of this society and this unique people. Some of that we covered before, some of it we've been covering since. My guest today someone who has been doing extraordinary work long before this war, long before judicial reform and all that stuff, who's had to change the nature of his work because of the specific needs of Israel during this time, and who, of course, is thinking very much about what's coming down the pike.
My guest is the founder of Israel's largest food nonprofit, Joseph Gitler. If you have heard of Leket, you know of its extraordinary work. It has been around for a while. It does amazing things. And in these particularly dark and sad times, it's really a zchut, it's a pleasure and a privilege to be able to talk to someone who is doing really great things to bring light and food and hope and thorough decency to Israeli society.
So, Joseph, I'm very grateful to you for taking the time. And as is unfortunately far too often the need in these days, I'll just begin by expressing on behalf of all of us, our condolences to you on your family's loss, on the loss of your beloved son-in-law, a few months ago in this terrible war, and hope and pray that your family will know healing, and that all Am Yisrael will know healing, and as minimal loss going forward as we possibly can.
Tell us about you. How does a person with your background-- what is that background, first of all? But how does a person with your background end up in Israel, end up doing this? And then tell us about the work of Leket until October 6th.
Sure. Thank you very much. I'm hearkening back to my days of listening to sports radio. Some of your listeners will hear this. I'll say, Long-time fan, first-time guest. I don't know if maybe that was the Steve Summer show on WFN. I don't remember which show, but I remember that. So, thank you for having me on. I'm a fan. I've read many of your books.
Look, how did I get to where I am today? So, some, of course, I'll blame on my parents. You have to always lay some blame for them. But I would say it's kind of boring, meaning I come from the very typical modern Orthodox background. I went to those schools, those camps. And my late father, when my wife, Lila and I, told my parents that we were making Aliyah, I remember my father saying, that's the one thing. Of all the things you learned, that's where you decided to, I don't know, drink the Kool-Aid? And of course, they were very proud of us. They brought us up that way. But as the oldest child, and at the time, the only one married, and as the parent of one child, their only grandchild at the time, Meital, who, unfortunately, is my daughter who lost her husband, it was hard. I remember I didn't even have the guts.
We weren't these flag-waving, wearing my tilboshet (uniform) at the Israeli Day parade types, but my parents always knew in the back of their heads that making Aliyah was a possibility, but I couldn't do it. I was a wimp. And I waited till after Pesach because I didn't want to ruin their Pesach. And I told them we're moving in August. It was like four or five months. I didn't want like, in the NBA, when a great player retires, they always have every arena they go to... I didn't want going away festivities month after month. And of course, my parents are very, now only my mother, but my parents are very proud of what we've accomplished here, and that we're here, and that we have five children who I will tell you, even though as parents, we've been here 24 years. We've seen a lot. I thought actually when we made Aliyah was the tough time. We came 10 days before the second Intifada started. So, I thought that and the various wars we've had over the last 24 years was the worst. I was wrong, unfortunately. But I can tell you, and I think a lot of people who've made Aliyah and have children serving the army or growing up here, and even though my kids love going to the US and love going to Canada, where our families are from, and love traveling, they have no regrets. They have no regrets that we move them here. They feel like this is the place to be…
So, you made Aliyah 24 years ago. Was the plan to go into the nonprofit world and to found something?
No, I went to law. Like the good Jewish boys who don't follow their father's medical footsteps, I went to law school because I needed something to do. Obviously, I didn't want to go straight to work after I finished college, and I was able to get away with that, thankfully. And so I went to law school and practiced for one year. Passed the bar. Everything I had to do to make... I just had to make my mother comfortable and happy. So passed the bar, worked for a year in a New York law firm, showed that I could do it. It wasn't the place for me, but that's life.
I wanted to go straight to the top, but it doesn't work like I wanted to be advising the Fortune 500 CEOs at 22 years of age. And we made Aliyah, we came with Meital. She was two years old. I went to work in a software business here in Israel, which I did for three years through thick and thin. It was excellent training. Just seeing what it was like to work in the Israeli workplace, work with Anglos, work with overseas people. It was good. It was good training to work with a product that wasn't great and try to sell it.
