A Season For Action
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” [Elie Wiesel]
[Choose 1 of the following 2 vignettes or else add a story you know from personal experience]
Fran is a 78 year old widow. She lives alone in an apartment. She has no family nearby, and most of her friends have passed away. Fran lives off social security, having long ago exhausted her savings. Fran also suffers from painful arthritis, which she can only control through expensive medication. This winter, with the cost of heating oil skyrocketing, Fran is going to have to make an awful choice—pay to heat her apartment and endure the excruciating pain of her arthritis, or pay for her medication and endure a frozen apartment for the next four months.
Tanya is a 24 year-old single mother of two. She dropped out of high school when she became pregnant with her first child. Though she has since gotten her GED, she has found her job prospects to be very limited and can only find minimum wage employment. She works double shifts at McDonald’s, but after paying for her rent, her children’s daycare, and other expenses, she still comes up short and has to rely on food stamps for sustenance. But due to increases in food prices without proportionate increases in food stamps, Tanya’s food stamps only provide enough funding to cover three weeks out of every month. Even after trips to soup kitchens and food pantries, Tanya and her two kids often have to skip meals and go hungry, counting the days until the next month’s check arrives.
The story just told is more common than any of us would like to admit. We are living in a time when poverty levels are rising at alarming rates. Today, more than 37 million Americans live in poverty; one in five children lives in a household experiencing food insecurity, and 47 million Americans lack health insurance. Nor is poverty relegated to the non-Jewish world; nationally, approximately 15% of Jews live in poverty, particularly in major cities like New York and Chicago. And the current economic climate suggests that poverty is only going to get worse. As you all know, gas prices have exploded, the price of food staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour have surged at double-digit rates, and a record number of homeowners across the nation face foreclosure.
Yet nothing seems to be getting done to resolve the poverty crisis in America. This Shabbat I would like to speak with you about why the Jewish community must not, DARE not cave in to indifference on poverty. To the contrary, our tradition makes clear that we have a moral, theological, and a human imperative to do our utmost to eradicate the poverty in our midst. I will begin by providing an overview of this tradition, addressing why we, as Jews, should care about poverty in America. I will then discuss what we can do to make a real difference, moving beyond platitudes and proclamations and towards constructive change.
[pause]
So why should we prioritize poverty relief? First, our textual tradition is resolute in requiring Jews to take care of impoverished Jews and non-Jews alike. As but one of many examples within the Torah, Deuteronomy [15:7-8] commands, with regard to the Jewish poor: “If there is among you a poor person, one of your kin, in any of your towns within your land which G-d gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against them, but you shall open your hand to them, and lend them sufficient for their needs, whatever they may be.” Likewise, Isaiah instructs: “Share your bread with the hungry, and take the wretched poor into your home. When you see the naked, clothe him, and do not ignore your own kin.” [Isaiah 58:7].
We are taught time and again to care for the non-Jewish “stranger” as well. In Deuteronomy [14:27-29], we are instructed to tithe our agricultural produce so that “the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your settlements shall come and eat their fill.” Indeed, the Bible at times rejects any distinction between our obligation to care for the Jewish or non-Jewish poor: “And if your neighbor becomes poor and his means fail him with you, then you shall strengthen him, be he a stranger or a settler, he shall live with you.” [Leviticus 25:35]. Thus, while we certainly have an obligation to care for the Jewish poor, our obligation does not end there; rather, our tradition instructs that we must care for all of G-d’s children.
But these textual invocations are only the beginning. I believe Judaism articulates a deep moral imperative to care for the marginalized in society because of what doing so reflects about who we are and the society we aspire to live in. This week’s parsha, Ki Tetzei, provides us with one such reflection. Ki Tetzei is pregnant with moral instructions, from returning a neighbor’s lost animals to letting a mother bird go when taking eggs out of a nest to not returning a slave who is seeking refuge from his master. Rarely does the Torah provide any textual justification. Two commandments, however, do receive a justification. First, Deuteronomy 24:17-18 states: “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless... Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your G-d redeemed you from there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.” Second, Deuteronomy 24:20-22 states: “When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow… Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.”
What is the connection between the ethical norms and the “remembering” of the Israelites’ status as former slaves in Egypt? By emphasizing that we, too, were once “slaves”—marginalized and impoverished—the Torah teaches that we should not view today’s poor as an inferior “other” but as an equal, a fellow human being. Once we reject any sense of hierarchy or difference between “us” and “them”, the very act of caring for the poor becomes an act of affirming our common humanity. It transforms tzedakah from a paternalistic exercise of helping out the unfortunate to an embracing of the inherent dignity and worth of all our brothers and sisters. At its core, then, acts of righteousness and loving-kindness are not so much about helping the recipient but about helping the donor reconceptualize his or her relationship with the rest of society.
