Tag: Social justice

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Social Justice

One Road – Two Worlds: Modern Shavuot Story of Justice in the Fields

As we near Shavuot, our thoughts turn to the agricultural roots of our people.  For many, discussions of justice in the fields, fair treatment of farm workers, and standing up against slavery fail to resonate with our modern experience.  I felt the same until one Tuesday morning last December.

I live in Naples, Florida.  If I turn left out of my housing development, a ten minute drive brings me to the Gulf of Mexico.  On that day I drove out of my development and turned right, driving past the coffee shop, grocery store, and bank where I normally stopped.  Almost thirty miles later, that same road brought me to another world within the same county, the town of Immokalee.

This was my first trip to Immokalee, but I know it will not be my last.  My travels came as part of a group of rabbis participating with T’ruah: A Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.  Since 2011, more than seventy Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox rabbis, from communities across the country, visited Immokalee with T’ruah to meet with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  Affectionately called Tomato Rabbis (#TomatoRabbis on social media), these groups spend three days meeting farm workers, learning the history of the CIW, and bearing witness to the transformation that has led to fields of justice.

One’s heart breaks listening to the stories of the workers and the conditions that existed prior to the Fair Food Program (FFP).  Workers had no shade, no break times.  Wage theft was rampant as crew leaders doled out pay.  Sexual harassment was used to threaten and demean female laborers.  One worker was beaten for stopping to drink water, with the crew leader saying to the others, “Are you here to work or drink water?”

As if the conditions in the fields were not bad enough, many workers lived as modern day slaves.  Eight instances of modern day slavery were discovered, with the last occurring less than ten years ago!  Workers kept in trailers, hosed off at the end of each day, and then locked in to prevent their escape by night.  It was so unprecedented that the Justice Department did not know how to even handle the first cases that came forward.

There is a Haitian saying, “A bull would not let a child lead it if it knew its own strength.”  The workers began to realize that they had the strength to change their situation.  Lucas Benitez, one of the founders of the CIW, explained, “Immokalee was a desert of justice.  We searched for hope, and discovered the waters of justice.”  The effort began with actions to push the growers to improve conditions.  Later, the CIW realized that the chain really went beyond the growers up to the buyers – the corporations who purchased the tomatoes for restaurants, grocery stores and other food services.  Rather than being in conflict with the growers, they formed a partnership together.

Torah teaches in Deuteronomy, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof!” – “Justice, justice, shall you pursue!” Lipman Produce and Pacific Tomatoes, both started and owned by Jewish families, were the first two growers to participate in the Fair Food Program in order to protect workers’ rights, increase safety in the fields, and provide a better wage. These two growers, who joined in the fall of 2010 after a critical mass of corporate buyers had come on board, served as models.  Soon thereafter, the majority of Florida’s tomato growers joined in – representing 90% of all tomatoes grown in Florida.  Working in partnership, the Fair Food Standards Council was established, to protect the rights of workers, ensure compliance by the growers, as well as monitor the buyers.

Fourteen major corporations have joined this effort, including Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Aramark, Compass, and more recently Ahold USA (Stop & Shop and Giant) and Walmart.  Each corporation commits to only sourcing Florida tomatoes from growers who are part of the Fair Food Program, paying a penny per pound premium for tomatoes that goes directly to the farm workers, and accepting responsibility for their role in the supply chain.  Conditions in the fields improved dramatically in recent years.  Participating growers provide shade stations, water, time-clocks for fair wage management, and education to identify and prevent sexual harassment. As evidence of the Fair Food Program’s success, incidents of violence toward workers in the fields have greatly decreased and workers now exercise the right to complain without fear – over 1100 complaints have been received and resolved since the FFP’s inception.

The New York Times recently identified the Florida Tomato industry as an exemplar in the field of agriculture.  Once called “ground zero” for modern-day slavery, the CIW and its partners transformed tomato farming into fields of justice.  Efforts continue to expand participating buyers and move into other fields of agriculture.  Campaigns exist to encourage Publix and Wendy’s, two corporations that have refused to meet with the CIW, and as a result still do not treat the farmworkers fairly and with respect.

