Just one short day after Blog Action Day, is World Food Day, an annual celebration of The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  The theme this year (and shouldn’t it really be every year?) is The Right to Food. 

I was struck by how the FAO’s framing of The Right to Food feels so akin to the Jewish obligation of tzedakah, which is often translated incompletely as “charity,” but actually comes from the root meaning “justice:” 

“The Right to Food is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed. With more than 850 million people still deprived of enough food, the Right to Food is not just economically, morally and politically imperative - it is also a legal obligation.”

In celebration of World Food Day, here are four resources for you to check out - an inspiring article by food activists, Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe, and three Jewish organizations that are working towards food justice. 

• “The Right to Food“ - published in The Huffington Post
• American Jewish World Service’s sustainable agriculture projects
• Mazon - A Jewish Response to Hunger
• Tuv Ha’Aretz - Hazon’s Jewish Community Supported Agriculture Program