Red tomatoes: Freedom from slavery includes fair food

This article was originally published on April 14, 2014, by Haaretz. The full article can be found on their website here.

Slavery is a modern concern in the Southwest Florida tomato fields. As we celebrate our freedom this Passover, may we join the struggle against exploitative labor. 

Several weeks ago, students at our Martin J. Gottlieb Day School at theJacksonville Jewish Center welcomed over 70 migrant farm workers for breakfast. While the middle school students participate in weekly mitzvah projects and regularly volunteer in soup kitchens and food banks, this was not an instance of feeding the hungry. Instead, this was an example of welcoming in the oppressed.

These migrant workers were a part of the Coalition of Immakolee Workers (CIW) based roughly four hours from Jacksonville, Florida. I heard from, saw and expressed the struggles of these workers firsthand last year when I traveled with a rabbinic delegation to Immakolee, sponsored by Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. The Department of Justice refers to Southwest Florida as “ground zero for modern slavery.” In fact, according to U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy, anyone who has eaten a winter tomato has eaten a fruit picked by a slave.

While I did not witness slavery in the tomato fields upon my visit, I did hear story after story of exploitation. In the most extreme cases, there was modern-day slavery, the last case tried as recently as 2008. If slavery is the extreme end of a continuum of abusive and exploitative labor practices, the CIW fears that without serious changes, modern day slavery will continue. Some migrant workers had been enslaved to growers and crew leaders through coercion, force, fraud and debt. Most though are exploited through cheap labor: being paid by the amount of pieces picked, 50 cents for a 32-pound bushel of tomatoes. This bushel will cost the consumer roughly $81 in the supermarket, yet the migrant workers have been paid this wage since 1978.

Refusing to be exploited, refusing to deal with the day-to-day threat of modern-day slavery, the CIW, founded over 20 years ago by Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian farmworkers, launched the Fair Food Program. This campaign encourages corporations, restaurant chains, and supermarkets to sign on and agree to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes in order to improve wages for workers, but, most importantly, to improve working conditions. Such a change doesn’t just guarantee that workers will finally be paid a minimum wage, but it does guarantee the protection in the field from safety concerns, threat, assault and sexual abuse.

These migrant workers visited our students as they passed through Jacksonville as part of their “Now is the Time” tour, traveling throughout the southeast and mid-west of the United States to urge national companies, especially fast food chain Wendy’s and supermarket chainPublix, to join the Fair Food Program. These workers spoke to our students like a modern-day Moses, standing up to the Pharaohs of the food industry and fighting against slavery and exploitation in the fields, demanding companies that thrive on cheap labor to “let my people go.”

They were touched when we explained to them that we would be placing tomatoes on our seder plates this year during the Passover holiday in recognition of their efforts and as a reminder of the work still to be done. Ironically, we read in the Haggadah during the Passover seder, “this year we are slaves. Next year, may we be free people.” The holiday that celebrates the Jewish people’s freedom from slavery in Egypt still acknowledges the exploitation and enslavement of so many in the world around us. It is our responsibility and task to not just praise God for our freedom, but also to act as God’s messengers and fight for freedom for all. The tomato on the seder plate acknowledges the continuity of our narrative. Our fight for freedom did not end when we crossed the split Sea of Reeds. Our fight for freedom continues.

There is a new day in the tomato fields of southwest Florida, with many large corporations joining the Fair Food Program, most recently Walmart, the United States’ largest supermarket chain. The CIW – and our Middle School students who join in their fight for equality and freedom – believe now is the time for change. We celebrate freedom and continue to fight for freedom for all. We fight for Wendy’s and Publix and all restaurants and supermarkets to join the Fair Food Program. We see the tomato on our seder plates and remember the work we still have to do, so that we can one day truly celebrate at our seders that we are all free people.

– Rabbi Jesse M. Olitzky

Lighting a Spark for Human Rights and Inclusion

If you live in the Jacksonville area and haven’t yet checked out the One Spark Festival, the world’s largest crowdfunding festival, then I encourage you to check it out. I spent time there on Thursday and Friday and it was a great experience. I went not only to check out the creators and amazing innovators and ideas. I went because of my work with the We are Straight Allies campaign, an ad campaign that brings together clergy, city business leaders, political leaders, community leaders, philanthropists, and “faces” of Jacksonville to encourage the city council to pass the Human Rights’ Ordinance, ensuring that it would no longer be legal for landlords to evict tenants or employers to fire employees because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The city council disgracefully failed to do so in June 2012! Some suggest that this ad campaign is just stirring the pot, that it is making something out of nothing, just trying to create controversy. Some believe that there is no discrimination in our city and this campaign is just trying to make something out of nothing. Unfortunately, recent events have suggested otherwise.

