JRF Omer Study -

Thanks to All the Contributors

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 11:25:43 -0500

By Rabbi Shawn Zevit and Roni Handler

To all those who graciously contributed to JRF's Omer Study Initiative:

Rabbi Brant Rosen
Rabbi Fred Dobb
Isabel De Koninck
Joseph Berman
Rabbi Steve Gutow
Congregation Beit Haverim- Tikkun Olam Committee
Robin Yasnow
Elanah Richman
Bill Marker
Rabbi Liz Bolton
Valerie Hyman
Sydney Nestel
Roni Handler
Rabbi Shai Gluskin
Ruth Messenger
Eric Shochman
Irene Howard- Weitzen
Rabbi Fredi Cooper
Rabbi Shawn Zevit

Kol HaKavod for all the great work you have been doing in your communities. And thank you for sharing your inspiring stories and insights with the entire JRF community and beyond. Thank you also to the many of you who posted over the previous weeks.

Topics covered in this year's Omer Study Project will continue to be available at this web site. If you have any additional/related information and/or pictures that you would like us to upload onto our website to accompany your teachings please send them to Rabbi Shai Gluskin at sgluskin@jrf.org. Our hope is that the work that you have been doing in your communities will inspire others and help them think about how to take on similar projects in their home communities.

Check out Tikkun Olam resources.

Thank you again for sharing your torah.

L'Shalom,

Rabbi Shawn Zevit
Roni Handler

With Compassion Comes Responsibility

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:34:29 -0500

By Rabbi Brant Rosen
Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, Evanston, IL

Bless what forces us to invent
goodness every morning and what never frees
us from the cost of knowledge, which is
to act on what we know again and again. Marge Piercy

As the 2006 Hurricane Season commences, many of us still recall the indelible images from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina last fall. But in addition to the tragic ruin of Katrina, it is impossible to ignore the remarkable mobilization of American citizens that ensued. In the wake of this terrible disaster, so many of us created a real and palpable communal bond with people who lived far away from our own neighborhoods—in most cases with people whom most of us did not know personally. It was truly a time in which we saw first-hand how citizens and communities can work together in the spirit of compassion and caring.

However, nearly one year later, we would do well to ask, do we still care? Indeed, as inspiring as these mobilizations were, they beg deeper and more troubling questions. Why do we invariably seem mobilize our compassion in response to the “crisis de jour,” if you will? Why does our compassion so often seem to be after the fact: reactive rather than proactive? And why does our compassion invariably seem to have such a short shelf life?

It is true that we are often simply overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the human suffering that the 24-hour news media brings to our door. As a result, when it comes to our compassionate impulses, we often don’t know where to start. So just as we tend to compartmentalize everything in our immediate world—our family lives, our careers, and our social lives, our religious lives—we also compartmentalize our reactions to the larger world outside our door. Compartmentalized compassion.

Statistically speaking, it should be pointed out that Americans are a compassionate and generous people. In fact, American philanthropic giving is relatively high compared to other countries. But it is also well known that private giving is on the decline. Many experts point out that with increased mobility and the breakdown of community, our culture is becoming increasingly privatized and individualistic. In a society that has always defined itself as volunteeristic, apparently more and more people are volunteering not to give away what they feel “belongs to them.” As a result, in contemporary America, collective compassion too often feels like a precious—and even sometimes arbitrary—commodity.

Here’s one little cultural reference point that might serve as an example: the ubiquitous bumper sticker that advises, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.” In its way, this slogan reflects something very profound about contemporary American culture. As a society that values individual initiative, it is natural that we will view compassion as a random, voluntary enterprise. We act compassionately whenever we feel compassionate. And yes, we might well feel a great deal of compassion: for our loved ones, we may even feel compassion for people we don’t actually know. But the problem with this approach, of course, is that feelings cannot be guaranteed. They come and go. Feelings are, by definition, elusive and transient.

Jewish tradition provides us with a different model. Compassion is not random—it is an imperative. Even love itself is commanded: Love your neighbor as yourself. You shall love Adonai your God. You shall love the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. In other words, feelings are wonderful, but feelings are not enough. Compassion should not be reduced to a random feeling—it is should be a mindful, ongoing conscious practice. We must learn how to be compassionate even if we are not feeling particularly compassionate—even if we are too overwhelmed to feel compassionate. Compassion is, for lack of a better word, a discipline.

Jewish commentators have pointed out that one well-known Hebrew word for compassion, chesed, might be more accurately rendered as “covenantal loyalty.” To demonstrate this point we can look at the specific contexts in which the word chesed is used in the Bible. God shows chesed for Israel—and Israel for God—when they remain loyal to the mutual relationship they established at Sinai. In another example, Ruth is praised in the Bible for the chesed she demonstrates to her mother-in-law Naomi when she remains loyal to her promise to stand by her side.

The Rabbis took this abstract notion of chesed and applied it to the everyday life of the Jewish community. Chesed societies, for instance, were the proto-typical Jewish communal welfare institutions that were the cornerstone of Jewish communities for centuries. They too were guided by the central ethic of covenantal loyalty—of “commanded compassion.” At its core, chesed is intrinsically connected to the concept of covenant and mutual obligation. It is the kind of love and compassion that comes from a deeper sense of communal accountability.

Though the Torah presents this covenantal model in a Jewish context, we Americans have a great deal to learn from it. Too often, it seems, our American culture venerates individual freedoms to such an extent that we often view the suggestion of communal obligation as a personal violation. In a covenantal context, however, our individual freedom is necessarily refracted through the experience of our mutual responsibility to one another.

As long as we view our mutual responsibility to one another as random or voluntary, will continue to access our collective compassion in a reactive manner—arbitrarily—in response to whatever new crisis the media decides to present to us at any random point in time. But if we affirm that our compassion is not dependant on how we feel—if we understand that compassion is neither random nor voluntary but rather is guided by a sense of obligation and responsibility to the fellow members of our community—then we may find that our compassion is not as limited a commodity as we might previously have thought.

The concept of chesed has implications for our actions as private citizens, but it clearly has implications for public policy and advocacy as well. Indeed, with the 9th Ward of the City of New Orleans still as devastated as the day Katrina’s waters receded, we would do well look seriously and unflinchingly into nation’s responsibility to the ongoing challenges that face the Gulf Coast region, and to the untold numbers of American citizens displaced by the hurricane. And we must face honestly our communal responsibility toward addressing policies that leave too many American citizens vulnerable: the poor, the elderly and the infirm, vulnerable—the very people who bore the tragic brunt of this terrible disaster.

Many have pointed out that one of the greatest, most empowering spiritual gifts that the Jewish people has bequeathed to the world is our unique conception of covenant. Whatever we believe about what actually occurred at Sinai, there can be no doubt that it was a radically counter-cultural statement for its time. To claim that human beings did not have to live at the whim of the powerful, that we could live with a sense of covenantal loyalty to one another and to a Power much greater than us—this was truly a spiritually revolutionary concept for the cultures of the Ancient Near East.

This notion is just as counter-cultural in today’s world as well. In a nation increasingly gripped by a culture of self-focused individualism, where compassion is defined largely as a matter of personal choice, standing up and promoting chesed—mandatory covenantal compassion—is truly the ultimate act of chutzpah.