One road links together two worlds.  On this holiday of Shavuot, let this story of justice in the fields serve as our reminder that while the world may have evolved, our work is far from done.  May each one of us find our road to justice – the path we need to follow as we pursue justice, support the right to human dignity, and act so that fairness, equality, safety and freedom are experienced by all.

 

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Rabbi Adam Miller,  the senior rabbi of Temple Shalom of Naples, serves on the Commission for Social Action of the URJ and emphasizes building relationships with the community at large around issues of social justice, interfaith dialogue, Israel, and Jewish education.

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News Passover Pesach Rabbis Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice

Promises of Liberation

Rabbi Seth Limmer

This week is framed by the unfulfilled promises of liberation.

On April 16, we celebrated Emancipation Day, which marks the anniversary of President Lincoln’s signing the Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, which freed the over 3,000 enslaved individuals who resided in Washington, D.C.

On April 22, which is also the 14th of Nissan, we will sit at our Seder tables to commence our annual Passover festival which marks not only the historic liberation of our people from Egyptian oppression, but also the beginning of our obligation to insure none in the world suffer similar degradation and abuse.

Our Passover meal ends with the hope, “Next year in Jerusalem! Next year may all be free!” We understand it is our obligation to rise up from our Seder and work for that great liberation of humanity which is not yet complete.  For those who marked Emancipation Day, we recognize that—in a society still roiled by racial injustice—the promise of American Emancipation is likewise not yet fulfilled.

It is our work to bring to light the Jewish hope, and the American dream, of enduring freedom for all.  Passover teaches us that the opposite of freedom is oppression; we know in American that the antithesis of living free is being incarcerated.  We also know that our country today suffers—disproportionately in the case of our Black brothers and sisters—from the plague of Mass Incarceration.  That is why we, as a Reform Movement and Reform Rabbis, have banded together to advocate the passage of the bipartisan Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act [S. 2123] in this year’s Congress.

Fighting for the passage of S. 2123 has been interesting for me as a resident of Illinois.  One of my Senators, Richard Durbin [D-IL], is an original co-sponsor of the bill.  My other Senator, Mark Kirk [R-IL], has long been viewed as a key moderate who might ultimately come out in support of the bill.  Our job was to turn the possibility of Kirk’s potential support for this bill into his committed support.

Our work began in January, the Friday before Rev. Martin Luther King Day.  Rabbi Ari Margolis and I met with Senator Kirk’s representatives in his Chicago office, and explained our movement’s support for this needed legislation.  The following Tuesday, over 500 Reform Jews—inspired by their rabbis—called into Kirk’s office to add their voices to those who wished to see S. 2123 become the law of our land.

But January brought no word of endorsement or support, we took further action.  The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights organized a local press conference at which I spoke on behalf of the Reform Movement and reminded our Senator that, “Mercy, redemption and rehabilitation are just as much part of a just society as punishment.” [http://thehill.com/regulation/legislation/267347-illinois-residents-push-sen-kirk-to-support-criminal-justice-reform]  Still, we hear little from Capitol Hill.

Last week, I travelled to Washington, D.C., as part of our bi-annual meetings of our Commission on Social Action.  Our meetings ended on Tuesday with a trip up to the Hill, where we gathered in state Caucuses to lobby on behalf of S. 2123.  Together, Rabbi Shoshana Conover and Deborah Kadin and I prepared for what we feared would be a contentious meeting in Kirk’s offices: too much time had passed for us not to receive an answer.  As we sat with Gregory Tosi, the Senator’s lead counsel, I honestly felt like we would walk away defeated.  Boy was I wrong.

Instead, as we finished advocating for our cause, Greg shared the following with us: “You’ll be happy to hear—and you’re the first to hear—that the Senator decided today to become a co-sponsor of the bill.”  That direct.  That plain.  After months, the victory we sought… a first small win on the campaign for much more.

We left the Hart Office building delighted.  I thought I was the one with good fortune—I also ran into colleagues Matthew Cutler and Michael Latz, who were lobbying with the Jubilee USA network for relieving global poverty.  It was my colleague Rabbi Conover who had the best luck: she ran into Senator Kirk himself, while he was on the way to a press conference to announce his support for S. 2123.  On behalf of all of us, she thanked him for his vote.