There was an article in Friday’s edition of the Florida Times-Union explaining that some were unhappy with the We Are Straight Allies campaign being a part of One Spark, and specifically being housed in the Wells Fargo building, alongside other vendors committed to “Building a Better City.” Housed in the lobby of the Wells Fargo Building, the building’s management company, Parkway Properties, informed the We Are Straight Allies campaign that some of the “key stakeholders” of the building were uncomfortable with the pro-LGBT agenda of the campaign. They were concerned that they – and I – were pushing our agenda on others. While this was in the Wells Fargo building, this was not a complaint from Wells Fargo, for they are an ally and big supporter of LGBT rights and equality. However, other unidentified companies in the building were uncomfortable with the signage and window displays, even wanting to know if the musical performances associated with this creator were going to be “controversial.” The whole point of the campaign – pushing the city council to pass the HRO – is about inclusion, not controversy. The actions of these so-called key stakeholders only reinforced the need to pass the HRO. If this is how companies treat such an organization that focuses on inclusion and human rights, I can’t even imagine how they treat their LGBTQ employees.

I share this not just because it happened only days ago, but also, because this past Shabbat’s Torah reading, Parashat Acharei Mot, is arguably the root cause of such hate, homophobia, and exclusion. In Leviticus chapter 18, we find the beginning of the so-called “holiness code,” a text in which focuses on a lot of “Thou Shalt Not’s.” In that list we find the infamous verse, Lev. 18:22:

V’et zahar lo tishkav mishk’vei isha – to’eivah hi.

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination.

As Conservative Jews, we are part of a movement and a community that does not believe that Torah is set in stone, is min hashamayim, directly from God, without human influence. We also recognize that our own interpretation of Torah evolves through time as society continues to evolve.

When Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi in this country, was a scholar-in-residence at the Jacksonville Jewish Center this past winter, he explained how he reinterpreted the verse. This is an interpretation that I have heard before by many of my own teachers, that suggests that if we truly look at the Hebrew, the text isn’t focusing on homosexual relations, but rather forced sexual relations. Thus, according to the Torah a man can force himself unto a woman, but because the text is a patriarchal scripture, you couldn’t do that do another man. So to clarify, according to this understanding, a man can have sexual relations with another man, but it must be consensual. Yet, according to the Torah, a man can rape another woman, can force himself on her. We may not like this interpretation because it is just as problematic, idenitifying the misogyny of scripture.

In all honesty, I am not concerned with how we translate the Hebrew. This is a problematic verse. I am not saying we just get rid of the verse, erase it from Torah, because it is problematic to us. As Conservative Jews, we struggle with text, even when we are uncomfortable with it. But also as Conservative Jews, we cannot accept it as Divine truth because, in 2014, this sole verse has been used to condemn, criticize, delegitimize, and even criminalize same-sex relationships.

We can look at problematic verses in the Torah and see them for what they are – simply a human interpretation from thousands of years ago of the Divine word, be it by Moses or another author. It is then possible for us, in 2014, based on religion’s influence on society and society’s influence on religion, to also interpret the Divine word. And when we interpret the Divine word, at least when I interpret the Divine word, I choose to focus on the holiness of loving my neighbor as myself, of remembering that we are all made in God’s image, and I refuse to believe in a God or accept as Divine word a single verse that delegitimizes a human being.

This past Friday, April 11^th, 2014, was the National Day of Silence, an initiative started in 1996 by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which is now the largest student-run action towards creating safer school environments. Gay-Straight Alliances, common in Middle School and High Schools vowed to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBTQ bullying and harassment in schools. It is clear that if we do not put an end to such bullying in our schools, then it only continues as adults, no example greater than these key stakeholders trying to bully the We Are Straight Allies campaign out of One Spark, trying to bully human rights and inclusion.

If that bullying is a result of this verse, if the discrimination, bigotry, and hate, is a result of Leviticus 18:22, then we in the Jewish community as a whole have a moral obligation and imperative to say that this verse does not define us, does not speak for us, and is not how we understand, interpret, or translate God’s Divine word.