On the other hand, perhaps it is a spiritual model whose time has come. As a follow-up to Shavuot—the time in which we stand once more at Sinai to reaffirm our covenant with the Source of Chesed, may we all find a measure of compassion: for ourselves, for those we love, and for our world at large.

And then, if and when we succeed, may we all come to understand – truly understand – that with compassion comes responsibility.

Questions for Thought/Discussion:

What are some other American cultural impediments that keep us from responding to human need with chesed?
What practical measures might keep us from becoming paralyzed by the never-ending news of crises and human misery that arrives at our door daily?
Is it truly possible to have compassion for people who don’t know personally? How?
What current domestic and global policies should we advocate to ensure that our compassion will make a real difference in the world?

Rabbi Brant Rosen is the spiritual leader of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL. He is also the President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.

Justice and Sustainability – Protecting Creation by Feeding People, and Vice Versa

Tue, 30 May 2006 12:22:13 -0500

By Rabbi Fred Dobb
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, Maryland

When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a Sabbath of God. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of God: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard… you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you: each of you shall return to their holding each of you shall return to their family... Do not wrong one another, but fear your God… the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land…
Leviticus 25, linking justice and sustainability.
There are important intermediate steps between hand outs and legislative reform. For example, low income renters and homeowners might be given incentives to exchange incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient ones. Landlords should be given incentives to put heating and cooling thermostats in their units that allow for turning down the heat when no ones home and up when they are and so forth. Obviously this not only provides cost benefits but also is good for the environment. Communities need to do a better job of organizing the recycling of used furniture so that we can reduce both waste in our landfills and the production of low quality and cheap (but not in the longer cost effective) furniture. We can also do more with making healthier foods more affordable...
Rabbi Howard Cohen, response to JRF Omer Study, Week I, on the question of balancing our advocacy efforts with direct service.

There will always be hungry people in our midst (per Deut. 15) – unless and until, anyway, we tackle its root causes, and prevent the feedback mechanisms which exacerbate the problem. So far our Omer study has addressed many of these reasons why so many still go hungry, and these explorations are valuable, but incomplete. We still need to more thoroughly investigate the linkage between environmental destruction and human hunger, poverty, and suffering.

That linkage goes way back. The first sixth of the Talmud is Seder Z’ra’im, the Order of Seeds, pointing toward sustainable agriculture and tzedakah alike. Sustainable agriculture, where the land is respected enough to keep feeding people generation after generation, resonates from Leviticus to Tractate Peah to Israeli innovation in drip irrigation. That environment-hunger linkage is also important to consider precisely so we can learn how to feed people and spare ecosystems. The connection between human hunger and environmental devastation is a fact of history, a challenge for today, and a key to our survival tomorrow.

In the Past: Societies that don’t plan for the long-term, and don’t fastidiously protect their environment, collapse, with often disastrous results. Easter Island cut down forests to build up cities and monuments, and once treeless and soil-less, imploded. Ancient Mesopotamia supported a huge population through irrigation, but the growing salinity of the soil led millions to starve. Rome’s downfall may well have involved heavy metal contamination in the populace. How different are we?!

In the Present: Poor and hungry people, understandably, denude their local environment. What good is a wildlife preserve next door when your own family is malnourished? When residents need subsistence firewood to stay warm and heat food, what chance do the last nearby trees have? No environmental solution can work without also meeting the basic needs of the human population -- true in the savannah or in Savannah, in Tell Afar or Tel Aviv, locally and globally. And the reverse is true too: stripping vegetation creates new drier microclimates, leading to lower crop yields. Deforestation leads to soil erosion and loss of farmland. Toxins spewed into the air bioaccumulate in the plants and animals we eat. Polluted water sources compromise agriculture across the board. The environment must be protected in order to feed people; people must be fed in order to protect the environment.

In the Future: The impact of environmental destruction is always felt heaviest those already poorest and hungriest. “Environmental justice” advocates, including religious environmentalists, have long noted the undue environmental burden of the poor (the field began in a sense with a United Church of Christ study in 1985; the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, has in recent years been a key player in this movement). The worst however is yet to come: the rising sea levels and adverse weather changes that global warming are bringing will first and most seriously affect poor hungry people in developing nations, clustered along coastlines, already experiencing horrific food insecurity. Indigenous knowledge of agriculture and nature will be lost as the same crops no longer grow where they have for millennia. To keep people fed, global climate change and other environmental catastrophes must be mitigated.

What can we do for environmental justice? Three examples from Adat Shalom in Bethesda, MD. We designed our own synagogue building to be as energy efficient and as possible, using alternative materials (like cork instead of vinyl flooring) to be conscious of human health impacts. We sponsored a drive to replace potentially toxic mercury thermometers with digital ones, safely disposing of the hazardous older models. And we partnered with our local “Interfaith Power and Light” group (http://www.theregenerationproject.org) to buy a good percentage of the energy our synagogue uses from wind and other renewable sources, to do something to lessen the global warming now upon us.

In each of our communities there are so many things we can do. One of the texts above, from Rabbi Howard Cohen in Vermont, lists a host of possible actions. A number of our JRF affiliates are now designing synagogue buildings and expansions with environmental concerns in mind, led by JRC in Evanston Illinois which is breaking new ground by striving for high LEED certification (see www.usgbc.org for more on LEED green building).
Through Hazon (www.hazon.org) and on their own, numerous synagogues are starting organic gardens on their grounds, stewarding the land and feeding people at the same time.

And as individuals, acting on our most deeply held Jewish values, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. But first we must realize that we cannot choose either to feed the hungry or to protect Creation. As Jews and as people, we simply must do both.

Questions for Thought and Discussion:

What’s the best term for what we seek – social justice, or social-economic-environmental sustainability? Is justice possible without sustainability; and even if so, how helpful is it?
What (or what else) can / should you and your congregation do, to ensure both environmental and social/economic justice?
If you’re up for this tough one: what’s the role of Population in sustainability and justice? Advances in technology, agriculture, and ethics all mitigate the ill effects of population growth, but at 6.3 billion and counting, by some definitions Earth is well past its “carrying capacity” – especially if we could and would bring everyone up to the average upper-middle-class North American standard of living. Women’s rights, the role of education and government, and many other issues must be included in any discussion of population; for us, a Jewish population decline (thanks to first genocide, now demography) further complicates matters. But the question remains: Do we live our lifestyles, and freely choose our family size, on the backs of the world’s poor and backs of our own great-grandchildren? Two resources follow this question: lyrics from folk-singer-turned-UU-Minister Fred Small’s fabulous “Too Many People”, followed by excerpts from P Zohav’s provocative but important post earlier in this year’s Omer study:
- Everything Possible
  1994 by Fred Small
  
  Too many people having too many babies
  Got to love them babies, but there’s
  too many people having too many babies
  Got to love them babies, but it’s out of control.
  