As we dwell in a season of unfulfilled dreams, I am fully aware that this victory is small.  Next, we need to ensure S. 2123 makes its way to the Senate floor.  Then we will likely need to fight for its passage.  And then, the problems of Mass Incarceration won’t evaporate; they will only be mitigated.  Dr. King taught that the moral arc of the universe is long, and we need to be in this for the long struggle if we want to make sure that arc bends towards justice.

I left Capitol Hill last week, a few Days before Emancipation day and a week prior to Passover, feeling just as I do every year when the Seder comes to an end: I’m appreciative of the strides we’ve made towards liberation for all, but aware that we have a lot more marching to do to pass everyone through the split sea to the Land of Promise.

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Rabbi Seth Limmer serves Chicago Sinai Congregation.  He is also the Social Justice committee chair for the CCAR. 

Read more about the Commission on Social Action and Rabbis Organizing Rabbis trip to Washington D.C.

 

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Social Justice

Digging Into the Second Justice: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

A Note to Rabbis About The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 

“Justice, justice, you shall pursue” (Deuteronomy 20:16) is the baseline of Jewish social justice work. It is our oft-repeated mantra that undergirds our fight for everything from trans-inclusion to gun violence prevention. And yet, how often do we dig into the second justice? When do we really consider what it means that our text tells us not “justice you shall pursue” but “justice, justice”? I believe that this second justice represents a second level of obligation, a level that speaks directly and inherently to our need as Jews to champion climate change.

In the pursuit of justice, we find ourselves “championing the poor and the needy” (Proverbs 31:9) on a micro-level. Justice-justice requires a more systemic approach, beyond giving to charity or advocating for policies to protect folks experiencing homelessness in our cities. The “poor and the needy” immediately require clothes and shelter, but their lives are also fundamentally shaped by global food and water scarcities due to rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns.

In Leviticus 19:34, we read that we should “welcome in the stranger.” Justice alone would have us allow entry of immigrants and refugees into our borders, while justice-justice requires us to look at the wars and famines that are causing people to flee their homes. In short, our Jewish obligation to pursue justice is more than case-by-case direct service work, but is a call to combat system structures of inequality, like the industrial greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global climate disruption.

Next month, I will be joining a delegation of young faith leaders to attend The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France. I am the manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and will be there representing the Jewish community. Our delegation, comprised of myself along with Muslim, Mennonite, and Zoroastrian lay leaders along with a Baptist preacher, mirrors the spirit of the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC is perhaps the only governmental mechanism that has a real shot at addressing and combating a problem as large and inter-national as climate change. The conference lasts for two weeks and includes representatives from both developed and developing countries. The hope is that by the end of negotiations, there will emerge an international agreement on emissions reductions.

In the same way that the UN represents international collaboration, we aim to act as an interfaith group, learning from each other and bringing climate mitigation practices and our moral imperative to care for our planet and fellow human beings back to our respective faith communities. While there, we’ll join pop-up prayer vigils, the People’s Pilgrimage, and climate protests. We’ll also be speaking to Parisians and decision-makers who will gather at the conference to make some of the most important policy calls of our time in order to bring them the voice of faithful ethics that informs our climate change advocacy.

One of the most important things that the faith community and in particular our Jewish rabbinic leadership, can do ahead of this paradigm-shifting conference, is to show their support for a strong international agreement. Rabbis have the unique ability to pass on this connection between the issues happening in the world around us and our sacred text to your congregations. Reform Jewish leaders have a critical role to play in giving voice to our moral obligation to act on climate change, and to protect the poor and the needy, not only in the immediate ways in which we are well-versed, but also with our eye to a second “justice.”

You can sign the Paris pledge, asking our leaders to act on climate at the UNFCCC here.

For more resources and materials on Jewish environmentalism, you can also check out the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life website here.

—

Guest Blogger Liya Rechtman is the Manager of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL),  and a Policy Associate of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. She is also co-chair of the Washington Inter-religious Staff Council’s Energy and Environment Working Group. CCAR is a member of COEJL. 