I prefer to focus on the begin words of the next Torah portion, Parashat Kedoshim, often linked and read as a double portion with Acharei Mot.If we look at these begin words, we truly understand how to act. For it begins with:

Kedoshim Ti’h’yu, ki Kadosh Ani Adonai.

Be Holy, for I, the Lord Your God, Am Holy.

There is nothing holy about bullying, hate, bigotry, homophobia, discrimination, or exclusion. In fact, it is the opposite of holiness: an abomination. Let us then focus on that which is truly holy: each and every one of us, made in God’s image, and let us work to ensure that the holiness and sanctity of each individual is recognized and embraced.

– Rabbi Jesse M. Olitzky

Crowdfunding the Jewish Future

This article was originally published on April 10, 2014, in the Ops & Blogs section of Times of Israel. The full article can be found on their website here.

I am spending today walking around downtown Jacksonville, Florida to see what all the buzz is about. Over this five day period (from April 9th – April 13th) Jacksonville is hosting One Spark. One Spark is a crowdfunding festival for social innovation. Throughout the festival, more than 150,000  visitors will tour the twenty-square block gallery of ideas downtown to see new and creative ideas from social entrepreneurs, artists, innovators, and inventors and decide which ideas deserve an investment. These projects can be at any stage of development. It can be a not-for-profit that has been doing work for years or an idea written out on a piece of scrap paper waiting to become reality. All a creator needs is an idea. The creator then convinces visitors about the importance of his or her innovation. If a visitor likes an idea, then he or she can vote for it.

According to the One Spark website, there are four ways to acquire funding:

1. Wow attendees and collect their votes to score a piece of the $200,000 crowdfund. Whatever percentage of the vote a Project receives, that’s how much of the crowdfund they earn. The top voted Creator Project in each category will get their hands on a $10,000 bonus prize!
2. Attendees can contribute directly to Projects in any dollar amount. From $5 to $5,000, every little bit adds up to getting you that much closer to launching your idea.
3. Along with the popularly distributed funds, industry experts will jury an additional $10,000 prize to the innovative Project of their choice in each category.
4. Connect with millions of dollars in potential capital from hungry investors out to discover the next big thing!

One gets the opportunity to pitch his or her ideas with literally thousands of individuals and get funded as a result.

With the instant connection and communication of the Internet, crowdfunding has taken off in recent years, with websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo offering platforms for artists and inventors to beg their friends – their actual friends and those of the social network variety – to invest in their ideas. Hollywood is even using crowdfunding to make movies. To make the Veronica Mars movie, and finish telling the story of his cancelled television show, director Rob Thomas took to Kickstarter and raised over $5,700,000 from over 90,000 supporters. He made a movie through crowdfunding. Hollywood is doing it. The entire city of Jacksonville is doing it. The Jewish community should be doing it as well.

It seems that after week I read article after article about the financial challenges in the established Jewish community. Following the publication of last year’s Pew Study, Jewish communal leaders, clergy, educators, and philanthropists are regularly struggling with where to invest funds to ensure a vibrant Jewish future in America. These conversations are going on as synagogues, Jewish day schools, camps, youth groups, and non-profits are all struggling to balance their budgets.

That does not mean there is not demand for new ideas. Hundreds of “Jewish Start-Ups” and social innovations have been launched recently. Incubators such as the Joshua Venture Group, Bikkurim, UpStart, JumpStart, and PresenTense have helped these social entrepreneurs in the Jewish community flesh out their ideas, create successful business models, work on strategic plans, and develop their “brand.” These incubators have helped entrepreneurs stand on their own two feet, but now, these start-ups are struggling with the same challenges the rest of the organized Jewish world face: financial stability.

Everyone knows the big names in Jewish philanthropy. These names are familiar because of the impact they have had on innovation by investing in groundbreaking ideas like increased Israel engagement among college students (Birthright Israel) and an increase in Jewish children’s books (PJ Library). They are also familiar to us though because there are truly only a handful of these big name Jewish philanthropists. Many of us may be willing to shell out millions on the next big idea to engage millenials, prioritize early childhood education, or keep baby boomers involved. We just aren’t blessed with such deep pockets. Crowdfunding has made me realize that we don’t need to be. We can turn to crowdfunding websites for help with innovation in the Jewish community.

