Thanksgiving is a holiday almost everyone loves:  A day to gather family and friends, enjoy a turkey feast, watch a little football, relax . . . .  Thanksgiving is the great equalizer in America:  Jews and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and the most secular among us all gather to count our blessings and appreciate the plenty so accessible to all of us.

Well . . . not all of us.    

On the eve of Thanksgiving, please read with care and take to heart the following article by Rabbi Steven Gutow of the Jewish Center for Public Affairs:

Huff Post Politics:  Americans Are Falling Off the Food Cliff -- We Can Stop the Pain
Posted: 11/16/2013 1:20 pm

This week, just days before Thanksgiving, lines at food banks will be growing. This is not unexpected. In fact, unbelievable as this may sound, this was scheduled. On November 1, 47 million Americans on SNAP (formerly food stamps) began receiving fewer benefits thanks to the expiration of funding from the 2009 stimulus. For a family of four, that reduction comes out to about $36 less for food for the month. Which brings us to this week; when those suddenly reduced grocery budgets begin to run out.

Congress saw this coming. We knew that even as food prices were increasing, working families, the unemployed, children, the disabled, and seniors would start to receive less assistance and problems with increased hunger in America would ensue. But not only were we allowed to go over the food cliff, Congress is actually debating even more cuts to SNAP. The Senate Farm Bill includes a $4.1 billion cut - almost equal to the $5 billion cut this month - and the House is making the Senate look like a humanitarian body by proposing a cut of $39 billion, eight times more devastating to the poor than the already problematic Senate proposal.

What made the fall from the food cliff even more painful is that we have been pushing our most vulnerable towards the edge for months. In March, the sequester went into effect, slashing nutrition assistance to low-income women and children, limiting the capacity of food banks, and cutting Meals on Wheels deliveries to homebound seniors. Not to mention cuts to Head Start and LIHEAP, the energy assistance program that had alleviated the need for families to choose between paying their heating bills and buying food. But that pain of the sequester was quickly forgotten because last month's government shutdown caused even more harm by diminishing these services even more. No doubt, 2013 has been a difficult year. And things are not looking better in 2014 as the next round of sequestration cuts goes into effect in January.

Bit by bit we are tearing holes in the fabric of our national human needs programs, and I fear the repercussions not only for those who need our assistance and protection, but for our nation. With one in seven Americans facing hunger, we went over the food cliff this month. Before that, the costs of disagreements that led to the government shutdown and sequestration were felt most by those with the least.

This week, as the food banks around the country work to meet the planned food cliff, we must acknowledge the choices we are making. Private charity is a noble but insufficient substitute. According to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, the estimated dollar value of all food distributed by U.S. charities this year is $5 billion, the same amount as the cut that took effect this month.

However, we are still able to change our course. Instead of demonizing and punishing those who need support in this season of plenty and thanksgiving, let us unmask the face of hunger in the United States and dedicate ourselves to overcoming it. The truth is, over half of those who benefit from SNAP are children and seniors. For unemployed adults, SNAP serves as support to help them through difficult times with more than half of enrollees leaving the program within a year, most of whom are only on the program for 10 months or less. Instead of taking away food from those in need, we should strengthen this program which feeds families, helps children do well in school, and supports the most vulnerable.

With each cut, our country pushes more Americans down the food cliff. How long until we stop noticing the fall? This Thanksgiving, as many of us sit at our tables for an annual feast, more of our fellow Americans will have less to eat. With this stark reality we must choose a different path. Now is the opportunity. As they actively negotiate a Farm Bill, Members of Congress, acting on our behalf, should open their hearts and offer an outstretched hand to those who have fallen over the food cliff. Simply, there should be no more cuts to SNAP.

Rabbi Steve Gutow is the President of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. For more information and updates, visit here and follow @theJCPA on Twitter.

On my first day at Torat Yisrael, in the summer of 2004, I sat myself down at the desk in the rabbi’s study and started opening drawers to see what “treasures” my predecessors had left for me.
     I opened a file and found a memo, written in 1985, by my
predecessor, Rabbi David Rosen, making the case that the congregation’s most
promising future could be fulfilled through a move to East Greenwich.
      Here and now, with the leadership spearheading our congregation now, with all the complicated realities of economics and demographics and the very human aversion to risk.  Here and now, when congregations around the country are closing their doors,  it is now that we are  dedicating our new synagogue building in the very promising land of East Greenwich.
    Over and over I have had occasion to marvel at the commitment, the perseverance, the determination, the generosity, the selflessness of the
members of our congregation.  Over and over, I have witnessed delays, resistance, barriers, and I’ve thought, “please God, let them not lose heart.”  And over and over the leaders of this project rolled up their sleeves, regrouped, got creative and got it done. 
 