  Adam and Eve, time on their hands,
  hyperactive glands, room to expand –
  when they began begetting, they begatted to excess,
  eschewing tactics prophylactic: now we’re in a mess…
  
  Some say no, no no, it’s not the population,
  it’s consumption, pollution, unequal distribution –
  I say that’s so, but it’s a simple equation:
  population times pollution, equals no solution
  when there’s too many people having too many babies…
- Shalom all,
  At the risk of supporting Malthus, I wonder if the current and often passionate discussions and suggestions may be glossing over something essential to the conversation. Population growth and the environment.
  
  Raising minimum wages, working for and with the homeless often seems to me to be akin to putting our fingers in a diminishing dike. Not that taking measures such as these ought be avoided, but maybe taking another look at population growth may provide an expanded context.
  
  When people and their environments are under stress they will reach for all kinds of notions that support, justify, and rationalize their point of view, support their chosen or inherited traditional ways of being. Sometimes it looks like religion, sometimes it looks like an ideology…
  
  In my view so long as the Palestinians, Israelis, Hindus, Muslims, Chinese... (one can substitute any other group) keep on making more and more children who will need more and more "stuff" supported by more and more demands for water, power, roads, buildings, bridges - a lasting peace with ____ (Israel, India, Pakistan, Iraq) will pretty much remain a dream.
  
  Hungry, deprived peoples do not dance well together.
  
  I do not believe that goodwill towards one another is sufficient. We need to work to reduce the pressures on our societies that inevitably will shove us into conflict, produce poverty, and hunger. P Zohav, in 2006 JRF Omer Study

Rabbi Fred Dobb is the spiritual leader of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation and serves on the Board of Directors of COEJL, Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.

Making a Difference

Tue, 30 May 2006 09:05:33 -0500

By Irene Howard-Weitzen

How many times have you heard a young child in a middle-class family beg for a snack, complaining, “I’m starving!” That child has probably never been starving, and, hopefully, never will be. However, this outburst shows a sad truth of our society: that many middle- or upper-class people are uneducated or even indifferent about poverty. Because they have so little experience with it, they tend to underestimate its impact. Pictures and stories can only do so much; they cannot make you stand in their shoes. People pretend to others and to themselves that they understand what the poor are going through, but in actuality they have no idea. As famous author Elie Wiesel once said, “Hunger is isolating; it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously. He who never felt hunger can never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible. Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory. Hunger is felt only in the present.”

There are people, however, that can say truthfully that they are educated about poverty and have seen it through their own eyes. These people are the people that actually spend their own time to volunteer at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, orphanages, and other charitable organizations. Yes, I know, we all say that we could, we would volunteer, if we only had the time… but alas, our lives are too busy (or so we tell ourselves) to actually put in the effort to help those beneath us. However, there is a group of people for whom charity is not a chore, but a pleasure, and it is on those people that the hope for a caring, educated community lies. These people make it their duty to remember those forgotten by the rest of us and help others to understand the force that drives them to care when others look away.

My hometown, Highland Park, NJ, is only one square-mile in area, yet it has a soup kitchen. My former Hebrew school is very socially active, and the director, Ira Mintz, often would advertise within the school when volunteers or aid was needed in the community, including the soup kitchen. In fact, he felt so strongly for this cause that he celebrated his 50th birthday at a local soup kitchen and organized about 40 volunteers, including my mother, to load boxes with food for distribution.

My family celebrates the High Holidays at a synagogue up in Woodstock, NY, where we also spend our summers. Every year the youth program organizes a massive food drive. These teenagers spend their own time distributing bags and flyers, collecting full bags, loading trucks, and driving them to wherever the food is needed. These kids truly understood what Jack Riemer said in his well-known poem:

We cannot merely pray to God to end starvation;
For we already have the resources
With which to feed the entire world
If only we could use them wisely.

Therefore we pray instead
For strength, determination, and will power,
To do instead of merely to pray
To become instead of merely to wish;
That our world may be safe,
And that our lives may be blessed.

If only every community had a younger generation that was this caring, maybe they could inspire the adults.

As part of the eighth-grade curriculum, there is a class called community service. Each week we do something to help out the community, such as volunteering at a daycare center for underprivileged kids, cleaning up a park, or playing music on the street to raise money for cancer research. One week we walked to the grocery store, bought huge amounts of peanut butter, jelly, ham, cheese, and bread, and made our way to the local homeless shelter. There we made sandwiches and chatted with the people there. Some were sick and worn out, and simply needed a loving touch and a kind word. Others would brighten immediately and enthusiastically chatter on about their youth or life in general.

They had the most amazing stories to tell! These were people that had had the hardest life you can imagine, yet they somehow found the strength to tell about the daughter that had had a child before she was 16, or the kind old storeowner who would always save some bread and fruit for the hungry children that passed by. Needless to say, I was very moved, and began to see these people for what they really were: not poor people, not ignorant, uneducated people, not desperate people, but simply people. They were simply mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters that were trying to make the best of what they had.

One Wednesday before Thanksgiving, about two years ago, I did something that I will never forget. It was a cold, rainy day, and I was running for a train. I reached the station and waved to Ronnie, a man that owns a small fruit and vegetable shop in the station. I suddenly had a thought. I was going to go home and have a feast with family and friends at my warm dry house, but there were plenty of people that did not have that opportunity. Without a second thought, I loaded up a shopping bag with broccoli, squash, cranberries, potatoes, yams, and other vegetables. I then paid for the food, hid my backpack and coat, grabbed the bag, and ran. I ran, without a coat, in the freezing rain, for eight city blocks to get to the homeless shelter. There I breathlessly handed them the bag, and commenced to racing back to the station. By the time I got back, I was dripping wet, freezing, and exhausted, but exhilarated. I had missed my train, but made a difference.

Irene Howard-Weitzen is in the eighth grade in is a member of B'nai Keshet in northern New Jersy.

Who Benefits from Tzedaka?

Thu, 25 May 2006 14:56:15 -0500

By Rabbi Fredi Cooper

The obvious beneficiary of tzedaka is the needy recipient. The Rambam (the 12th century rabbi and philosopher also know as Maimonides) and others have noted, however, that the giver is also the beneficiary because the gift helps the giver become openhearted. One can learn to feel empathetic by acting empathetic. Furthermore, giving tzedaka can help the giver feel useful and needed.From A Guide to Jewish Practice: Tzedaka By David A. Teutsch, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Press.

In my teaching for the Omer period, I want to broaden this concept past the idea of tzedaka to include also gemilut hasadim. I believe that the Rambam is teaching us that we grow beyond our expectations when we extend our hand to another, to say that we care. Through our caring we can help another and help ourselves. The simple act of being open to opportunities for giving can alter our lives in a manner that is not always clear and straightforward. Once that first step is taken it has a way of being constantly reinforced and can delineate a rich and enduring road for our lives.

It is almost twenty years ago now when I experienced an act of giving that has altered the fabric of my life. That act of giving continues to grow, change and touch me and others. I was a patient in a hospital that was far from my home. My husband had returned to our home city to care for our children and I was alone in this strange city recuperating from surgery. On a Friday morning two women came into my hospital room and delivered Challot and grape juice for Shabbat. As they left my room, I was transported in my thoughts to my childhood home—with the table set for Shabbat and the scent of chicken roasting in my mother's kitchen. This one act took me from the hospital room for the rest of that day. It was a powerful reminder for me of how important my connection was to my Judaism and how I had neglected it or had found it lacking in my adult years. This reaching out—this simple gesture—awakened something for me that truly changed my life.