Then just if you think about the germination of Leket, the Intifada, September 11th, poverty and startup nation, I would say, all come together for me to create this psychological breaking point, which says, wait a second. Here we are in this getting richer by the day country on the one hand, but on the other hand, a lot of people who are not part of that economy, or even if they are part of that economy, maybe they're not at the... Maybe they're not programmers or they may not founders. And Israel, which when we made Aliyah, I used to always say to people, wow, this Israeli breakfast, this is incredible. It's so cheap. Like 10 bucks, you go out, you get this massive breakfast with fresh cheese, oranges, and a coffee, and a full meal. And as the years have gone by... that's my gauge.
The economist has what they call the Big Mac, the Big Mac gauge. And that's how you gauge if a country is overpriced. Israel always comes up very high in that as a very overpriced country. And that's because relative to the salaries, the cost of a Big Mac is very expensive. And that's my gauge-- was the breakfast gauge. And today it's 60-shekel, 70 shekels, for something that was 30 shekels when I made Aliyah. So, Israel is this weird animal. It's become this very wealthy country. And by the way, it's much more wealthy 24 years later than when I made Aliyah with beautiful homes and restaurants...
And so that all came together in my head. And at a time when not just your typical Israelis were struggling because of just general poverty, but of course, the economic impact of the Intifada on tourism, on hospitality, on investment made things very, very difficult. And, I guess, fortunately for me, I was in the middle of things in work. And it's a family business, which is in our family. So, I was able to go at the ripe old age of, I don't know, 27, 28 to my cousin and say, "I'm very concerned. I'd like to take off three months to investigate if there's something missing in this country. Is there something missing in the way we help the poor vis-a-vis food?"
And by that, it's a very primitive way of looking at poverty. Meaning people who don't know anything about poverty always jump into food. But who's going to pay someone's rent? Who's going to pay their electricity bill? Who's going to buy their kid's schoolbooks? We could go on and on. But we think of poverty, oh, they're going hungry. Actually, even though Leket does great work, 24 years later, I can certainly say to you, food is one of the areas where the most help is preferred because people have this primitive view of what poverty is.
And so, for me, I said to myself, okay, let me go investigate what's possibly missing. And what I found was, after I visited about 100 not-for-profits around the country, was that there are tremendous, holy people feeding the poor of this country. But all of them said to me, we spend too much of our time-- especially those who are trying to do more than just feed people. There are your soup kitchens, which that's 99% of what they do. And then there's an after-school club for kids, which I think we could all agree has a greater purpose than just feeding.
No one's starving in Israel. And if they are spending too much of their time raising money to buy or prepare food, then they can't take care of the kids in the way we want them to. And so the message was, my message was, but we all know we all go to simchot, we all go to weddings and bar mitzvahs, and we all go to hotels. And I hear from soldiers, everyone knows there's so much food waste in this country. So how is it that you're spending so much of your time raising money to buy food? Why can't you get that food? And their answer was, we're busy doing our job, and our job is educating kids, helping battered women, making sure Holocaust survivors are surviving, et cetera. But hey, if you're willing to do that, we would love to get that food free of charge from you.
That was really my jumping off point, and I was surprised, and I'll tell you, 24 years later, to this day, I'm still shocked that Israel had so many food not-for-profit. You had- there are people dealing with dry goods, and we don't deal with that at all in Leket because it's easy, quote, unquote, but I'm making my quote, unquote, as though this is being recorded.
But when it came to agriculture and it came to excess cooked meals, which, of course, is what Leket is known for, there was almost no one doing that. When I went to the leading feeding charities at the time and said to them, Well, what about this? They said, We have our hands full. When I said to them, well, why don't I just join you and I'll do this We're happy with what we're doing. They all do great work, and they continue to do great work.
I said, okay, I got to go out on my own. I did, in my Aliyah car, which, of course, again, those listening who understand-- Aliyah car is the one car you get reduced taxes on. You don't use that to found a food rescue organization with the spills and the muck! And that's it. I was off to the races, started at night to pick up excess food from caterers. Within a few weeks, realized there's something here. There's good food, there's quality food. The agencies in the area of Renana, where I live, that I was delivering it to, were absolutely thrilled to get high-quality food from the best wedding halls in the country to feed their people.
