Meital, not her real name, completed her high-school studies in Ramle two years ago, but even today, as a soldier, she well remembers the hungry that accompanied her adolescent years. “I come from a family with many children, a household that has seen tough times financially. There were periods when our electricity would be cut off, and sometimes we had whole days without running water. When that happened, we would split up – I would sleep at my grandmother’s, and my siblings would sleep over at the friends’ homes.”

Hunger, as described by Meital, is an elusive phenomenon. Sometimes, it takes the form of not knowing where dinner will come from; many times, the lunch provided by the school is the child’s only meal of the day. Sometimes, hunger can manifest itself in obesity since the most readily available food is the cheapest food – carbohydrates like bread and pasta. Sometimes, hunger is an intense and painful physical sensation.

“I’ve experienced it many times, and it is incredibly difficult,” says Meital. “At least at school, I knew I would have a meal at lunchtime, and even if it wasn’t tasty, I had something to eat, no matter what.”

Poverty – especially as a high-school student – obligates people to make tough choices, and adolescents will do almost anything to ensure that no one finds out about the difficulties they are experiencing. “Sometimes I would see the other girls going out to the movies or the mall, and I couldn’t go because I didn’t have any money,” Meital says. I had one friend with whom I would talk about it [the financial problems], but that’s all. I didn’t share. At first, the whole issue didn’t really matter to me until I reached the age where I wanted to connect with friends and everybody. To feel that I belong.”

Meital is far from an exceptional case in Israel. According to a survey commissioned last year [Hebrew link] by the National Insurance Institute, 16.2 percent of Israeli families – including around 665,000 children – suffer from food insecurity. This broad term covers a spectrum of conditions, from concern about the possible food shortage in the household to long-term hunger. Around half of those children, according to the survey, fall into the very low food security category. Although that survey was not published in full, the previous one, conducted in 2016, found that 352,000 children in Israel suffer from severe food insecurity, including actual hunger.

Watch Daniel Dolev summarizes the report

Finished Elementary School? Go Hungry

In order to tackle the problem of food insecurity among children and adolescents, Israel established a feeding program to ensure that every child was given one hot meal a day within the framework of their school. However, with only a few exceptions – such as the schools for Arab students at risk of dropping out, which are covered below – the project only operates in elementary schools. From the moment children finish sixth grade, the state provides them with no solution.

Israeli governments over the years have been well aware of this problem. In April 2018, for example, reports reached the Education Ministry that students in the ORT networks of schools in northern Israel were going hungry. Delegations from the education and health ministries visited some of the schools and returned with extremely worrisome conclusions. “After visiting these schools, and talking to principals, teachers, students, and parents, we get the impression that there is indeed an objective problem of daily hunger which the highest levels of government must address,” the report summing up the visit stated. It is evident that hunger is the primary and fundamental problem in the schools we visited. It is vital, first and foremost, to take care of the most existential needs of the students – food. Food keeps the children in school, which becomes a safe space for them, physically and mentally, and encourages them to study.”

Although the document only covers schools in northern Israel belonging to the ORT network, visits and conversations conducted in recent months by Shomrim reveal that this is not the exclusive problem of that network and is not an issue that is limited to one geographical part of the country.

“I can tell you that 90 percent of the families with children in my classes, from first grade to sixth grade, are in very severe financial distress,” says Nurit, who asked that we use a pseudonym and who works at an after-school childcare facility in Kiryat Gat. “Most of the children here come from schools where they are fed, but still, before they go home, they have to eat and, if possible, take food home with them. You see children eating after they’re full because there is food here and at home, there is not, so they prefer to eat as much as they can, even if they are satiated.

“Most children only eat meals here or in school. If they eat anything at home at all, it’s usually just bread with something spread on it. During the coronavirus pandemic, we operated in capsules, and kids would show up and wait for a sandwich, even on days when their capsule wasn’t scheduled to come in.”

You also work with at-risk youth. What’s the situation like in that age group?

