Annual Report 2025 #2

Letter from the Board Chair & the Executive Director

“Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

Each spring, Jews around the world gather with family and guests and proclaim this stirring invitation that serves as the opening theme of the Passover Seder and the retelling of the Exodus story.

This declaration is not a ceremonial relic or nostalgic echo from another time. It is an enduring covenant—an obligation rooted in Jewish tradition to care for those in need. The Torah commands that farmers leave the edges of their fields unharvested so that the poor and the stranger may gather with dignity. From our earliest days as a people, sustenance and justice have been inseparable.

Today, as we reflect on an extraordinary year at The Jewish Fund—celebrating the remarkable work and impact of our grant partners, an honoring Alternative For Girls with the Sosnick Award—we also reaffirm our shared commitment to one of the most urgent challenges confronting our community: Hunger and food insecurity.

For thousands of families among us—and millions more across the country—the struggle to put food on the table has grown more severe. Our Board recognized this reality as we saw a steady rise these last few years in grant applications addressing hunger, confirmed by conversations with partners whose missions either focus on, or increasingly include, hunger relief. In response, The Jewish Fund Board elevated Hunger Relief and Food Insecurity to a Priority Area for grants—acknowledging the deepening crisis facing both the Jewish and the broader community.

The scope of the problem is sobering. Here are some real numbers. According to data from our friends at Forgotten Harvest, nearly half of all households in Wayne County experience food insecurity, as do roughly one in three in Oakland and more than a third in Macomb. Across Michigan, food banks now face demand surpassing even the peaks of the pandemic. Every day, families are forced to choose between buying groceries and paying rent—or between a meal and life-sustaining medicine.

Yet hunger is not merely the absence of food. It is a threat to health, to dignity, and to human potential. Those who face hunger endure worse health outcomes, diminished educational and economic opportunities, and a painful erosion of hope.

Like I noted at the outset, the scourge of food insecurity has existed for millennia. In our own country, for the last 100 years there has been a concerted effort between governmental assistance and private and charitable initiatives to address hunger. From the federal surplus food distribution during the Great Depression, to the War on Poverty and the expansion of food assistance in the 1960s, to the emergence of coordinated food banks in the 1980s, and to the more recent proliferation of food pantries and home delivery services for those in need, the methods to address the challenge evolve, yet the need persists.

Today, however, a convergence of economic pressures has made the crisis more acute than it has been in years. Rising food and housing costs, inflation, the end of pandemic-era benefits, recent government funding, with the added uncertainty of potential future cuts, and widening inequality have left many working families, children, and seniors struggling anew. As our Jewish sages teach, one who turns away the hungry is as if one has spilled blood—for hunger diminishes life itself. As a foundation inspired by Jewish tradition and carrying our legacy forward, this reality has influenced our grant making these last two years.

The work of our grant partners confronts this reality every day, transforming compassion into action. The Jewish Fund Board knows that our grants to, and through the work of, our dedicated grant partners, brings smiles to the seniors who receive daily food deliveries, allows children to concentrate better in school because they receive a nutritious meal at their after school program, and provides those families who visit Yad Ezra or Forgotten Harvest or Gleaners, or received food as a result of the work of Metro Food Rescue, the hope needed to move from the edge of crisis toward stability. 

The fight against hunger is not someone else’s responsibility. It is the essence of who we are as a community, shaped by the Jewish Fund’s very Jewish commitment to improving the lives and health outcomes of both our fellow Jews and those within the general community. May the work of the Jewish Fund, through our collaboration with our grant partners, continue to transform compassion into action—and ensure that no one in our community, or beyond it, goes hungry.

Jeffrey Schlussel, Chair

Margo Pernick, Executive Director