Suddenly, they didn't have to worry as much about how they were going to feed people. And of course, the long-term impact of that, especially, even though Leket, we're a food rescue organization, we don't like to make promises. But as time goes on, you learn a base level of what you're going to be able to provide. And that allows agencies to either change their model or provide more.
So, I'll give one example. We've had over the years many, many after-school clubs for kids which said, "Wow, because of Leket, we don't have to buy food anymore. Now we've been able to buy each kid their own computer. We've been able to pay for their driving lessons. We can send them on the trip to Poland, et cetera, et cetera." And so the impact is greater than just the food. It's an enabler for many organizations.
Well, there's no sort of a food rescue organization is a fascinating way of putting it because as you point out, in Israel and all over the world, there's lots of food programs that people can give money, and then they help people buy food, and there's food stamps in America. There are all kinds of things. But there's no rescuing food. So again, I'm going to say before the war, we're talking October 6th and before, but 20 something years after you got started. So, this is already a very well-oiled machine. In a typical week or month. Just give us a sense of the scope. And let's say I throw a wedding for my kid. I'm just trying to throw a wedding, but there's a caterer, and there's going to obviously be a lot of leftover food because that's just how it works. Am I reaching out to Leket, or is Leket reaching out to caterers? In other words, if that food is going to get picked up from my kid's wedding, how does Leket find out about it, and how much of this is happening on October fourth, fifth, sixth, before the war? What's the scope of this thing?
Sure. So interestingly, just to start, the project that we started with and put us on the map, which was picking up from events at night, we don't do much of that anymore. Partially for the reasons that you said: things are moving around, this client wants, this caterer doesn't want. Also, the caterers have learned from us how to be... and that's fine. It hurts the... There's always a tension in our work. We hate food waste, but if there's no food waste, we can't feed the poor. So it's this weird dynamic that's always been built into our work. And we've seen over the years, and I'm okay with that, that a lot of catering companies have learned how to do things better. That's number one. So, there's less waste.
So, what has Leket been doing since it's not recovering from those events?
The main focus of our cooked food rescue is corporate cafeterias, army bases, hotels.
What's the scope of that in September?
Well let's put it this way. Last year, up through, if October seventh if only had never happened, we were on pace to rescue and redistribute about 3 million meals. So, you're talking about 8,000, 9,000 meals every day throughout the country, that were rescuing. Hotels in Eilat, those big half and full board hotels. A lot of food, maybe not the best food, but who cares? It's feeding the poor. That food… you try to get that food to kids. It's schnitzel, it's rice, it's cut vegetables.
Now, the food in Eilat is going to kids in Eilat, or the food in Eilat is going to kids all over the country. How's that working?
Eilat is interesting, except for COVID, where Eilat had 85% unemployment in the beginning, Eilat is typically a net exporter. We give Eilat what it needs, and then one day a week, our truck will go up to Mitzpe Ramon. One day a week, it will go to Dimona. One day a week, it will go to Ofakim, you name it, a different city every day and take that excess food to a different place. Jerusalem, we pick up a lot of food in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is the poorest city in Israel with tremendous need. So Jerusalem ends up being a net importer often for Leket food.
And so up until October 7th, those projects were going great. Police bases, picking up from something like 80 army bases every single day around the country. Not enough. But the problem for Leket is that we need army bases that we can combine to make it efficient. So you have bases that are really in the middle of nowhere. If they're an hour drive from the next base, even though we want to go there, we may not get there.
And so, of course, the night of October 7th, Saturday night, already our CEO, Gidi, had the whole team on a Zoom because we understood. Look, we went through COVID and we understood what this was going to do for Leket. We knew that come October eighth, corporate cafeterias are going to be closed for who knows how long because people are going to be working from home to be with their kids. We understood that army bases, which are so open to Leket... and understand we have an exclusive agreement with the army. Only Leket trucks or people that Leket gives approval to, other amutot, other not-for-profits, can go into army bases to pick up excess food. Because the army doesn't want to have to deal with everyone. And it makes sense. We're the right people. It's not that we push someone out. It's the right thing.
How many people are you, by the way? What's the size of the staff? What's the size of the volunteering thing? How does that work?