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Raising the Minimum Wage Raises Up Us All

Marching in 97 degree heat on the blacktop of the Selma Highway was not easy.  But, I only had to do it for a day.  As I marched under the blazing August Alabama sun, I thought about centuries of people living in poverty who have worked all day, all summer, in that heat—in cotton fields, in factories, on roads, on roofs.

Ta-Nehisi Coates eloquently describes in his recent book, Between the World and Me, how racial injustice has physical effects on people’s bodies.  White Americans perpetrated the very abuse he describes on the bodies of those who walked the same highway fifty years ago.  That abuse is becoming more visible as we open our eyes to the wounds of racial injustice today.  And we are also finally starting to see the insidious physical abuse of poverty. Working in the heat is draining, but when you are unable to afford nutritious food, your sleep is shortened by multiple jobs and family responsibilities and illness often goes untreated because you cannot afford an unpaid sick day, poverty starts to destroy your body.

And then it can attack your spirit.  As Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP said to us on the steps of the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, we need a living wage because “we understand that jobs are not about dollars only but about dollars and dignity.”  Working full time should allow every American to live a life of dignity.  But it doesn’t.

The current federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, and at the current amount of $7.25/hour, an employee who is working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year earns only $15,080, which is not enough to lift a family of two out of poverty.  This has caused the number of full-time workers living in poverty to double since the late 1970s.

It does not need to be this way. A bill currently under consideration in Congress, the Raise the Wage Act (S. 1150/H.R. 1250), would bring the federal minimum wage to $12/hour by 2020 in a series of gradual increases. The National Employment Law Project reports that the increase would bring dignity and new economic security to millions of our fellow citizens:

  • 35 million workers (more than one in four);
  • 30 percent of wage-earning women (19.6 million women);
  • 35 percent of African American workers; and
  • 38 percent of Hispanic workers.

The Jewish obligation to treat workers fairly appears over and over in the Torah.  As does the need to see and respond to poverty in our midst. In this week’s parsha, Ki Teitzei, we read, “…You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is needy and urgently depends on it; else he will cry to the Eternal against you and you will incur guilt.” (Deuteronomy 24:14-15)  When fellow Americans, our “kin,” are working full-time and still unable to care for their bodies, their spirits, and those of their family, we must act.   That is the responsibility we must assume when we have our day in the sun.

Take action and urge your Members of Congress to support the Raise the Wage Act.

Learn more about the RAC’s work on economic justice and racial justice.

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Blog by: Rabbi Ariana Silverman 

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s blog.

 

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Rabbis Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Marching toward a World of Justice

Rabbi Tarfon taught: “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to abstain from it.”

What is the work we are called to do?  Along with nearly two hundred of my colleagues, I was honored to participate in America’s Journey for Justice.  Along with Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker of Minnesota, I walked the last leg in Alabama, ending the day by crossing over into Georgia.

That particular day, moving from state to state, gave us the opportunity to reflect on the significance and meaning of what the name “United States of America” stands for. Is there equal opportunity throughout our country?  Are we united in ending racism and discrimination?  In particular, I was moved by talking to the men in the group who, like me, are fathers.  What are the realities for their children, when they go to school and when they drive down the road, when they go to the ballot box and when they seek employment?  It was an exciting moment to reach the end of the long day’s walk and cross over from state to state.  The moment of celebration was tempered, however, by what I see as a central aspect of this walk: the desire to create equality and justice all throughout our land.

That particular day was also a Friday, which meant we ended the day by welcoming Shabbat.  We sang Shalom Aleichem and imagined the angels that would accompany us on the journey towards peace.  We made Kiddush together, and celebrated its message that God brought us forth from bondage: and now that we were taking these actions to move our country from oppression to opportunity.  We tore open the rich white braids of the challah and taught our new friends that Judaism’s sacred teachings command us to journey for justice.

In Deuteronomy Rabbah, we read, “R. Joshua ben Levi said: When a man walks on the highway, a company of angels goes before him announcing: ‘Make way for the image of the Holy One, blessed be He.’”

