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New all-digital Hunger Museum charts US response to food insecurity through a Jewish lens
An 1888 portrait of Ellen Swallow Richards and her all-female home economics class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A 1915 campaign poster that maps out the 20 states providing food assistance for widows and single mothers. A 1940 photo of Japanese-American children eating hot dogs at a World War II internment camp in Idaho. A video of the 1950 launch of the “Betty Crocker TV Show.”
These are among the fascinating artifacts and mementos on exhibit at the Hunger Museum, a new barrier-breaking museum that seeks to inform and raise awareness about hunger in the United States.
A virtual project of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, the museum’s six galleries chronicle well over a century of U.S. hunger and anti-hunger public policy, from the Civil War through 9/11, the 2018 government shutdown and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The all-digital Hunger Museum was conceived by Abby J. Leibman, president and CEO of MAZON, a national organization based in Los Angeles. It took three years to put together and opened on March 9.
“The Hunger Museum began as an idea, and it has exceeded my wildest expectations,” said Leibman, who has led MAZON since 2011. “It’s visually stunning and incredibly immersive, as if you’re in an actual exhibit space. There’s so much to learn as you move through the museum’s galleries and artifacts.”
The website, developed by Dan and Tamara Zimmerman of Loyal Design, has six galleries with multiple exhibits and hundreds of webpages. Leibman says there is growing interest in and awareness of the issue of hunger among Americans generally — and U.S. Jews in particular.
“Because of the pandemic, hunger registered in a far more present way than it ever has before — and not only because millions of people instantly became food-insecure as jobs were lost and businesses closed,” she said. “It was also evident in media coverage and photos of literally hundreds of cars waiting in line for free boxes of groceries.”
MAZON, which produced the all-virtual Hunger Museum, envisions it as on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Mazon)
Besides its galleries, the Hunger Museum, like any physical museum, also features venues such as a multistory lobby overlooking an atrium, an auditorium (for online events), the Terrace Restaurant and a Wishing Tree inspired by Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree that allows visitors to leave a wish for those who struggle with hunger. However, at this museum, all these features are virtual. There’s also the SNAP Café — where virtual diners can select dishes from the five major food groups and calculate how much that meal would cost, and whether they could afford it if they were on SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps).
“This is really an innovative initiative, not only in the way it’s being delivered as a virtual museum, but also because of the story it tells about hunger in this country — and our response — over a 100-year period,” said Mia Hubbard, vice-president of programs at MAZON, which has 23 full-time employees and an annual budget of $8.5 million.
“Food insecurity is a pervasive and persistent part of our history, and that becomes clear as you go through the galleries,” said Hubbard.
The Hunger Museum aims not only to raise awareness and inform people about hunger’s history in America, but also to create a Jewish call to action — to inspire people to help fight hunger.
“We are focused on social justice and repairing the world, and since hunger has been an enduring part of the American social condition, it requires constant vigilance,” Hubbard said. “Part of MAZON’s role is to rally the Jewish community, and in turn, create the political will to end hunger.”
Naama Haviv, MAZON’s vice-president of community engagement, said that while plenty of brick-and-mortar museums have created online exhibits, nobody has ever done an entirely virtual museum before.
The most significant changes in American society on hunger issues occurred during the 1960s and ‘70s, Haviv said, when bipartisan efforts shifted public understanding and political will to address hunger more comprehensively.
“Americans started to realize that hunger was not a personal moral failing. It was systemic and based on people’s lack of access to economic security, and oftentimes lack of access to government safety net programs,” Haviv said.
She added that hunger in America can be solved because it was solved once before, citing household surveys showing that just 3% of Americans went hungry in 1969. Today, by comparison, 12% of the population is on SNAP, and over 34 million people are food -insecure.
A wishing tree at MAZON’s new Hunger Museum is inspired by Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree project, inviting visitors to leave a wish for those facing hunger. (Courtesy of Mazon)
“During the first few months of the pandemic, that number skyrocketed to around 80 million, but then, because we had robust government investment in food safety-net programs, we saw those numbers drastically reduced,” Haviv said. “We are now below pre-pandemic levels.”
But instead of understanding the lessons of history, and learning from the recent experience of the pandemic, efforts to make it more difficult for those who struggle to find stability and food security are now underway, she warned.