Caring for the poor not only helps us to realize our common humanity, but it also allows us to reflect on the inherent holiness of each individual. Our tradition teaches that: “Anyone who withholds what is due to the poor blasphemes against the Maker of all, but one who is gracious unto the needy honors God.” [Proverbs 14:31]. Why is failure to provide for the poor equated to blaspheming G-d? It is because caring for the poor affirms the notion that everyone is imbued with the divine spirit, “btzelem Elohim.” To ignore the plight of the poor, to ignore their humanity, is to turn our backs, quite literally, on G-d. How, then, should we treat G-d’s creations? G-d has shown us through acts of chesed in the Bible, from clothing Adam to visiting Abraham during his post-circumcision convalescence. When we engage in similar actions, we, too, celebrate the dignity and sacredness inherent within each individual.
Now to the tachlis, the nitty-gritty of what we can do to make a difference. Most of you have donated money to disaster relief or volunteered at a soup kitchen or other social service organization. This type of action is often characterized as direct service, acts of one individual to another during a difficult time, and they comprise an essential element of any social services network. Engaging in direct action helps connect us to the real suffering of others, removing the abstractness of poverty as a public policy issue by making it personal. You should applaud yourselves for all the wonderful, and meaningful, direct service work you have done.
Yet our tradition calls out for more than just direct service work. It calls for the radical notion of actually transforming the world, creating systemic, overarching change through the implementation of laws and policies at a macro level in order to create a more balanced society. The Talmud [Baba Batra 9a] says: “Greater than one who does a mitzvah is one who causes others to do a mitzvah.” The Hebrew term for effecting this effort at systemic change is one you all know quite well—“tikkun olam.” Direct service calls for providing clothes to the naked before you; tikkun olam mandates enacting legislation to ensure that people never will go naked.
We need to do more, much, much more, to address poverty through new laws and policies at the local, state, and federal levels. We need to pass universal healthcare so that millions of Americans, particularly small children, get the medical treatment they deserve. We need to expand food stamp programs so that they provide necessary sustenance for the entirety of every month, not just 3 out of 4 weeks. We need to increase subsidies for home heating oil costs so that millions of Americans this winter will not have to choose between heating their homes or buying their prescription drugs. [feel free to add in local poverty issues here]
Contrary to conventional wisdom, today there is broad support for government-based efforts to ameliorate poverty. A recent Pew Forum study found that 62% of Americans "favor the government doing more to help needy Americans, even if it means going deeper in debt." What we are facing is not intellectual or moral opposition to poverty relief--it is apathy and indifference, they very apathy and indifference our parsha and Elie Wiesel both warn us about. In the face of this lethargy, what we need to do is to articulate clear policies, mobilize support for these policies, and hold politicians accountable for the effectuation of these policies.
And we cannot do this alone. We need to partner with our religious and secular friends who likewise are committed to eradicating poverty. We need to develop a network of individuals and groups with the clout to get new laws and policies enacted.
This week, a national interfaith coalition of Jews, Christians, and Muslims have organized a “week of action,” titled “Fighting Poverty With Faith,” in an effort to bring poverty issues into the national spotlight. Over 21 national faith-based organizations and almost 100 communities across the country are mobilizing this week to:
· Get specific commitments from candidates and elected officials as to what they will do in their first 100 days in office to address poverty in America;
· Build and strengthen interfaith relationships and mobilization capacity in order to hold the candidates accountable to those commitments once they are elected;
· Marshal the political and public will to seriously tackle poverty in this country by showing that confronting poverty is a top priority for people of all faiths
To these ends, faith organizations across the country will be taking coordinated actions throughout the week to get local, state and national candidates and elected officials talking about what they will do to address poverty in their first 100 days in office. If we are serious about addressing poverty in this country, we need candidates and elected officials to be clear about setting poverty-reduction goals. We must also show them that we are both mobilized to hold them accountable to those goals and committed to helping them achieve them through a citizen-driven movement.
I therefore urge you to speak out collectively during this week, and in the weeks to come, so that we can spark a national conversation about poverty and create a mandate for the officials elected this year to pursue aggressively a poverty-reduction agenda. Call or email all your elected officials and candidates for local, state and national office. Ask them about what they plan to do to address poverty in America in their first 100 days in office. And find some way to get involved in poverty relief work: make the commitment to “pray with your feet” by taking action to eradicate poverty in America.
To return to this week’s parshah, we are taught that if you find your fellow’s lost object or livestock, you may not ignore it and leave it in the field—“you must not remain indifferent.” [Deuteronomy 22:2-3]. Today, when we find that our fellow Americans have lost their jobs, their health care, their affordable housing, their ability to heat their homes during winter, we too may not remain indifferent. It is time for us to act, and to act effectively, to transform the world into the world we want it to be.
[tie in conclusion to vignette chosen at the beginning]
Shabbat shalom.
4