This journey from Selma to Washington is sacred, and God is present in every step down those country highways.  We answered hateful cries with songs of peace.  We met ignorance and bigotry with love and dignity.  We shared stories of vulnerability and fear and we shared hopes and dreams.

And we did it all carrying a Torah scroll, proudly, alongside the American flag.  Torah, which begins with the story of creation, because we are all responsible for one another.

During the weeks of this journey, the scroll will be in places where it has never been seen before.  May its wisdom and beauty and its clarion call to pursue justice inspire all those on the journey.  We may not complete the work, but when the Journey reaches its destination, may we be ever closer to a world of Justice.

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Rabbi Peter W. Stein serves Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY.  

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s Blog.

 

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Rabbis Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Keep on Walking, Keep on Talking, Marching up to Freedom’s Land

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around

We’re gonna keep on a walkin, keep on a talkin,

Marchin up to Freedom’s Land

As we marched in the hot humid sun, a group of truly courageous and gusty Georgian women began singing this Freedom Song in beautiful harmony.  Their singing gave me strength and served as a connection to the past.  They reminded me of why I was there: to walk, to talk, and to march for justice and freedom for all.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up for this journey.  Yes, I knew I would help carry the Torah during the day’s 18 mile journey, but it was the walking and the talking that truly inspired me and it was the extraordinary people that I met on my trip that will stay with me long after my feet stop aching.

Over breakfast, I sat with Royal who shared his anger that he could not join the numerous fishing and hunting clubs in town because of his skin color.  He worried about his five year old son whose best friend is white.  “What will happen when my son’s friend has a birthday party at the Fishing Club?” he asked me.  “Will the boy include my son in the birthday party or not?  Will the father turn his son into a racist or will the boy recognize the ignorance of his father’s way?”

In the morning, I walked alongside Shelly who was concerned about the next generation.  She shared that those without an education often find work as a restaurant server – making the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – barely enough to make a living.  Shelly inspired me by accepting a new job tutoring high school seniors, enabling these students to move forward with their education and their dreams.

In the afternoon, I stood by Keisha’s side.  It was a transformative moment in Keisha’s youth that led her to become an advocate for change.  She told me that she believes it is a smile, a wave of the hand, a kind word that will truly change the course of our country.  Her heart pushed her to create a new non-profit that will support future business owners and help get people back to work.

Later that day, I was honored to chant from the Torah and read these words: “If there is a needy person among you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin” (Deuteronomy 15:7).  Rabbi Jill Perlman shared a beautiful teaching that in order to break open a hardened heart we must first unclench our hands and reach out to each other.  Over the course of my journey, I recognized the power of not only my hands, but also my feet.  By holding on to the marchers next to me and by walking by their side, I was able to open my heart to their worries, their challenges and the injustice that pervades our society.  By being present and sharing my entire body and soul, my heart was opened to their experience.

I only marched for one day in the steamy 100 degree Georgian heat, but Royal, Shelly and Keshia are marching the entire length of the journey.  They’ve come so far already, but it’s still a long way to the Promised Land.  May the beautiful singing inspire them and continue to push us all to open our hearts and our hands, for we must keep on walking, keep on talking, and marching up to Freedom’s Land.

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Rabbi Andy Gordon serves on the clergy team of Temple Sinai of Roslyn. 

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s blog.

 

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Turning Justice into Righteousness

“Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof:” this is one of the most famous lines from all Scripture, lines we read this week as part of Parashat Shof’tim. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most misunderstood lines in all of Scripture. We commonly translate the text as, “Justice, Justice, You must pursue (it).” Justice is the rule of law. The scales of justice hang in every courthouse in the country. Justice is really nothing more than the best answer we have for any given legal situation, at any given point in time. “Justice” allowed slave ownership. The highest “Court of Justice” in the land affirmed it on a number of occasions … until it did not anymore. Then, a new standard of “Justice” was imposed. We are not seeking justice; we have it. What we need is righteousness, the better definition of “Tzedek.” We must pursue righteousness (the best moral answer available to us). Sometimes, following the law, may be “just,” but it is not righteous.