Since that time, I have carried that image with me of the two women in my hospital room on that day. They brought back Shabbat to me, when I didn't even know that it was missing. More than that, it was one of the many times when I had a sense that I needed to find out more about the role of Judaism and Jewish text in my life. It was one of the many steps that would ultimately lead me to the rabbinate later in my life.

Once I began studying to become a rabbi I wanted to develop a way to bring Shabbat to other patients in the hospital, knowing how important it had been to me. I was able to begin a program in Philadelphia hospitals both through raising money for this initiative and also by convincing leaders of Jewish agencies in the Philadelphia area of the power and importance of reaching out to others in this way. In the years since I began this project, it continues to grow and I continue to hear stories of how important it has been to families to have Shabbat come to them in the hospital. I have been privileged to deliver Challot and grape juice myself and have seen how much this has meant to patients during a difficult time in their lives. I have also been privileged to deliver Challot to young parents who have just welcomed a new life into our world. This gesture has also had a powerful impact in the context of birth. I have also had the opportunity to train volunteers to be the visitors in hospitals on Shabbat and have watched how they have grown in their lives in being a part of this. I continue to receive notes from families in a cancer hospital where I have continued to stay involved in this mitzvah.

It is clear to me that the giving and the receiving have had equal value in my life to be transformative. I continue to get as much from being the giver as I did when I received the gift of Shabbat from the two women so many years ago. I often wish that I could tell them now how they have helped to change my life and how their mitzvah has traveled to another city and continues to effect the lives of so many.

Questions for consideration

What have you experienced in your life that has had a powerful impact and has changed you in some important way? How can you transform this experience to reach out to others?
What are you doing in your synagogue community that you can share with others in our movement that has had an impact though reaching out to others in significant manner?
What do you think is needed that might be a new focus for our movement that would be akin to this?

Rabbi Fredi Cooper is the Director of Congregational Development and Education at the JRF

Fulfilling an Impossible Command

Fri, 19 May 2006 11:52:50 -0500

By Rabbi Steve Gutow

The Torah

Deuteronomy Chapter 15 reflects the rather conundrum-like nature of the eternal war against poverty. In an enigmatic turn of phrase the Torah teaches us first that there is no right or justification or moral acceptance of poverty. Verse 4 states unambiguously as a command directly from God: “There shall be no needy among you.” The chapter then continues by making it clear that each of us has a duty to respond to the needy with an open heart, great generosity, without regret, and with the knowledge that God appreciates the response. Then, the Torah suddenly says in verse 11 of chapter 15 that there will never cease to be needy among you. It is as if the Torah recognizes the impossibility of its command. It asks that we do something that it knows cannot be done, that we do our part to alleviate that which cannot be fully alleviated.

The Enigmatic Commandment

The mandate is clear. We must end what cannot be ended. The command rings of a kabbalistic revelation of a perfect state of being that we will never fully experience. After all, how can the law assert that there shall be no needy amongst us? The Torah could have just left that verse out and ordered us to do all we can to alleviate and ameliorate the pain of those in poverty. The answer lies in two concepts of Judaism’s messianic impulse. First Jews must know what a messianic world is like and then Jews must recognize that our mandate is to do all we can to get there. We will not suddenly see the messiah arrive; we will aid in the messiah’s coming.

Rabbinic Judaism And The Tradition

The verses reflect a path for each of us. There must not be poverty but there always will be. As Jews we never get to relax. The mission is in front of us and we have a lot of work to do. The remainder of Jewish tradition seems to respond to this impossible challenge. Exodus Rabbah states that ‘if all the sufferings of the world were gathered [on one side of the scale] and poverty was on the other side, poverty would outweigh them all.’ Rabbinic Judaism endeavors to teach us that poverty is not a sign of lessened humanity and insists that we not neglect those who are poor. As if to make sure we understand God’s vision of the value of the poor, the Talmud states: “neglect not the children of the poor, for from them shall come forth the Torah.”

Again in Baba Batra, the Talmud is clear as when it states that “we are duty bound to observe the mitzvah of ‘tzedakah’ more than all of the other positive commandments.” The tradition insists that we open our homes to the poor on Passover and Sukkot; that we give gifts to those who are hungry; that we leave gleanings in our fields; that we offer a percentage of our crop or our income to those who are poor. Responding to the problems of poverty is not optional in the universe of Jewish action.

The Public Square

How do we bring this mission into today’s world? The intractable battle against poverty, the battle to make sure that there will be no needy among us, must be waged in every possible arena. If the messianic age is to arrive, we must help it along. The battle to end poverty requires work in the public square. In a universe in which millions of people suffer, individual acts of generosity will not even scratch the surface of the problem. Poor people in America, in Israel, and in the world require government resources and legislation if the Biblical command is going to have any chance of being fulfilled. To do our part we must jump into the public debate and demand that Medicaid and food stamps and welfare not be diminished. We must insist that Israel look at the problems of her poor as she maintains her military might. We must recognize that American foreign aid that is given to solve some of the international problems of famine is not discretionary funding. We cannot rationally imagine that we are responding to the Deuteronomic injunction if we do not have the energy and the wisdom to respond to the world’s anguish by entering the political process and doing what we can to make a difference.

Conclusion

The ambiguity of Deuteronomy 15 is not ambiguous at all. We are in a battle that we may not win but that we cannot stop waging. We are doing our part to bring the days of the messiah to our times. The verse from Pirke Avot: “It is not your duty to complete the work but neither are you free to desist from it” is the Torah’s message about the fight to end poverty in our midst.

The command is clear and so is the world’s reality. The Torah understands that reality just as determinedly as it rejects our right to live in acceptance of it. There can be no poverty in the world and yet there always will be. Our duty as Jews is to respond and respond and respond.

Questions For Discussion

Scholars make the case that in ancient Israelite society, the mitzvot were not just the responsibility of each individual but of the society as a whole. Why would that case be important to make if you wanted to support the idea that the commandment mandates action in the political arena?
What other mitzvot from the Torah strike you as commands that we cannot fully fulfill but that we must still attempt to accomplish?

Rabbi Steve Gutow is the Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public affairs.

El Salvador: Encountering Poverty and Possibility

Thu, 18 May 2006 14:46:36 -0500

By Isabel deKoninck and Joseph Berman

There is nothing in the world more grievous than poverty the most terrible of sufferings. Our teachers said: All the troubles of the world are assembled on one side and poverty is on the other. Midrash Rabbah Exodus 31:12

In January we traveled to El Salvador as a part of the American Jewish World Service’s rabbinical school delegation. The trip was designed to bring rabbinical students from all of the major rabbinical schools together to see the work of AJWS, learn about sustainable development and the impact of globalization, and discover new ways to bring concepts of global justice into our emerging rabbinates.

Much of our time in El Salvador was spent in Ciudad Romero, a small community nearly two hours outside of San Salvador. In many ways, Ciudad Romero is representative of both the extreme poverty that afflicts El Salvador, as well as the kind of dynamic hope that is made possible by grassroots ingenuity and funding from organizations like AJWS.