Leket has about 175 employees, a few dozen trucks that either we own, we lease, we outsource. And last year, we had something like 70,000 volunteers between our, mostly in agriculture, either picking the fields or repacking for distribution to the not-for-profits.
Just give us the number again. You were on track for how many meals this year?
Last year, without October 7th, we probably would have distributed about 3 million cooked meals and about 30 million kilos, so about 70 million pounds of rescued fruits and vegetables. It's a mega project. It is really big time on par with any of the food banks, anywhere in the world.
Now, when October 7th happened, you were just saying, and I interrupted you and I apologize, but when October 7th happened, so you'd already been through one crisis called COVID. So, you already had a sixth sense of how the world changes when people can't move, when businesses can't operate, when people have greater need, et cetera. So, you guys geared up very rapidly to respond to the needs of, the perceived needs, and the foreseen changes from October 7th.
Tragically, we're a year later, so you can talk now where you're projecting probably 2024 will be when we get to December in a few months. Compared to the three million meals last year, what's the number going to be this year? And what's the nature of the change in the need, and the nature in the change of the availability of food for you?
Okay, so that's great. So first of all, cooked food, our numbers remain steady, but not because of rescue. We reached out like we did in COVID to our donor base. And also people were throwing money at us in the first few months. Really throwing money at us in the first few months after the war. That slowed down since, understandably. So we made up for what disappeared from rescue, with purchase. And that's great. That puts money into caterers' hands, into hotels' hands, people who always give to us free, and it creates tremendous goodwill. And I hope we never have to do it again, but we understand in Leket that any time there's some crisis that impacts our ability to rescue food, even though it costs us five times as much to buy it, we're going to be out there doing it. And again, I hope it's the last time. So that was really, let's say, a week later, the middle of October, for the first three or four months. Now it's almost completely back to normal our rescue. A little bit less in some hotels, a little bit less in some corporate cafeterias, a little more in some army bases, a little less in other army bases.
Basically, we're back to normal now. And that's good. That shows that the State of Israel continues to be resilient. Obviously, we understood on October 8th, we are going to war. And from many visits I had with my son, my late son-in-law, my chayal boded- my lone soldier- and others, when I got to Tze'elim (training base)- the first time- I said, "I understand why we cannot drive, like a truck. It's going to get squashed by a tank or some other massive vehicle." It just wasn't the time.
But of course, the army hates waste as well. And so we knew eventually, after things slowly calm down, we'd be back to that. So that's great. And we hope we'll continue. We're buying a few hundred meals a day now just for very specific places we haven't been able to figure out solutions, but overall, that's disappeared. Now understand, even just 300 meals a day, you're talking 20 shekels a meal times 300, times 5 or 6 days a week.... even just that little bit is hundreds of thousands of shekels. So that's side A. Demand is steady. The complication has been since October 7th, getting the food to the people who need it, who are maybe not where they used to be.
Especially people in the North now, I would guess.
Oh, it's the North. At first, it was the South. And so, what Leket did in the beginning is, now, understand, some people went to hotels where they were fed three meals a day. So Leket didn't need to help those people. Now, if those people are back in a tough situation, back in Sderot or Dimona, and the agencies they work with which were closed in the weeks or months following October 7th, so now we're back to normal with them.
The people in the North, like everyone, depends on where they are. So, when a not-for-profit in Kiryat Shmona would say to us, Well, we have 60 of our clients, and they are now spread out. We knew we couldn't get them food, so we took that money and we got them debit cards. So, we've given out millions of dollars’ worth of debit cards since October 7th. The first time, interestingly, and this was a discussion with our CEO-- the first 5,000 were each given by a person to a person, which was a massive undertaking-- volunteers, staff. I thought our CEO was crazy. He felt it was very important for people to get that touch point.
We did it once. After that, everything's been done electronically because it just takes too much work to do it, but it was the right decision at the time.
Now, are these debit cards that can be used only for food? Is there such a thing? Or they can use it whenever they want?
No. You could probably do that, but we felt like, we don't want to limit people who knows what their expenses are right now. If someone needs to spend all that money, frankly, this is not me, but I'll just say, buying cigarettes- because that's what's going to keep them-- and I am very anti-cigarettes- we didn't feel like it was the time to be big brother.