Monday, August 17, I joined in the NAACP’s America’s Journey for Justice; an amazing event on so many levels. As much conversation as we shared, we kept returning to the topic of the laws affirmed by government and our purveyor of justice (the courts) still allowed for discrimination and disparate treatment of minorities and women. As we walked across the Georgia countryside, we became more focused on pursuing righteousness, holding our nation’s leaders to a higher standard than the law. We marched to remind America that the Constitution of this land declared the rights to equality in opportunity and security are “unalienable.” While the law is more egalitarian than it used to be, our system of justice still has a long way to go. My 19.5 miles calling our nation’s attention to more righteous answers did not change the world, but together, our voices over 860 miles can.

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Rabbi Marc Kline serves Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, NJ.

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s Blog.

 

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Rabbis Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Acknowledging and Transforming our Legacies

As I got off the plane in Atlanta to march in America’s Journey for Justice, I was reminded of the last time I was there. It was earlier this year. I was there with my wife and our two kids, ages 6 and 8, and my in-laws. My wife’s parents live in Boston, but my father-in-law grew up outside of Atlanta. In fact, he grew up as a Baptist, and descends from people who had lived in Georgia since before the American Revolution. His ancestors fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Members of his family owned a plantation and owned slaves.

My father-in-law hated much of that world and ultimately ended up a Jewish college professor in the Boston suburbs. But my wife grew up visiting her grandparents and extended family in Georgia. Now, we wanted to take the kids to Georgia while my parents-in-law were still able to do so. The only problem, of course, is that we also had to explain the history of racism in America to them as well. Granddaddy’s family weren’t bad people, were they?

The trip was great, including visits to the Martin Luther King National Historic Site, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Center for Civil and Human Rights, in addition to family cemeteries, churches and homes. But the question we had to answer for our kids we also had to answer for ourselves. And, I believe, so do all white people and also all Jews (white and otherwise): what is my part in the structural inequality in this country, and what am I going to do about it?

That’s why I was so happy to join this march, as an individual and as a rabbi. Like so many of us, I am sure, I desperately want to do something. And so, going and marching, meeting people and hearing their stories, was so powerful. Sitting in a church in LaGrange, Georgia, and hearing from state leaders in the fight to protect voting rights was just different than it ever could have been from my home in New York City. And feeling like an ally of the people I met, from all over the country, could not have happened at home either. Most of what I will do in the future is to continue organizing here in New York with communities across race, class and neighborhood for better access to good education and housing. But I am more motivated to do that work because of what I felt marching through the ancestral home of my children’s granddaddy.

On our second night in LaGrange, after learning at the teach-in about barriers to voting access in Georgia, one of the marchers got into conversation with the state trooper who was sitting in the back (the march has been accompanied by copious law enforcement). She asked him what he thought about what he had just heard. We had learned that one way people can be kept from voting is by demanding they produce documents they don’t have. Many poor, and often African-American, people in the South were born outside of hospitals and as a result don’t have birth certificates. “My father doesn’t have a birth certificate either,” this white state trooper reported. He now saw the issue in a new way.

Because of our fathers’ stories, our fathers’-in-law, and our own, we are all in this together. Our privilege, or our oppression, is entwined with the experience of every other person in our country. And we will all need to be a part of the solution.

—

David Adelson serves East End Temple in Manhattan. 

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s Blog.

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

Bibilical Echoes

83 year old Hazel Dukes led our community with words that I’m sure are familiar to all who have and will march: “What do we want? JUSTICE! When do we want it? NOW! Her voice was simply a modern echo of Isaiah’s call (51:1) from the Haftarah for parashat Eikev, for us to be Rodfei Tzedek, Pursuers of Justice.

Standing at our rally at the steps of the Alabama State Capital in Montgomery, we chanted along. Having grown up in the 1950s and 60s, I found it humbling to gather in this location where over fifty years ago George Wallace and his Alabama State Storm Troopers reigned. Now, historical signs throughout Montgomery are reminders of how far civil rights have advanced. All the State Troopers, not just the black officers, could not have been more helpful, courteous or supportive of our purpose. Yes, there has been progress, but as we know, the work is not complete.

