‘It is a Jewish imperative to alleviate poverty’

It is an obligation of the Jewish community to play its part in alleviating poverty, a prominent Liberal rabbi said this week.

Rabbi Dr Margaret Jacobi, who is the associate chair of the Liberal Judaism Beit Din, said it was “a Jewish imperative” to help those in need, and while “loads of great work is being done in the short term, more needs to be done in the long term”.

In her role as chair of Tzelem – Rabbis and Cantors for Social and Economic Justice, Jacobi has been working with Jewish human rights charity, René Cassin, on its Right to Food campaign, advocating for this necessity to be enshrined in UK law. René Cassin was a Jewish jurist, who co-authored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Referring to Jewish texts during a session at Limmud, Jacobi said: “When we think about human rights, we think about things like freedom of speech, but we don’t think about the right to food.

“It’s our obligation to care for the poor, and it’s a right for the poor to have food. At the heart of this, is a sense of empathy.”

In 2023, the Trussell Trust, which oversees over 1,200 food banks in the UK, distributed 3.1 million emergency food parcels. This was up from 1.8 million food parcels five years ago.

Jessica Foster, head of Church engagement at the charity, who also spoke at Limmud, blamed Universal Credit, which provides £91 per adult, far off the £120 needed to cover food and essentials.

She said: “We are calling on the government to assess Universal Credit independently and match it to the cost of living.”

Foster said that food bank clients included people who were unable to work due to long-term illness or disability, as well as people in work whose salary did not cover the cost of living.

Currently, JW3 runs a regular food bank, delivering meals to people who have been referred to them by Camden Council. A team of volunteers does the cooking, sometimes inviting a group of refugees and asylum seekers to help them, who are also able to take a meal home. “It’s so important for their dignity to know that they are also giving to others,” said one of the Limmud participants, who helps run the food bank.

Jacobi said that while members of the Jewish community suffered from poverty, the numbers were “an unknown as Jewish people are embarrassed about acknowledging it”.

But she said that it was likely to affect larger, strictly Orthodox families, who were impacted by the two-child benefit cap, which prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children.