More exciting though, and I believe more revolutionary, is the impact that a festival like One Spark could have on the Jewish community. Imagine all these new and revolutionary ideas, these Jewish social entrepreneurs coming together annually at the JFNA’s General Assembly, or at movement gatherings like the USCJ conference or the URJ biennial, to share such innovation. This would not be a Jewish version of ABC’s Shark Tank where social entrepreneurs make pitches to a select few Jewish philanthropists. Rather, it would be an opportunity for any Jew with an impactful idea for the Jewish future to pitch that idea to the entire Jewish community. We each then would have the opportunity to invest in the ideas we like and disregard those ideas that don’t speak to us as individuals. More importantly though, such a festival would allow more exposure to such ideas and in turn, more financial investment, to ensure a vibrant, thriving Jewish community in the future. I look forward to the excitement of One Spark spreading to the American Jewish community.

After all, it only takes is one spark…

– Rabbi Jesse M. Olitzky

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

I finally saw the blockbuster film Divergent last week, based on the young adult dystopian novel by Veronica Roth. The film, takes place in futuristic Chicago, following war. In order to keep the peace, society is divided up into five factions, those who are all knowing (Erudite), those who are honest (Candor), those who are brave (dauntless), those who are strive to keep the peace (Amity), and those who are selfless (adnegation). The film begins with the main protagonist and narrator the film, Beatrice Prior, played by Shailene Woodley, and her family affiliated with abnegation.

There is a telling scene at the very beginning of the film, in which the supposedly selfless Beatrice attempts to look in the mirror. Her parents slam the door shut and lock it, keeping the mirror in a vault behind lock and key. The message is clear: you cannot truly be selfless if you are worried about how you look and how others perceive you. We look in mirrors because we are concerned about our outer appearances. We are concerned with how we look, and thus how we are received.

For this reason, we cover up mirrors in the shiva house because we should not be concerned with vanity during a period of mourning. After all, the first words of the book of Ecclesiates speak volumes: “Hevel Hevelim, Vanity of Vanities,” offering the pessimistic view point that all of life is vanity. All that we do revolves around our appearance. All that we care about is how we look and how we are viewed.

This past Shabbat, we read the Torah portion, Parashat Metzora. While this year we read it on its own, it is often read as a double portion, with Parashat Tzaria.  We rarely focus on this part of the narrative. When we do focus on it, we suggest, as many rabbinic commentators do, that tzaraat, a skin disease often mistranslated as leprosy, is punishment for lashon hara, speaking ill will, gossip, slander, and spreading rumors. We link it to lashon hara because we don’t know what else to do with it. We focus on the cause, rather than the issue at hand, the skin ailment. However, if we ignore the significance of the punishment at hand, then we ignore the true message of tzaraat.

My friend and colleague, Rabbi Eliot Malomet, points out that this type of punishment is reflective of what is wrong with us in society. Throughout the Torah, God punishes in a variety of ways: the complete destruction of cities like Sodom and Gemorrah, a flood that wipes at all life except for those aboard Noah’s ark, the earth swallowing Korach and his followers who rebel against Moses. So, why in this case does God punish with a skin disease?

We live in a world of vanity. We live in a society where we care about appearance and too often judge someone solely on appearance. We want to present the best version of ourselves. We incorrectly assume that this means we must focus on appearance. Before a job interview we shave and shine our shoes, we get a manicure or a haircut. We put on our nicest suit, or our most professionally looking blouse. And in anything we do, we hide our blemishes. We put on make up to hide our pimples. We cover up scars or birthmarks. We are so worried about physical appearance.

Society doesn’t help, with half naked airbrushed models on billboards and in magazines. Thanks to media, advertisements, television shows and movies, including the movie that I mentioned above, we live in a hyper-sexualized world, a world where we are pressured to look young, and be thin and beautiful.

Maybe tzaraat isn’t a punishment for lashon hara, as the rabbis suggest. Rather, it is liberation from society. Even dating back to the Torah, society was over-sexualized. Biblical society focused on lust over love, and treated human beings as objects that others could take ownership of. Tzaraat wasn’t a punishment as much as it was an eye-opening experience, a reminder, like the protagonist in Divergent, to not worry about looking in the mirror, to not focus on our outward appearances, and instead focus on who we are on the inside.