But that's been a challenge. We're not doing as much of that anymore now, but I can tell you-
The debit card thing is behind you.
But we do have a plan. We have a plan called "Northern Escalation". Now, of course, people living in the North might feel like, "What are you waiting for? The escalation is there." But I think everyone understands, sadly, there's escalation and there's escalation. So, we have a plan in place, which we've presented to some big funders that if this happens, please be ready. Make a commitment to... You don't have to give us the money but be ready just in case. It's hard to sometimes... It's not like what they call that when you give money to a fund and they say we're going to call it as time goes on, it doesn't always work that way.
But we do appreciate that there are some very forward-looking foundations out there that that said to us, what’s going to be if there's an escalation in the North? What do you need? What are you going to need to do?
And we're trying us our best. Let me switch gears to agriculture a little bit. Obviously, let's go back and then we'll talk about the South and the North and the differences. So a lot of people don't understand, and it's important for me to highlight this, that one of the things that the Hamas planned on that day was just not murder and mayhem. It was also economic damage. And so one of the things they did was blow up tractors and combines and irrigation equipment and burn fields, not just from the rockets, but actually from a terrorist who crossed over. And... that was the first damage. The second damage was, okay, now a kid like my son who's a tank commander, they need places to train. They need places to park. They need places to work.
And I went down with Avi Sussmann just a few days after the war started, and we weren't allowed to be there. But this is Israel, so we show up at the staging ground just north of the Gaza border. And we get there. There's a guy our age who's letting people in. He says, "Listen, you guys can't go down there. Okay? Call the boys. Tell them to come up to see you. Park here and then call them." And then we noticed, he disappeared, because really what he was telling us was "Do whatever you want." So of course, we come back and my friend Avi, he says to him, "Do you know who this is? This is the chairman of Leket Israel. He needs to see what damage you guys have done to his fields." Of course, it wasn't my farm, it wasn't my field, but that's Avi.
But you don't actually have farms and fields, do you? Does Leket have farms?
Leket has one. Okay, so we have one farmer in the center of the country who we work with who grows for us so that we have a steady place for volunteers to go because if you can imagine, we used to send volunteers all over the country. It was a nightmare. Getting lost, not finding things... So we used to have something in Binyamina. We also have 40 dunums of our own fields in Binyamina bought to us by- this is amazing- evangelical Christians in Singapore who bought us 40 dunums. We farm there, but I hope one day that's going to be our endowment because it's going to get zoned for apartments and I'm going to have 40 dunams of land that I can sell to some developer.
Okay, so who's doing that farming? Is that volunteers or do you hire…
We have a farmer who does it for us. Sorry to get off track. Hamas did tremendous damage. Then we did damage, and then, of course, it was too dangerous with the rockets. So, there was a lot of loss of farmers in the beginning in the South. We'll get to the North in a second. In the beginning, all that we did was, again, debit cards. We sent 5,000 shekels to hundreds of farmers in the south, first those we worked with, and then others. Then once it became 'safer', we started to send down volunteers. We've paid for thousands of busses to go down to the South. We have about 10 busses a day, one from Jerusalem, one from Renana, one from Tel Aviv, going down there with volunteers who sign up. There are people who go in their own cars. There were farmers who needed help with planting. There were farmers who needed help with picking. There are farmers who just had total losses. We have a loan fund, one with Ogen and one with the Keren Koret to help farmers who need loans, who are maybe a little better. We have a grant fund together with Strauss. We've given out $4 million in grants.
Again, everything is a question, people say, "Well, what about the government?" So just to give one example. So the grant fund, a lot of what it's doing is trying to make up the par between what government gives, what insurance might give. Because understand, if you spent a million dollars on a combine, and now that combine is five years old, so the government says, well, that combine was only worth half a million dollars. The combine today doesn't even cost you half a million. It costs you 1.2 million because of inflation. So we're trying to come in there and be smart and use this money smartly. But just so listeners understand, if anyone wants to help with the grant fund, this initial grant fund was only for the South. We gave out 4 million. We had 17 million dollars in requests. So, we're doing the best that we can. So that's the South. The South is in a much better position now. The biggest issue continues to be- volunteers are great- but most of the paid pickers have not come back, either because they were, primarily Thai, and they don't want to come back or they're scared to come back.
