MORE Justice

In typical Talmud style a story is told of two camels ascending a hill.  If they go up at the same time one of them will tumble down.  One must precede the other.  The question raised is, “How do you choose which one will go first?”

The one carrying the lighter load will let the other go first.

 

Talmud teaches an important lesson about justice.  Even with animals our sages teach us that we are to treat them justly and with care. Our faith demands, for example, when an animal is in our care, i.e. dependent upon us, we must care for their needs before our own.  It is no great leap of logic that our children’s needs must precede ours, as they are not capable of fulfilling their requirements independent of us.

 

What then comes to mind are questions of other people’s animals and children.  Do we have any responsibility toward them?  “If you find another person’s animal, you must return it to them.”  (Deut. 22). The Rabbis go on to expand that if you find any lost item you must return it to the owner and if they cannot be found you must care for the object until they can be located.  It is logical that the rabbis go on to teach that if this is true for an animal, how much more so must it be true for children?!  We have a responsibility (read: mitzvah) to help children return home- whether that means literally bringing them home when they are lost or returning them home by teaching, feeding or even housing them if they are homeless.  I have met such people in my life who have taken children into their homes when their family of origin could not, or did not, care for them.  This too is justice.

 

“A judge must be guided by what he actually sees.”  -Talmud, Sanhedrin 6b

 

This is an axiom of Torah.  Hearsay, prejudice and whispers are disregarded.  

 

For those who have lived through the fifties and sixties we are painfully aware that African Americans were oppressed, discounted because their race.  They did not enter a store or conversation without a predictable and undeniable bias. We are now witnessing with the spiraling rise of anti-Semitism prejudice is passed on from generation to generation.  The suffering at the hands of Nazis, and Cossacks before them, can still be found widely available in the media.  So it is with African Americans, Asians and Muslims today.  Hatred is not limited to any group.  And we are insistently taught to judge each person on their own merit, “by what s/he actually sees.”

 

An apocryphal story is told about Mayor Fiorello La Guardia when he was serving as a night court judge. A woman was brought before him on charges of stealing food to feed her hungry children.  La Guardia heard the case of the victimized storekeeper and the hungry mother.  He declared, “I fine you,” he said to the woman, “ten dollars for stealing the food.  And everyone in the courtroom are fined as we are responsible for living in a city where a mother is forced to steal to feed her family.”  The extra money was then given to the poor woman.

 

La Guardia was not Jewish he was emphasizing a Jewish principle: we have a responsibility for the people who live in our community.  That too is justice.  The homeless, mentally ill, and hungry are our responsibility.  They are the woman squatting down late at night next to the closed store, the veteran who holds up a cardboard sign at the corner, the children wandering aimlessly through dark alleys, the children and women forced into slavery, another Columbia victim of gunfire…

 

That is why I am insistent on working with MORE Justice.  We have the means to fix all these ills.  They are not insurmountable.  In fact, many of them are as simple as getting our public officials to acknowledge what we propose (training our police officers, allotting money for affordable housing, improving gun control…) MORE Justice has “on the ground” proposals that are simple to implement and only require our elected officials to pay attention and put into action what will benefit our entire community.

 

The culmination of a year of research to determine best practices are now reaching their climax and we will be approaching those who wield the power to make real change at our Nehemiah Action on April 4.  Contact Nina Grey or me if you wish to be part of the change.  As Elie Wiesel taught, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”

Food

When Noah sent the dove from t he Ark to find land, it returned with an olive branch.  The Midrash records the dove saying to the Almighty,”Ribbono Shel Olam!  Let my food be as bitter as the olive branch from Your hand rather than the sweetest of honey from the hand of a human being.”  (Sanhedrin 108)

 

Have you ever seen customers in a restaurant arguing over who is going to pay the bill? Both insist on playing the host.  Sometimes there are compromises, like, “I’ll pay the bill this time.  You get the next,” or “Let’s split it.”

 

However tasty the food is, it is inevitably tastier when the dinner is “on us.”  Whether at home or in a restaurant, we all prefer self-sufficiency to relying on others.  As we say in the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after meals), “May I never be in need of gifts from human hands…”.

 

Eating is a sacred act.  In Judaism, we understand food as a product of God’s continued goodness.  Appropriately enough, several customs revolve around the table to elevate the thrice-daily event.  Here are a few:

 

Ø  Some have the tradition of placing salt on the table.  Salt, for the Jew, is not a condiment but a reminder of the days when sacrifices were offered as a means of connection to the Divine.  When our ancestors brought their sacrifices to the altar the meat was salted.  Mimicking their heartfelt act of being proximate to God we place salt on our altar (the table which has replaced the idea of thanking God for our bounty).

Ø  Unlike other foods, salt does not totally disappear even though it dissolves in a liquid or melts into food it will, sooner or later, crystallize.  That is why we call people who fully embrace their humanity, “salt of the earth.”  We recognize them as an integral part of the universe.  Salt, which is ever-present, is also a sign of God’s eternal existence.  

Ø  Washing one’s hands is the way of hygiene but for the religious Jew, netilat yadayim, literally lifting of one’s hands, transcends simple cleanliness.  In the same way, the ancient priests (kohanim) used to wash their hands before beginning their scared duties, we rinse hands before commencing a holy act.  Only then is the Ineffable One’s name pronounced over bread.

Ø  It is said that all ten fingers are to be placed on the bread that we bless just as there are tens separate labors that are involved until the seeds are nurtured to be baked into a loaf, and there are ten words in the ha-Motzi.

Ø  The Talmud also advised, “the one who prolongs his meal prolongs his life.”  If the sixties were the Age of Aquarius, the next decades were the age of McDonalds and the delivered meals by box.  The gobble down food so swiftly, we might eat anything and never know the difference.  The dictum of the Talmud is universally applauded by people of medicine and healthcare providers everywhere.  But this advice is not just a digestion technique.  Tasting the food we eat brings appreciation.  Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav was known to say, “A person should eat slowly and with etiquette even if you are alone at the table.”

Ø  A final custom: Many people keep some bread on the table throughout the meal, even when saying Birkat HaMazon. The ancient ones used t say that even after completing a meal, a poor person might come to our door, asking for sustenance and we must have something to give them.  Our home, our table, is set for anyone who may be hungry.

Ø  It is true that we are most comfortable feeding ourselves and others than being dependent on others for our food.  The natural extension of that feeling is to elevate our meal, heightening our appreciation that we are obligated to no person.  We eat because of God’s grace and mercy.