Mesekhet Sanhedrin 98a drives home this point:

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was visited by Elijah the Prophet. Knowing that Elijah’s return would announce the coming of the Messiah, Rabbi Yehoshua got anxious. “When will the Messiah come,” he asked him. “Why don’t you go ask him yourself,” Elijah replied. Yehoshua is flustered, looking around expected to see the Messiah. Is the Messiah a religious figure? A political leader? A wealthy individual? Who is the Messiah? Where can the Messiah be? Elijah informed him: “he is sitting at the gates of the city, among the poor, the sick, and abandoned, changing the binding of his wounds.”

The message: messianic redemption comes when we stop focusing on vanity, when we stop worrying so much how we look and focus more on how we act. I believe that tzaraat was a brutal reminder that we focused too much on outer beauty and ignored inner beauty. The punishment of this parasha was not illness as it is otherwise defined in the Torah; it is not death; it is not loss of life. The punishment was that people weren’t pretty. The punishment was a blessing, reminder to all, and a message to all, that skin disease or not, we are all beautiful, as long as we emphasize inner beauty and stop caring so much about our outward appearances. Let’s stop looking in the mirror so much. Instead, let’s look at each other, and see the divine beauty, the divine spark, in each of us.

– Rabbi Jesse M. Olitzky

With a New Baseball Season comes a Chance to Start Afresh – On and Off the Field

This article was originally published on March 30, 2014, by Haaretz. The full article can be found on their website here.

As Jews, celebrating MLB Opening Day together with the Hebrew month of Nissan means embracing a clean slate.

 

Tonight, Sunday March 30, 2014, baseball fans America-wide will celebrate the eve of a pseudo-national holiday: Opening Day. Some of us will play hooky from work to stay at home and watch the first game of the Major Baseball League season on television, or travel to the ballpark to watch the action in person. Some will even join the movementencouraging President Obama to officially declare this day a national holiday.

We are celebrating the beginning of a new season and with it the opportunity to make a fresh start. As a lifelong fan of the Baltimore Orioles, I have spent many seasons suffering from heartache and disappointment as my underachieving team is systematically eliminated from playoff contention early on in the season. Yet by the time a new year rolls round and Opening Day is upon me yet again, I find myself decked out in regalia and apparel, ready to cheer for my favorite team. Every year, like all hopeful baseball fans, I believe that this season the Orioles will become World Series Champions; I am convinced that “this year is our year.”

Maybe that hope stems from the smell of fresh cut grass and the rays of sunshine that herald the arrival of spring. Maybe it comes from the crack of the bat. Or maybe it is a result of the constant reminders that beer, soda, peanuts and Cracker Jacks are for sale. Whatever the reason, by the time Opening Day rolls around, I am ready for a new start.

As I prepare for this new beginning as a baseball-obsessed American, I also prepare for a new beginning as a Jew. This week, we enter the Hebrew month of Nissan. During this month, self-reflection is particularly important, for it is the first month in the Torah (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, occurs on the first day of Tishrei, which is referred to in the Torah as “the seventh month”). It is also the month in which we celebrate Passover, rejoicing in our people’s freedom and the new beginnings and opportunities that stemmed from that freedom.

With Nissan, we begin our seasonal year, leaving winter behind and celebrating spring. Buds appear on previously barren tree branches and animals awake from hibernation. Nissan is about rebirth. It gives us the opportunity to seize the future with a fresh start. Winter becomes a distant memory as we luxuriate in spring. We may remember the past, but are optimistic about the future.

How blessed we are to be able to rid ourselves of the negativity of our pasts and have a clean slate, a fresh start and a new beginning. As a baseball fan, I can put the disappointments of past seasons behind me. Previous statistics no longer matter. Win-loss records can be thrown out. The new season allows for new opportunities to prove who we are and what we can do.

The true beauty of Opening Day is that everyone starts at the same place. There are not yet winners and losers, there are not yet failed expectations or Cinderella stories. Instead, every team believes they can succeed.

Likewise, the new Hebrew month of Nissan and the ensuing celebration of freedom during Passover allow each individual to start afresh. Our failures of the past are a thing of the past. Our statistics, both positive and negative, do not matter. Instead, we begin anew. With springtime, we too come out of hibernation. With springtime, we too are reborn. With springtime, we too have the opportunity to seize the future, as long as we see ourselves as champions.

Believing in ourselves and what the future holds, we can “root, root, root for the home team.”

– Rabbi Jesse M. Olitzky