It just shows you money isn't everything. Or Palestinians who are working there who still, 11 months later, mostly have not been let back in the country. And so that has really caused... that today is the number one issue for farmers in the south.
In the North, it's much worse. There, it's just simply too dangerous. So, when Leket says or raises money to send volunteers to the North, it's the North to a point. Okay? That meaning, where is the army comfortable allowing us today to allow volunteers? We're not sending- if people want to go up and work on the Lebanese border for a farmer, that's their business. I can't take... the same in the beginning, on October 20th, we couldn't get any companies to send their workers en masse, but they said, "We will forward your request, and if people want to come on their own on your busses, we won't charge them for a day off, but we cannot have that on our... And that way everything makes sense to me. And so for the North, it's total loss.
So, it's much bigger than Leket. It's much bigger than philanthropy. It's the government, which, of course, our government is also in financial trouble. So we're doing the same thing. We're sending grants and we're giving out loans. And this is really, in the beginning, you said strategic.
What Leket is doing now is not just about feeding the poor today. We're concerned, as is the government, as is philanthropy, of the food security of this country. It's important to me me to say for your listeners that, unfortunately, Jewish history and the history of the state of Israel, I think, tells us that we need to look at food security a little bit differently than Canada or the United States. The United States is not that has to worry about its food security and set policy, but the US is not worried about food security because of some outside threat. Yeah, there could be drought, and there is and that's a big issue in the United States and the Western United States, where a lot of things are grown. And I pay close attention to that. But Israel is worried like the world gangs up on us or they close the straits and we can't get fuel or God knows... Spain and Turkey and all these other countries that export to Israel suddenly say, "Sorry, we're not going to send you."
And so, we have to make sure that our farmers survive. Now, I'll add one last thing, and then I'll stop talking. And that is, there's always another tension when you're trying to keep your farmers in business. And that is, Israel is an expensive country. How do we balance? We could bring tomatoes from... forgetting the taste. Everyone says, "Oh, the taste won't be as good." We could bring tomatoes from Jordan for 25% of what they cost to grow here. Now, is it fair to the poor that we don't bring those tomatoes in? That could help them dramatically. That could help Leket dramatically. That could help the whole issue. But on the other hand, if our farmers all go out of business because we're just importing tomatoes from Turkey... And that's the balance that the government needs to constantly figure out and constantly be finding that balance. And that's why when we look at what's going on now, we're trying to find "How do you help farmers, show them love, show them goodwill, put money in their pockets, keep them in business, but on the other hand, when this is over, we need sensible government policies which will allow the poor to not feel like, "wow, I wish..." When I hear from a poor person, "That's the first time I had a peach in 10 years because they're too expensive," I want to start crying. Because when my family... And we were never poor, when my father was getting started as a doctor, there were some leaner years. I think if I'm misquoting, my mother can write in. But I feel like my father, my parents used to say, "There's no budget for fruits and vegetables, and there's no budget for books." Okay? That pains me so much.
This is a country that has enough food to feed everyone twice over. We cannot have a situation where people just can't afford things almost ever. And that's one of the things that we want to see somehow, the government of the State of Israel, finding ways to lower costs, but find a way at the same time to keep farmers in business. And that's a challenge.
Yeah. Look, there's so much that you do. It's really just, I mean, from loans to grants to debit cards to collecting food to growing food. I mean, what you've built is really just unbelievable. I want to ask you a question which is not really a Leket question, but you raised it, and I've heard it discussed, and maybe you know the answer, maybe you don't, this whole issue of what's called Israel's food security. It's not an outlandish scenario to say that a day could come in the next three months when the airspace is closed and the international community gangs up on us and the straits are closed and European countries aren't shipping to us, and for whatever period of time we're on our own, how much food stock does Israel have? If there are no imports for however long, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, how long does Israel actually have food stocked up for?
That's a great question that I don't have the answer to. I do hope that our agricultural minister or someone has an answer to that. Look, I think we have to-
Because I heard that the answer was a matter of a month or two.
I believe that- because it's impossible- there's not enough storage to-
That sounds plausible to you.