For example, under current U.S. law, SNAP work requirements restrict essential benefits for “able-bodied” adults without dependents between ages 18 and 49. Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, has introduced a bill to expand this category to age 65. Earlier this year, Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, introduced similar legislation that would raise the restriction to age 59. Both bills would also bar states from seeking a waiver to the “able-bodied adults” time limit—even if there aren’t enough jobs for all those in need.
“These changes are unacceptable and will make matters worse, because not only do they ignore history — they rely on narrow thinking about the lives of struggling Americans while ignoring the many systems that contribute to hunger, and thus to its end,” Leibman said.
“But,” Leibman added, “we know we can end hunger in America. The proof is in our history.”
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The post New all-digital Hunger Museum charts US response to food insecurity through a Jewish lens appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find
Almost half of American Jews under 35 say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved by creating a single country in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with a government elected by both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a poll conducted by the Jewish Voter Resource Center.
The findings signal a generational shift in U.S. support for a binational state in Israel, reflecting a core demand of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses and beyond — even as most major Jewish organizations classify calls for a single state as an expression of antisemitism.
“The growing disaffection of younger Jewish Americans from Israel is a direct consequence of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu and the way the American Jewish establishment has demanded an ‘Israel right or wrong’ loyalty,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, the liberal advocacy group. “They’re reaping the harvest of seeds they planted — this is what you get.”
Ben-Ami pointed to the destruction of Israel’s war in Gaza, in which it killed an estimated 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed more than 80% of the enclave’s infrastructure, and growing violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, among other actions.
The data also adds to a growing debate over what share of Jews in the United States are Zionist, The Jewish Federations of North America began circulating data earlier this year that shows that around 90% of American Jews continue to support Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, even as only 37% label themselves “Zionist.”
The Jewish Voter Resource Center poll, released on Thursday, challenges these findings. Twenty-four percent of Jewish adults polled support a one-state solution to the conflict, according to the survey, nearly double the 13% who said they preferred a binational state just two years ago. While age breakdowns were not available for the 2024 poll, an American Jewish Committee survey in 2022 found that 23% of American Jews ages 25 to 40 supported a binational state.
Half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 — 51% — support a binational state, according to the new poll.
The Jewish Federations of North America declined to comment.
This abrupt turn comes amid a transformation in how Americans view Israel — favorability toward Israel has plummeted among almost every demographic group since 2022 — that has extended to Jews. A Washington Post poll found that 61% of Jewish adults said Israel had committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, while 39% said it was guilty of genocide.
The shift in public opinion also drives a deeper wedge between Israeli and American Jews. While many Jews in the U.S. have been alarmed by Israel’s conduct in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Israeli Jews have expressed a sense of increased vulnerability, and some viewed the massacre as shutting down the possibility of Israel giving up control over the Palestinian territories or granting Palestinians equal rights.
A poll from Tel Aviv University last year found that only 15% of Israeli Jews supported a two-state solution, while 29% wanted to annex the West Bank and Gaza without offering citizenship to Palestinians living there. Only 1% of Israeli Jews supported “one binational state with civil rights.”
When asked in more detail about the possibility of a one-state solution, 3% of Israeli Jews said they would support it only if Palestinians were granted equal rights while 37% said they would support it if Palestinians were not given full rights.
Jeremy Pressman, who studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Connecticut, said that young American Jews have little experience of Israel as a vulnerable underdog, unlike older generations that witnessed the establishment of the state or its victory in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.
Instead, they’ve largely come of age while Israel has been controlled by right-wing governments and have watched Israeli violence toward Palestinians on social media. “This creates a gap between the dominant Israeli Jewish understanding of the conflict and the center-left — or sometimes radical left — understanding of Jewish Americans,” Pressman said in an interview.
The Jewish Voter Resource Center, which is affiliated with the Jewish Democratic Council of America, polled 800 registered Jewish voters and the margin of error was +/- 3.5 percentage points and +/- 6.9 percentage points for Jews under 35.
Asher Kaplan Leba, a leader of the Massachusetts Synagogue Network on Israel/Palestine in Boston, said that many Jews had become disillusioned with a two-state solution as the Israeli government took steps that seemed to make it more difficult to implement, such as expanding West Bank settlements.
“It was my position for many years,” said Leba, 32. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life waiting for the authoritarian, ethno-nationalists in control of Israel — who I share no values with — to change.”
The post Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find appeared first on The Forward.
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.