In El Salvador, we learned the true meaning of poverty. Most of the families living in the community were resettled in Ciudad Romero after living in exile during much of the civil war. Families live in small cinderblock homes on dirt roads where live stock roam freely. Many women raise their families on their own as many of the men were either killed in the gruesome civil war, or have left for America (not a few illegally) in order to make money to send home to their families. Many children only get elementary education, and even that is a struggle for the community to fund. What is most shocking is that Ciudad Romero is one of the better off communities in its region, the roads are planned in a grid, each family has its own latrine, and there is a community center and organizing committee that brings hope to this impoverished place.

As we encountered the devastating poverty in El Salvador we began to ask why? Why is this place so poor? Why does the gap between the haves and have-nots continue to widen in our world? Can anything be done to change things?

What we learned were the difficult lessons of internal political struggle, and the crippling effects of US international economic and military policies and free trade agreements. The civil war that pit workers, farmers and the Church against landowners and the ruling class (backed by the United States) was long, bloody, and destroyed El Salvador. In many ways this civil war was a war about land, power, and poverty. The economic situation for the tenant farmers and day laborers in El Salvador became so untenable that many felt the only way to affect change was through uprising, and for many this meant through violence.

For many people of faith, however, this struggle was a religious and non-violent one. Led by the Archbishop Oscar Romero, many of the peasants began to conceive of their struggle in biblical terms; a modern day exodus from Egypt and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Body of the people. Many in El Salvador, especially those in Ciudad Romero (named after the late Archbishop), live their faith and politics as one, affirming a God of this worldly salvation. It was in part this religious movement that led to the end of the civil war in 1991 and helped affect some minor progress towards greater equality and real democracy.

Still, even after the war, though certain aspects of political and economic life in El Salvador have improved, poverty and inequality still grip most of the nation.

There is nothing in the world more grievous than poverty the most terrible of sufferings. Our teachers said: All the troubles of the world are assembled on one side and poverty is on the other.

In El Salvador we understood this Midrash perhaps truly for the first time. Poverty is the root of so many systemic problems poor health, poor education, the inability of communities to develop and thrive, or even to fight to protect their own rights. Feeling hypersensitive of our privilege as Americans, we wanted to know what we could do to help.

While in Ciudad Romero we were the guests of La Coordinadora the coordinating committee for the Lempa Valley Region, and a grassroots organization that is responsible for many of the successes of Ciudad Romero and a partner of AJWS. As an organization that is bringing hope and visions of sustainable development to El Salvador, we asked, as Americans how can we help to end this kind of global poverty.

The simplest answer was that we should continue supporting organizations like AJWS that work with grassroots groups to help cultivate sustainable development. The more complex and difficult response was that the only way to affect real, grand, systemic change, is to help change global economic policies. “Free trade is crippling us,” they said. “How can we hope to build our economy and our small farming communities when the United States forces us into trade agreements that benefit only wealthy Americans, and big business here in El Salvador.”

They asked us to go home, support fair trade, work to counter CAFTA, and work to educate ourselves and our communities about the complexities of globalization and the possibilities and challenges of global markets.

We spent only eight days in El Salvador, but in those eight days, we learned first hand why our Rabbis felt that poverty was a greater affliction than any other. As we left El Salvador we knew that poverty’s greatest challenge is its challenge to those of us with privilege – how much are we willing to give of ourselves so that every person in the world can have a safe place to sleep, enough to eat, and the opportunity to pursue their modest dreams.

The 35th Day of the Omer: Malkhut in Hod

...Therefore, may it be Your will, Yah our God, and the God of our ancestors, that in the merit of the Omer Count that I have counted today, may there be a tikkun (fixing) for whatever damages I have caused in the sefirah of Malkhut in Hod. May I be cleansed and sanctified with the holiness of Above, and through this may abundant bounty flow in all the worlds. And may it make a tikkun for our lives, spirits, and souls from all sediment and damage, may it cleanse us and sanctify us with Your exalted holiness. Amen Selah! Excerpt from the Kabbalistic concluding blessings for counting the Omer

Today is the 35th day of the Omer. For the kabbalists, this day, like every one of the 49 days of the Omer, represents more than just a day leading up to the holiday of Shavuot. Rather, each day becomes a time to taken (fix) a different aspect of divine revelation within ourselves and thereby bring that aspect of God into the world, coming closer to the time when the world will be characterized by wholeness and unity rather than brokenness and division. The sefirah, or sphere, for the 35th day of the Omer is Malkhut she'beh Hod, or Kingdom within Splendor. Hod, the sefirah for this week, is described as one of the sources of prophecy in our world. And Malkhut stands for the Shekhinah, the source of all life and the manifestation of God in our world.

Our time in El Salvador gave us the distinct impression that there are certainly prophets in our world, like Archcbishop Romero, who draw from the holiness of above, but that they are few and far between. At the same time, the poverty and inequality we witnessed made it seem as if there is a very real absence of the Shekhinah in parts of our world. We recalled the words of the Jewish prophet Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote: “God himself is not at home in the universe. He is not at home in a universe where His will is defied and where his kingship is denied. God is in exile; the world is corrupt. The universe itself is not at home.” (The Insecurity of Freedom, 258).

Questions for Thought/Discussion

What are the “damages and sediments” of globalization that exist in our personal lives and communities?
What are the tikkunim (fixings) we can do to address issues of world poverty?
What would it mean for each of us to be prophets around the issues of globalization and world poverty?

Isabel deKoninck and Joseph Berman are students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

No Person Should Go Hungry

Wed, 17 May 2006 12:50:33 -0500

By Ruth Messinger
American World Jewish Service, New York

The extraordinary Rally to End the Genocide in Darfur in Washington, DC, on April 30 of this year occurred at an auspicious moment in the Jewish calendar and in the 40 month history of the genocide in Sudan. Three weeks before the Rally, Jews all over the world gathered around their seder tables and declared:

Halachma anya, di achalu avahatana b’ar’a d’mitzrayim. This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are in need come share our Passover meal.

We say these words as part of the formula of the haggadah, and we often joke about how hungry we are at that moment – the parsley, salt water, and eggs have not satisfied us and we eagerly anticipate the steaming bowls of matzah ball soup and the meal that will follow. But it is worth being thoughtful and precise about the deep meaning of the words in the phrase—affliction, hunger, need.

To do this, we can look to another nearby moment in the Jewish calendar. A week before the Rally, Jews gathered again to commemorate the deaths of six million of our people during the Shoah. From Primo Levi, one of the most eloquent survivors of that catastrophic moment in our history, we can begin to get a sense of the experience of the real affliction of hunger and need in the most extreme conditions of terror. He writes of his time in the camps:

Just as our hunger is not the feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say “hunger,” we say “tiredness,” “fear,” “pain,” we say “winter” and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and without suffering in their homes. If the [camps] had lasted longer, a new, harsh language would have been born; and only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day in the wind with the temperature below freezing, and wearing only a shirt, underpants, cloth jacket and trousers, hunger, and knowledge of the end drawing near.

