Many of the mitzvot (commandments) in Jewish tradition are about helping others. One example is feeding the hungry, or maakhal revi’im.
Young children can find it hard to grasp concepts such as hunger if they’ve never experienced anything like it before. Children live very much in the present, and so learning how and why we have empathy for others can be tricky. Here are some ideas about how to develop their understanding about hunger, and how we can help people in our communities at the same time.
Start Small
Children will only take in a little bit of information at a time, so in the early years, it’s more about raising their awareness than anything else. Start with simple conversations about the food they eat every day. Cut out pictures from magazines and make a collage, or do some drawings of their favourite foods and meals. This will start to encourage an appreciation of the food they have access to every day.
Explain Hunger
Ask your kids how they feel when they’re really hungry and dinner is taking a long time to make. Do they feel happy or sad? How does their tummy feel? Maybe ask them to draw some faces to show these feelings or to express it visually with their own faces and bodies.
Go Shopping
Write a shopping list and take them grocery shopping with you. Ask them how much food they think they can buy for £10 and see what they choose from the shelves. You can then show them how much £10 actually buys to start to build in a sense of value and demonstrate how expensive food can be.
Children love to be given tasks that grown-ups normally do and raising awareness of food and how they access it can only help their learning and understanding. Give them different food items to find in the shop and add to your basket, then ask them to bag them at the cash register.
Develop Empathy
Children tend to assume that everyone in the world has same experiences as them, and they can feel shocked and saddened when they realise that other children can have such hard lives. Find a story or a short video that explains why children and families experience hunger, or explain it to them yourself, but try to keep it simple.
Enlist Your Child's Help
Once they have developed an understanding about hunger, show them that they can do something positive to help those that are suffering from it. Explain about food banks, charities and shelters, and that they’re there to help people. Each person in the family could choose a non-perishable food item and carry it into the local food bank and hand it in themselves. Or do some fundraising activities to raise money for local shelters and charities.
It might be helpful for children to be able to attach concrete actions to these ideas, and Judaism has several of these opportunities built in. For example, as a family you can fulfil one of the mitzvot of Purim called matanot l’evyonim, giving to the needy.
With big concepts such as hunger and suffering, it’s helpful to introduce your children to them slowly and safely, so that they can build their awareness and understanding as they develop.
November 7, 2019