A leftover dilemma

The discussion about leaving the forgotten sheath in the harvest for the needy started a side discussion on the problem of leftovers from an event.

It seems that sometimes it is even difficult to give away the leftovers.

There are places and organizations that feel they cannot leave or give the leftovers to those in need due to possible legal liability if the food is mishandled and someone gets sick from it. This is a valid point but sad.

It seems that if you want to be sure your event leftovers are donated, you should arrange to box them yourself and bring them to the food bank or food distribution points yourself. But the most important fact here is that we must try to get the food to those in need now since it is not the custom for 'gleaning' after our events. So this is a reminder to try to plan for this ahead of time.

There was an interesting day when I observed a small group of Beth Am teens that stopped by the synagogue on a Saturday afternoon to get the luncheon leftovers because they were hungry. I thought this was very resourceful on their part. And while we can't call them the poor of our community, these teens did harvest their own food from the forgotten 'harvest' of the day.

Then the point was brought up about fruit trees that are left unharvested. Jana H. mentioned Village Harvest, at villageharvest.org as a place to help with this one.

I also found some good articles with ideas on how to be more proactive with our efforts to take care of others and the world:

Leftovers to feed the hungry
article on leftovers dilemma