“We work with youths aged 15 and over, so there is ostensibly less hunger because they are in a different situation. They are at an age when most of them are working, but you can still see there is deprivation. If I bring snacks and soda to an activity, the kids will ask to take the leftovers home with them. When I was their age, I did not encounter anything like that. Nobody wanted to take the almost-empty bottles of Coke home with them. You see that kind of thing today among youths, but not as much as you do with younger children. Teenagers are embarrassed by it so that they won’t tell you, ‘I’m hungry, there’s no food at home.”

While there is an active feeding program in elementary schools, there is no such solution for middle or high school students. The situation is even worse in technological education centers – high schools for at-risk youths sometimes referred to as ‘last-chance high schools.’ These schools instruct students who often come from poorer families, and, as a result, they are often hungrier.

“I can tell you that 90 percent of the families with children in my classes, from first grade to sixth grade, are in very severe financial distress,” says Nurit, who works at an after-school childcare facility in Kiryat Gat. “Most of the children here come from schools where they are fed, but still, before they go home, they have to eat and, if possible, take food home with them"

‘Parents Cried Over the Phone’

Rachel, another pseudonym like all of those referred to by a single name in this article, is the principal of a school in southern Israel that is ranked in the ninth level of the Education Ministry’s Development Index, which measures several socioeconomic indicators, with Level One being the highest and Level 10 the lowest. She agreed to be interviewed for this article only on the condition that her name and the identity of the educational institution she works are not disclosed. Like students and school networks – ORT, Na’amat, Amal, Amit, Branco Weiss, and others – the educators interviewed for this article are concerned about acquiring an image of being needy and the associated stigma.

“Nobody wants to be seen to be hungry, but you can see it at lunchtime,” Rachel says. “Before the coronavirus pandemic, we had a hot meal, but since then, we’ve switched to sandwiches. So, they take a few baguettes or check to see what’s in the staffroom. It’s really a matter of survival. We also know that things are not at all simple at home. A hungry child is in no condition to study.”

“If there’s food left at the end of a staff meeting, like sandwiches, for example, I call one of the students and, even if she doesn’t live close to the school, she’ll come immediately to take them,” says a counselor at the same high school. “I’ve had parents crying to me over the phone when we distributed food baskets. People begged, and they took everything we had. Someone donated cakes, and everyone who came to my office asked if they could take two cakes home. There are children who come and actually ask if they can take a sandwich with schnitzel. Those whose situation is really dire ask if I can come with them or if I can ask someone to give them a sandwich. And some ask for food to take home.”

“You won’t see emaciated people here, skin and bones,” they add. “There’s not that kind of hunger. The hunger is visible in other ways. You see people who put on weight from eating so much bread. You see it in disproportionate obesity and in an inability to concentrate, as well as behavioral problems.”

A class coordinator at the same school adds: “As far as we are concerned, the most important thing is nutrition in the morning because otherwise, the children are not at ease here. They are more aggressive and more violent. When children are hungry, they are not calm. It makes sense that they would also smoke more. You can see how they rush to take sandwiches. They ask all the time when the food is supposed to arrive.”

When students are hungry, schools find it impossible to do their most fundamental duty – education. “The students are working very hard, sometimes at the expense of their schoolwork,” says the coordinator teacher. “And the whole issue is the war against overt and hidden attrition.” Hidden attrition, as described in a recent Shomrim article, refers to the phenomenon whereby a student is officially still registered at a school but, in practice, rarely turns up and, when they do, does not engage in studies.

“Students sometimes work until late at night and find it hard to wake up in time for school. When they arrive here, they are tired, so they are not focused enough,” says Rachel, the principal. “Alternatively, they get a taste of money and work and don’t understand what they need to study for. The most significant ramification is that, assuming they managed to study here and graduate, if they go into the army, where there is not such a long fuse, they will very quickly go AWOL.”

“We had one student whose mother was a single parent. At one stage, they had their power cut off at home. The student came to me and said that he’s dropping out of school because he needs to pay the electricity bill,” says the coordinator. “He has a special-needs brother. A while ago, we were given a whole lot of tinned food, we opened up the pantry to take as much as  he needed. We also bought them T-shirts and helped him find work. In the end, he didn’t drop out, and he graduated. A short while ago, he came to visit and said he wanted to start studying engineering. So, yes, without those tins of food, he wouldn’t have continued here.”