In conditions of what Tzvetan Todorov called “facing the extreme,” our very language breaks down. The terminology we use to describe our day-to-day experiences doesn’t suffice to capture the catastrophic. And so it is with great anxiety that we received the news, in the few days between Yom Hashoah and the Rally, that due to insufficient funding from its donor nations, the World Food Programme would be cutting rations in half for people starving in Darfur. The people of Darfur, who have suffered all of the terrors of genocide, are now being deprived of the food they need to live.

This reduction, from the minimum daily requirement of 2,100 calories a day to 1,050 calories a day will allow the WFP to stretch its limited food stocks through the particularly challenging summer season, before the next harvest is completed in the fall. According to James Morris, the Executive Director of WFP, “This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Haven’t the people of Darfur suffered enough? Aren’t we adding insult to injury? Food must come first—we cannot put families who have lost their homes and loved ones to violence on a 1000 calorie a day diet. But we have been pushed into this last resort of ration cuts in Sudan so we can provide the needy with at least some food during the lean season.”

The WFP has received just 32 percent of the funding required to provide sufficient food assistance to the people of Sudan. While the United States has been more generous than any other nation in supporting the WFP, many of our allies have been downright stingy. While we should celebrate the incredible demonstration of solidarity that the Rally represented, and we should be supportive and hopeful about the potential for the peace agreement reached in Sudan early in May, there remains much work to be done.

Our Pesach invitation to all who are hungry to come and eat should not lie flat on the page of the haggadah. It should motivate and inspire us to insure that, in a world in which there is sufficient food, no person should go hungry and no child should suffer malnutrition. And that we should never again allow ourselves to come up against the limits of our language to sufficiently describe hunger and suffering.

Questions for Thought, Discussion

While we say “Ha Lachmah Anya” at the seder—what are your family or communal practices of inviting people to join you? Do you actively seek out people in need?
Over 30 JRF congregations were represented at the rally to end genocide in Darfur in Washington, April 30th and at various locations around the United States. Were you or someone you know present—and what was your experience? How has this translated back home after the rally?

Atlanta Congregation's Work on The Living Wage Program

Mon, 08 May 2006 13:11:02 -0500

This week's offering consists of excerpts of a handbook created by Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta, Georgia which they created in response to their study and participation working on "The Living Wage". The handbook includes Jewish texts, information about the living wage issue, and some information about the congregation's engagement.

Download the handbook.

Congregation Bet Haverim's handbook for working on the living wage. (When you click the link it may open Word in your browser or possibly download it directly to your desktop, depending on your browser settings.)

Proactive Permanent Solutions Versus Reactive Band-Aids: Trellis Gardens vs Out of the Cold

Mon, 08 May 2006 09:07:00 -0500

By Syd Nestel and Val Hyman
Congregation Darchei Noam, Toronto, Canada

The Maharal of Prague taught that there are two types of tzedaka: reactive and proactive. Reactive tzedaka is based on compassion for those who suffer, and it is almost selfish because it is giving in order to remove the painful sight of poverty. Proactive givers seek out opportunities without waiting to be asked; they understand partnership with the One. Rabbi Mordechai Liebling commenting on Netivot Olam, Netiv Hatzedaka, Chapter 1 in RRC's Guide to Jewish Practice, Tzedaka

But, Maimonides tells us that the highest form of charity is to step in and help someone else to avoid or step out of poverty permanently, so that they no longer need our charity. Certainly, we know that unless the basic need for permanent shelter is met, there is little possibility that anyone can pull themselves out of the perpetual grind of poverty. Without housing, families become separated, women and children flee to shelters, men become hardened. People cannot find jobs without having a phone or a permanent address or the grooming that requires a place to store clothes and bathe, physical health suffers from insufficient nourishment, and mental health suffers from the stress of life on the streets. We see these effects of homelessness every week at our shelter program. And while our feeding and care may make us feel good that we have addressed the immediate suffering, they do nothing to alleviate the long term, debilitating, and self re-enforcing results of living on the street.

To create affordable housing, congregants at Congregation Darchei Noam formed an independent community board, by inviting community members and becoming incorporated. The community Board was then able to raise private money and to apply for government funding in order to develop affordable housing projects.

The first one, Moshav Noam, is a co-op of 132 units, and it opened its doors in 1995. The second one was developed under a new Board called Trellis Housing Initiatives. Trellis Gardens is its first project, a three-story rental apartment building of 24 units, 18 of which are subsidized.

The residents are from many different parts of the world, and the Board acquired volunteer help to develop a sense of community. Our objective was to develop more than bricks and mortar and we now have a reading club, a homework club, and a ping pong club. Residents have requested speakers on parenting and budgeting skills, and have held one or two very successful pot luck events where each resident contributed a dish of their county’s origin. The Board was invited.

We have seen people change from being stressed, hostile and fearful, to thriving and glowing with health once they are permanently housed. We have created a rent bank to prevent evictions People tell us they feel safe and are proud of their community.

Developing housing requires infinite patience and determination to stick with it during the difficult times that are typical of any development and construction project. A single project can take very many years from concept to fruition. The gratification is not immediate. However it does provides a more permanent solution to the poverty and homelessness than our shelter program. The housing we have built will, we hope, provide homes to marginal people through several generation. It will prevent the residents and their children and their children’s children from almost certainly falling into a cycle of abject poverty and hopelessness common to so many homeless people. We believe it provides a better world for us all to live in now, and it that provides a glimpse of the world as we all hope it will one day be. In our work developing affordable housing, we hope we are living up to our Jewish traditions in several ways, not the least of which is fulfilling the obligation “to seek out opportunities without waiting to be asked; to understand partnership with the One.”

As Rebecca Alpert and Jacob Staub write in Exploring Judaism “it is not out of charity that we align ourselves with people who are oppressed or less fortunate, but rather out of teaching that all human beings are worthy of respect and opportunity…and tikkun olam may be the most concrete and palpable way to make God’s presence manifest in our world.”

Questions for Discussion and Thought

The effort in creating proactive permanent solutions to poverty is enormous, and there is no guarantee that you will succeed. Is it perhaps not better to focus on short term reactive or crisis management aid? There is no doubt about the efficacy of your work when you literally feed a hungry person.
Different people have different temperaments and skills. Should the planners, politicians, business people, and lawyers work on long term proactive solutions and the social workers, psychologists, teachers and grade school students work on reactive “emergency” aid? Or should everyone focus on a single community project? Or should everyone be encouraged to work on both proactive and reactive projects?
Proactive projects that create permanent solutions take enormous effort, and in the end may help only a small numbers. How big do you aim? How do you best leverage other peoples resources? How do you balance the demand for Moshiach (or the socialist workers paradise if you prefer) Now ! with the reality that that is unlikely to happen in our lifetime.

Kiddush HaShem - Sanctification of God’s Name: Can Grace and Hamotzi Co-exist at the Homeless Shelter?

Fri, 05 May 2006 10:19:35 -0500

By Syd Nestel and Val Hyman
Congregation Darchei Noam, Toronto, Canada

Holiness is not the exclusive possession of those who engage in detailed ritual observance, nor is it the preserve of those who devote their energies to the pursuit of spirituality. True holiness is found in small actions that make a profound difference to the lives of the people around us and the world in which they live.