Speaker after speaker and the experts for our teach-in the next night made this abundantly clear. Echoes from this week’s Torah portion linked to the goal of our marching. “Our lives, our votes, our jobs, our schools matter” calls out to us in the spirit of Deuteronomy’s (15:7), “Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin.” Slavery may have ended after the Civil War, but the slave experience and subsequent manifestations continue to oppress the black community. We can relate, “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 15:15)

Walking in the hot Alabama sun, we chanted for justice and sang songs of freedom and friendship. (That included Hineh Mah Tov and Psalm 150.) On the one hand I felt as though we were reenacting history, but on the other I understood that there was so much more to be done. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice, you shall pursue (Deuteronomy 16:20), found in next week’s parasha, echoed loudly. It reminded me that we joined with the black community seeking justice in the past and that we must continue to seek justice today in order that there be a more meaningful tomorrow.

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Rabbi Bob Loewy serves Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie, LA.

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s Blog.

 

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice Torah

In Every Generation …

B’chol dor vador chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mi-Mitzrayim.  “In every generation, a person must view herself/himself as if s/he had gone out of Egypt” (Pesachim 116b). Our sages teach this text to emphasize the need to praise God for the Exodus each and every Passover.  At the Seder, we celebrate as if we were actually there and the stories we recount actually happened to us. In a broader sense, we view this text as a call to compassion and action.  In each generation, we must think of ourselves as if we had known personally the bitterness of slavery and then the joy of freedom.  Knowing the pain of oppression, we are compelled to work for justice, b’chol dor vador, in every generation.

The text took on a deeper layer of meaning for me as I marched with the NAACP’s America’s Journey for Justice this summer in Aiken County, South Carolina.  When I got off the bus at the staging area, holding the Torah scroll we would carry, I was approached by an older African American woman named Linda.  “Rabbi,” she said, “Thank you for being with us on this march.”  Making conversation, I asked her if this was her first day marching, meaning, had she participated the day before?  “Oh Rabbi,” Linda laughed, “I was marching back in the ‘60s!”  B’chol dor vador, in every generation we must work for racial justice.

My marching partner for one stretch of the journey was Eugene, an African American man about my age.  He was wearing a button that said, “I Am Marching For Civil Rights.”  Around the outside of the button, it said, “Washington, D.C. 1963.”  His grandfather had been there in DC in 1963 and worn that pin.  He had later given the button to Eugene when Eugene was 5 years old.  And Eugene wore it that day as we marched again for racial justice.  B’chol dor vador.

We were housed overnight at Paine College, a historically black liberal arts college in Augusta, GA.  Students were just beginning to arrive back on campus.  Nevertheless, one of the college’s theatre troupes heard that the marchers were staying there and, on short notice, prepared a performance for us.  They did a dramatic reading of pieces from Langston Hughes, Dr. King, and others, including a haunting 90 second rendition of Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe.”  At the end of the performance, one of the college actors explained why they felt compelled to perform:  “We know why you’re marching.  You’re marching for us.”  B’chol dor vador.

Before I left to march, I talked with my young children about why I was going: people are being treated unfairly and unjustly due only to the color of their skin, and we hoped the march would make people pay attention to these things that weren’t right and do something about them.  My daughter, age 7, made the connection and said, “Like in Dr. King’s time, right?’  “Yes,” I answered.  Then this quizzical look came over her face.  “But why didn’t they fix that back then?” she asked.  “Why is this still happening now?”  She was incredulous that we hadn’t gotten it right yet, that racial justice still needed to be worked on.  And that, I told her, was why I was marching.  The struggle for racial justice from the past is, unfortunately, still incomplete.  That struggle belongs to us now in our day and age:

And so we march with Linda, who had to march once again, this time with the next generation. We march with Eugene, marching in the path trod by his grandfather.  We march with the Paine College students marching for their future.  The effort of old is our responsibility now.  B’chol dor vador, in every generation, we will continue to work for racial justice.

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Rabbi David S. Widzer is the rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Valley in Closter, NJ.  He  currently serves as one of the CCAR’s representatives on the Commission on Social Action.

This blog was originally posted on the RAC’s Blog.