Waste Not, Want Chips (that's french fries to us Americans)

This evening after taking in a movie ("The Sentinel" with Kiefer Sutherland) in Talpiot (a city next to the German Colony), I decided to pick up a late dinner at a joint on Emek Refaim. The place is called Burger's Bar, and I don't know if that's the owner's name, a spelling error, or what. But anyways, they have a great grilled chicken sandwich and awesome sliced potato chips.

I'm standing at the counter waiting for my order when a lady pushes up beside me and starts yelling at the cook behind the counter in English. She says she did not order a spicy burger and that she wants another one. The cook apologizes and the woman walks away. The cook, a young man probably my age, is an observant Jew. Depite the Guess! jeans and Converse sneakers, he is wearing a yarmulke and has a short beard. He takes the burger, mumbles something under his breath, softly kisses the top of the burger bun, then throws it in the trash.

He goes on to my order. I ask him why he kissed the burger bun. What he said really opened my eyes. "I say a prayer over the burger because I am throwing away food that someone else doesn't have. In this world we should not throw away food we don't like." He handed me my order and I walked outside. I ate my dinner but not without thinking about what the cook said. Although the woman might have a good reason for not being able to eat a spicy burger (perhaps acid reflux, yada yada), a meal went to waste.

Every generation, a new group of people is starving. For our parents when they wouldn't eat their veggies, it was the Armenians, our older brothers or sisters it was the Ethiopians. For my generation, its everyone. Even in the place considered holy to the three montheistic traditions, people still go hungry. So what does one do. Get involved. Donate tzedakah (that's Hebrew for rightousness or just plain charity), or more importantly, be informed. Keep your eyes and ears open to what's going on in the world. And don't let your chips, or soup cans go to waste.