Wherever I travel in the Jewish world, I'm struck by the way that ordinary Jews are determined to perform kiddush Hashem—sanctification of God's name—and to avoid a hillul Hashem, the desecration of God's name.

The concept of kiddush Hashem offers a powerful challenge that has particular resonance in our times. Each one of us has to ensure that the word "Jewish" is always associated with the highest levels of ethics and kindness, so that our behavior always brings credit to our heritage and to our God. Rabbi Michael Melchior - at the time - deputy minister in the Israeli government with responsibility for Israeli society and the world Jewish community.

For the past 12 years, the congregants at Darchei Noam have been one of about 30 congregations and churches in Toronto that run a rotating weekly 24-hour shelter for people who are homeless and hungry. Originally, we ran the program in collaboration with a Roman Catholic congregation, who had space for the program that we do not have. While we now have volunteers who are from both denominations, the volunteers are an ecumenical group that is called the First Interfaith Out of the Cold program in Toronto. Darchei Noam contributes about 60 volunteers, about 50% of the total.

Because we operate in a multi-faith environment, and because most of the guests who are poor or homeless are expecting a Christian grace before meals, at our Out of the Cold program we make sure that guests and other volunteers know that most of the Jewish volunteers are present out of sense of fulfilling our Jewish religious obligations. Initially it was uncomfortable for us to put forward our own traditions. Our Catholic co-volunteers had no such compunctions. We, however, did not want to be seen as competing with Christianity, or to make our guests feel that they had to be subjected to a sermon before they were allowed to eat.

But preventing our Christian partners from saying grace, did not seem right, nor did hiding our own Jewish identities and motivations for working with the homeless.

For the volunteers from Darchei Noam, it was important make it known that we are not helping the poor for personal aggrandizement nor are we trying to proselytize. Nor is our presence the result of our individual quirks of personality or own off beat sense of morality. We want to represent our Jewish belief in the necessity and power of doing good. And we want to represent the Jewish community to the general community when we perform these tasks, so that Jewish values and the values of Jews are understood and acknowledged.

To this end, in addition to the Christian grace before meals, we always say the Hamotzi blessing over the bread. Sometimes it is said by a few volunteers, members of the B’nai Mitzvah class, or sometimes it is sung by a family, which to our delight is often followed by a round of applause, as if we had just completed the pre-dinner entertainment.

We also follow a tradition of making a package for each guest at Purim time (thus fulfilling the mitzvah of giving gifts to the poor—matanot l’evyonim). We usually make a package of chocolate, fruit, new socks and a streetcar token. Often we add a little note about the meaning of Purim.

At the end of our winter program, which runs from November to April, we invite our fellow volunteers to an "Out of the Cold Shabbat" where the contributions of all volunteers, Jewish and non-Jewish, are celebrated. Our Rabbi usually speaks directly from the bimah to our non-Jewish guests and one year invited them to come closer and view the Torah scrolls.

We are often asked by our fellow volunteers or guests about why we do what we do, and this provides opportunities for us to talk about a Jewish way of being that tries to maximize Godliness in this world. This is not without its dilemmas. Sometimes we wonder, who are we, to be speaking of our Jewish faith and traditions when we may not be the most ritually observant or knowledgeable of Jews? Sometimes, we get strange responses when we tell guests we are Jewish, like the time a clearly down and out and lonely fellow spoke longingly about “best girl friend he ever had” who was Jewish. Apparently she was a good cook and had “other talents” as well. Or another fellow who boasted that he had acquired guns for the Jewish Defense League. It not always clear how to respond.

Nevertheless we hope that by making our Jewishness visible as part of our volunteer work with the poor, we help build, in both our guest and our co-volunteers, understanding and tolerance, and the faith that Godliness is dwelling in all people and all groups, and that a commitment to making that Godliness real can in fact make the world a better place.

Questions for Thought and Discussion:

Most liberal Jews think that Christian preachiness is—well—too preachy. But are we too timid to admit in public that we do good deeds because we feel compelled to do so by our religion? Does our reticence in this regard distort peoples views of Jews and Judaism?
Is it proper to tell people why you are helping them when you are doing it? Can our underlying motivation provide them with some inspiration or solace? Or is this unlikely to work and simply too intrusive into their lives?
Much of liberal Judaism is about the need to repair the world, and a non rational faith that this can in fact be accomplished. Can we leverage our efforts by getting other people to buy into a similar world view? Or should we just do our “good deeds” and be quite about the context?

Anonymous Versus Public Acts: The First Interfaith "Out of the Cold" Program

Tue, 02 May 2006 14:03:34 -0500

By Syd Nestel and Val Hyman
Congregation Darchei Noam, Toronto, Canada

Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 67b:

Mar Ukba had a poor man in his neighbourhood into whose door-socket he used to throw four zuz every day. Once day the poor man thought: "I will go and see who does me this kindness [in order that I may thank him]. On that day Mar Ukba stayed late at the house of study and [went to place money in the poor man's door] with his wife. As soon as [the poor man] saw them moving the door-socket he went out after them. They fled from him and ran into a furnace from which the fire had just been swept. Mar Ukba's feet were burning and his wife said to him: Raise your feet and put them on mine. As he was upset [that his feet burned while his wife’s did not] she explained to him, "I am usually at home [when beggars come calling] and my benefactions are direct." And why [did they make such an effort to escape from the thank you of the poor man?] - Because Mar Zutra b. Tobiah said in the name of Rab …: Better had a man thrown himself into a fiery furnace than publicly put his neighbour to shame.”

Jeffrey Dekro in response to the Talmud from RRC's Guide to Jewish Practice: Tzedakah:

The importance of protecting anonymity is the dominant classical opinion. However, the famous story about Mar Ukba and his (nameless) wife preserves another tradition and a completely different mode of tzedakah conduct. When Mar and Mrs. Ukba flee and end up hiding in a still-hot communal oven..., he suffers a double shame, having to rely on a woman and having been "unmasked" while distributing histzedakah. In response to his amazed query as to why she did not suffer from the burning stove, Mrs. Ukba pointed out that she conducted her tzedakah activities face-to-face by making sandwiches for beggars at her kitchen door and, as a consequence, did not suffer red-hot shame at being recognized. So we learn that Mar Ukba's careful accounting and allocations [( we are told elsewhere that he was a very generous and meticulous giver of alms to the poor)] removed him from the opportunity to engage in a true meeting between provider and recipient, while Mrs. Ukba's direct, small-scale tzedakah procedures earned her both affection from the ones whom she benefited and honor from God, who gave her a capacity to endure great physical difficulty that her husband could not. ….”

For the past 12 years, the congregants at Darchei Noam have been one of about 30 congregations and churches in Toronto that run a rotating weekly 24-hour shelter for people who are homeless and hungry. Originally, we ran the program in collaboration with a Roman Catholic congregation, who had space for the program that we do not have. While we now have volunteers who are from both denominations, the volunteers are an ecumenical group that is called the First Interfaith Out of the Cold program in Toronto. Darchei Noam contributes about 60 volunteers. (About 50% of the total.)