It is our privilege to dedicate this beautiful building לשם ולטפארת / l’sheim
ultiferet, for the Name and the wonder of God.  Within these walls, generations of our people will come together to delve into the infinite richness of our Torah, to embrace each other as a community of Israel, to find guidance and inspiration from our traditions and practices, to ponder and to attempt and to explore new avenues of Jewish life.   
      During the mindful process of designing this building, it has been our goal to embody or to facilitate some of our most cherished, eternal Jewish values:
 בל תשחית   / Bal Taschit: Our commitment to the mitzvah of avoiding unnecessary waste of resources is expressed in our investment in a unique LED and fluorescent lighting system that barely sips electricity.
מכשול בפני עיוור /You will not throw up a stumbling block before the blind:  Through this mitzvah we are instructed
to anticipate and facilitate safe and accessible movement for all.  In this spirit, one of our first decisions regarding the new building was to build all on one level, making every space in the building accessible to every person coming in.  In that same spirit, one section of the coat rack in the cloakroom will be at a height comfortable to both the wheel chair bound and children to hang up and retrieve their own coats.
הזן את הכל /  Who Feeds All.  In the blessings recited after a meal, we praise God as “hazan et hakol,” the One  who feeds all.  Our tradition encourages us to internalize the values embodied by God’s own actions.  In that spirit, our congregation supports two food-security programs:  the Edgewood Food Closet in our former neighborhood in Cranston, and the Chester Kosher Food Pantry maintained by the Jewish Seniors Agency of Rhode
Island.  We have literally built our commitment into our building: the benches lining our lobby under the windows are actually bins in which we collect non-perishable food items for these programs.
העם: האנשים והנשים והטף / The people: the men, the women and the children.  Towards the end of the book of  D’varim/Deuteronomy, God instructs Moses to gather together the people and readthem the words of the Torah.  In
that text, the “people” , the body of Israel, is defined as “men, women and children.”  Our commitment to making sure that all men, women and children are welcome and comfortable in our sanctuary is expressed through the unique wall of windows separating our sanctuary from our library.  Shades reaching from the bottom of the windows upwards will provide privacy for nursing moms while still seeing and hearing what is happening in the sanctuary.  Bins of quiet toys will keep little ones occupied while their supervising parents can still be part of the service.  A parent, or grandparent!, who needs to “walk” a baby or comfort an unhappy toddler can do so without being cut off from the community.
מה גדלו מעשיך /  How great are Your works?   The Psalmist exclaims “mah gadlu ma’asecha?”  How great are Your
works, O God?  With the gift of conservancy land along the eastern border of our property, constructed an
  eastern wall that is almost entirely of glass. As we sit in our sanctuary, our social hall and our library, we are free to simultaneously enjoy and praise God’s natural world.
     We are celebrating a tremendous milestone in the history of our congregation.  Let us remember that a milestone marks a significant stop along a path, not the end of the route.  Yes, indeed, our geographic wandering is over, but there are many more paths for us to follow as a congregation.  This is a building that we are turning into sacred space by our presence as a kehillah k’doshah, a holy congregation.  How will we express our sense of the sacred here?  How will we pray?  How will  we learn?  How will we celebrate?   What kind of communal goals and aspirations will we strive for?
     TY members have contributed so much time and concern and skill as members of our Building and
Dedication Committees.   Thank them when you see them.  A project like this only comes to fruition when a few people throw themselves, body and soul, into the project.  Our president, Susan Smoller and the chairman of our building committee, Andrew Sholes, and the chairman of our capital campaign, Marc Davis are those “body and
soul” leaders who have inspired us and brought us to this day.
     Our Building Committee and our contractors and our architects and our painters and electricians and plumbers are done. Now it is our turn to fill this beautiful space with the joy, the challenges, the richness, the comforts, the spiritual horizons of the Judaism we love.