“We’ve become an offshoot of the welfare services,” they say in summary. “But where are the actual welfare services? Why don’t social workers help these kids? They tell us that the student didn’t show up for a meeting, and then they close the file because of a lack of cooperation. We’re dealing with children here, and we need to chase after them. Otherwise, they won’t come for any counseling on their own accord.”

Calcalist Weekly Cover (Hebrew link)

“Nobody wants to be seen to be hungry, but you can see it at lunchtime,” Rachel says. “Before the coronavirus pandemic, we had a hot meal, but since then, we’ve switched to sandwiches. So, they take a few baguettes or check to see what’s in the staffroom. It’s really a matter of survival. We also know that things are not at all simple at home. A hungry child is in no condition to study.”

‘If There’s No Hot Meal, They Just Leave’

Reuven is an official working for one of the education networks. He previously worked at a school for at-risk youth in central Israel and was also the principal of a similar school for several years. “There is wall-to-wall understanding that the better a student is in school, especially when it comes to schools like this one, his or her life will be better,” he says. “Home life is not always good for them, the community is not always one that it is always comfortable for them to belong to, and unless they find a regular job, there’s always the potential to get into trouble outside of the school framework.

“As far as I am concerned, a precondition of a student spending a lot of time in school is that fed. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t work. It can’t stand up. When I worked in a school, there were many years that we did not provide a hot me because there wasn’t enough money. So, every morning at 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock, we would take our loaves of sliced bread, hummus, chocolate spread, and white cheese – and that would last the children until lunchtime. But that’s no way to operate. They need a normal meal in the morning, something hot, healthy, and nutritious for lunch. We know how to provide a solution for students who aren’t focused, but if there’s no hot meal, they just leave.”

We met with Reuven at one of the network’s schools in the Shfela District. We are joined by Na’ama, the school’s social coordinator, and Alma, a teacher. “There is a food issue,” says Alma. “In my early education classes, every activity I organized was preceded by the question of whether food would be provided. In that class, it’s just with specific children.”

During the course of our conversation, Alma excuses herself to answer her cell phone. On the line is the coordinator of a hostel for youth in crisis, who is calling about one of her students, who had been thrown out of her home and was staying temporarily at the hostel. He said that the student was not eating, and he wanted to make sure that at school, at least, she was being given a meal.

What proportion of the students here relies on the hot meal they get at school as the only meal of the day?

Na’ama: “Most of them work, but they won’t get an additional hot meal at home. They and their little siblings don’t get meals at home. There are only a handful whose socioeconomic situation is moderate or above. Most of them face particularly challenging socioeconomic circumstances. A few weeks ago, one of the coordinators went grocery shopping for one of our matriculants. She simply bought her a thousand shekels worth of food from the supermarket because she called and said that they didn’t have anything to eat in the home, and she was there with her sister and her little children.”

One of the issues that are raised time and time again in these conversations is the shame experienced by disadvantaged youths. “They can’t give any external indication that they are poor,” says Alma. “Many children have Adidas and an iPhone, but whose fridge at home is empty.”

“This is a characteristic of poverty,” adds Na’ama, “that sometimes they don’t have power in the home, and they sleep in the living room in the same bed as a sibling, but the child will own two Adidas T-shirts. That provides them with a basic sense of belonging. They worked for it or stole to buy it – but they have to have it.”

Alma: “I had one boy in my previous class, for example, who had a fire in his house on the week of the graduation prom. I offered him replacement clothes, but he refused to come to the party because they weren’t fashionable brands.”

Reuven: “I think it’s irrational, but it also comes from the child’s desire to say, ‘I am a regular youth, and I want to feel normal.”

Na’ama: “Check how many of them have a driver’s license by the time they’re 19, have savings, and have plans for the future. They’re industrious, and they work hard, sometimes, they work until two in the morning and then come to school at nine – but they will waste the money they earned within a week. There’s no future in the present.”