That sounds plausible. But here's the thing, okay? The fact that we have our own natural gas now is a game changer, okay? The fact that I, in my heart of hearts, believe that there's no country in the world, Israel included, that's going to be allowed for the people to start starving by factors that are out of people's hands, drought or policy decisions like a North Korea not allowing a food to be delivered. And of course, I'm very confident, and I hope and pray that the government of Israel will continue to understand how important the United States is to us. And I truly believe as an American citizen that the United States would not allow its ally to suffer like that. That being said, I'm quite confident that we may not have everything, but we can feed our population, meaning you might not have red meat, but we can live without red meat. The important thing here is, can we always grow the... Everyone might have to become a vegan. I already have a few of them in my house. So, for me, that's not a problem.
Me personally, I might have to make some changes. But the point is that we need to have in place the ability to grow food that can feed the population. And that's why the fact that we might not have blueberries year-round because we can't get them in from South America, we'll survive. But if we can have enough calories to feed our population, that's why people have to keep in mind. Yeah, my anti-vegan youngest son, who's a big boy at 13 years old, he'd not be a happy camper if he can't have his shawarma, but we will survive. And the fact is things like chickens, they have a lot of babies and they produce a lot of eggs. And it just might mean... It's more the cost. But again, if that happens, government may have to nationalize for a little while food production.
I'm not an expert in these things. My kids always tell me, "Sound authoritative enough, people will listen to you." But I'm confident that even if it was a matter of months where imports became difficult for Israel, we would be able to feed our population differently.
I have to say that in these dark times, and it's been dark for your family, as we mentioned at the outset as well, and again, our hearts just go out to you and your entire family. Even in these dark times, there are stories in this society that are just... They remind us of the profound goodness of this place.
I mean, whether it is one of those days when people are bearing a child and the streets are lined with people with flags because they know they're not going to get close to the cemetery because so many thousands of people are going to be there. But the family leaves their own neighborhood with people that they don't even know, just lining the streets with Israeli flags. They're not alone. And I think there's a sense here, even in these dark times, that people can be critical of the government and less critical of the government and worried about this or not worried about that... There is a sense here that people aren't alone. And the country may feel alone, but people, individuals are not alone. And what you have done, both before the war and after the war, is to really take this idea that nobody's alone. And you've scaled it in an unbelievable way. If you're a family that is struggling with food, Leket's point is you're not alone. There are people out there who care about you. We're not going to let food get thrown out at army bases. We're not going to let food get thrown out at hotels. We're not going to let food get thrown out, whatever. We're going to grow food for you. We're going to take responsibility for you. In my own worldview, I have to say, Joseph, it's really the ultimate Aliyah story. A person who comes here, he's a trained lawyer, who can do anything he wants, works in a software company, but then looks around and says, "What does Am Yisrael need? What does Jewish people need?" And It's not only Jews that you're serving, obviously. It's all the citizens of Israel, Jews, Christians, Muslims, whoever. But it's really the ultimate Aliyah story. It's really, in many respects, the ultimate Israel story. And so our listeners will see in the notes and on the post today, all sorts of links where they can learn more about what Leket does, links where they can support the work that you're doing.
And I hope we can have a conversation a year from now, something like that. We'll talk about the war being behind us. We'll talk about Leket's plans for the future now that the crisis is over. But in the meantime, in these dark times, to hear the story of the work that you and your colleagues are doing is just a reminder to us of the profound goodness at the core of this society. And for that, in addition to all of the actual extraordinary work that you do, on behalf of all of us, I'm really truly grateful for who you are, what you do, and for your time today.
Thank you. I'll close if it's okay. I always say that I just want to go back to feeding the poor normally. As sad as it is, it just seems to be a fact of life in Western societies. We had COVID and so many other crises, and this one is a long crisis and a lot of suffering. Our family and so many others, and all of the people of the State of Israel are suffering. Of course, my final hope and prayers is that our hostages should come back safe and sound. And please God, by the next podcast you record, the soldiers will be home and the hostages will be home. And I just wish everyone, we say in Hebrew, bosorot tovot (good news).
Amen.
I much prefer hearing that. And I thank you for the opportunity. And I wish everyone well.
Thank you. And thanks for all you do.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
Rescuing food to save not only Israelis, but Israel, too.