Every Thursday night we serve a home cooked three-course meal to about 65 men and women, whom we call our guests. During the evening, guests can get foot care, see a public health nurse, watch a movie, paint, or play games such as scrabble. Or they can just talk to volunteers or other guests. There is a good used clothing boutique. About 60 guests stay overnight, sleeping on mats on the floor. In the morning, a crew of volunteers comes at 6:00 AM to cook breakfast and send the guests on their way with a nourishing packed lunch.

Mar Zutra's position suggests suggests that anonymous giving is the highest order of charity. Maimonides explicitly concurs. In his famous hierarchy of tzedakah the highest form of tzedakah is to help someone else to become self-sufficient and the second highest is give so that neither the person giving nor the receiver know each other's identity. Giving where both parties know who is who is ranked far down the list.

Our program is funded through donations, so there are many opportunities to provide donations anonymously. However, it is our contention that the value of our program is not only that we provide nourishment and shelter, but that because we serve our guests, treat them with respect, socialize and get to know individuals, we are providing a sense of well being and caring that they would not experience through anonymous giving.

We could simply collect donations, and donate them to a city run shelter. But then the guests, who spend many of their days in isolation walking the streets, would not have the opportunity to hug us when they see us. They would not be able to smile at our children doing community service for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or have an empathetic listening ear to the frustrations of their day. They would not have their blistered feet massaged and powdered and given clean dry socks to wear.

Anonymity may indeed be the best way to “give alms”. But tzedakah is not the only way of engaging in tikkun olam – repairing the world. We have found that simple human kindness – Gmilut Chasadim—is, at least, equally important. And we feel that it is not possible to be kind anonymously. It requires seeing and being seen. It requires a human touch.

Questions for Thought/Discussion:

Can the Jewish urge to anonymous giving be counter productive? Does it ever lead to shirking our responsibility to give of our time and our emotions – to be kind to the stranger? Can the counter urge towards open and face to face aid, ever lead to shirking responsibility to give of our material wealth?
Which is more important: meeting peoples physical needs, or meeting their emotional needs? Can you do one without the other? How do you balance between these?
Which would you find harder: giving 10% of your after tax income to the charity, or giving 10% of your free time and emotional strength to those in need?
I have a well paying job with opportunities for overtime. I could regularly stay late at work, earn extra money, and donate it each week to charity. Over a year this would add up to a significant amount of money. And it would be anonymous. But I choose instead to spend those two or three hours a week in face to face work with the homeless. Does that make sense?

Where Tikkun Olam Work and Religious Life Intersect

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:30:17 -0500

By Elana Richman, Rabbi Liz Bolton, and Robin Yasinow
Congregation Beit Tikvah

Many Reconstructionists have their most profound experiences of God through tikkun olam. It is not out of charity that they align themselves with people who are oppressed or less fortunate, but rather out of the teaching that all human beings are worthy of respect and opportunity… and tikkun olam may be the most concrete and palpable way to make God's presence manifest in our world. Rebecca Alpert and Jacob Staub, Exploring Judaism, p. 84

And God said, "Let us make adam in our image, after our likeness... And God created adam in God's image, in the image of God, God created adam, male and female God created them. Genesis 1: 26-27

Isaiah 5:16 teaches us that we can actually enhance holiness in the world through acts of tzedaka. We can expand the presence of the Divine in our midst through these acts of righteousness. We thereby help not only the recipients of our gifts, but our community and ourselves. Dr. Tamar Kamionkowski from RRC’s Guide to Jewish Practice, Tzedaka

Robin reflects: Since the Baltimore Interfaith Hospitality Network (a program that shelters homeless families in houses of worship) welcomed its first guests into the network in January, without any deliberate decision to substitute volunteering for structured religious observance, I haven't been to services. Fellow congregants have asked me where I've been. "I've got a lot on my plate," I explain. "I can't fit in services on top of BIHN." Lately, though, I've realized there are reasons that have nothing to do with time.

The truth is that my experience with BIHN fulfills a need that Beit Tikvah also satisfies—the desire to connect with people in a context that's relatively free of judgment about material wealth, professional status and physical appearance. But my BIHN experience also answers something that going to services does not. It engenders a sense of something infinitely bigger and more powerful than the individual.

Rabbi Liz reflects: As the spiritual resource for a congregation with many passionate Reconstructionists, as well as a few passionate atheists—sometimes embodied in the same person!—I am challenged to articulate for the whole community a vision of doing just work as an element of religious obligation or spiritual practice.

My personal guiding Biblical pasuk is the verse from Genesis. As Rabbi Arthur Green teaches, “The belief that every person is a tselem elohim or an “image of God” is the most fundamental moral claim of Judaism and its basis for a universal interpersonal ethic…[T]he universality of God’s image leads to the ethical norm of kevod ha-beriot¸ respect for all persons. Every human being has a right to such basic needs as food, shelter, work to sustain oneself without the gifts of others, and respect.” (These Are The Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life; p. 183)

The verse from Isaiah links God’s holiness to acts of justice. In this way, our IHN activities link up these two texts. Serving our guests as we do, offering this method of hospitality and shelter is not a disembodied, distant, or unengaged act of charity. It is a mutualized witnessing of the union of spirit and action. For many, IHN offers an alternative to the "white-glove" approach to tzedakah, we now open the doors of spiritual homes to those we serve, those, who like us, are created tselem elohim.

Elana reflects: We differ in the role IHN plays in our religious lives. For some who are regularly involved in tikkun olam work, Beit Tikvah’s services are a time for rest, refueling and prayer and the hospitality network is an additional way to carry out the teachings of Judaism. Some feel drawn to the IHN not only because of the importance of its work, but because it is being done in a setting where those you work with are also their because of their faith, including, or especially because, it is an interfaith group. While volunteering in a community of faith, the union of spirit and action is strong.

How do you incorporate giving tzedakah and doing tikkun olam into your religious outlook? What verses or guideposts inform your actions?
What spiritual gifts do you receive when you perform acts of tikkun olam?
How does taking part in tikkun olam with your congregation differ from taking part in tikkun olam in a secular setting?

From Both Sides of the Have/Have Not Divide

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:46:48 -0500

By Bill Marker
Congregation Beit Tikvah

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; thou shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I am Adonai your God. Leviticus 19:9-10

Give to the needy readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Eternal your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings. Deuteronomy 15:10

Just as many mitzvahs are directed at men, not women, so that women may wonder if they are part of the "us", this and other biblical poverty related statements are directed at the "haves," seemingly excluding the "have-nots" from "us". Individually I am certainly a have, but as a resident of Baltimore City, I am one of Maryland's have-nots. Seemingly my community's schools, police, library, etc. are dependent on subsidies, whether from taxes or charity, from Maryland's richer jurisdictions. Yet Maryland taxes my community at a higher rate than those outside Baltimore City, so that we, in fact, subsidize them.

Doesn't true Tikkun Olam require not only encouraging the wealthy to make transfers (tzedekah) to the poor, but ending exploitation of the have-nots that unjustly enriches the haves? Shouldn't it also empower have-nots to take their fair share?

When Reconstructionists organize Tikkun Olam projects, how might we ensure that the intended beneficiaries significantly manage and evaluate the program?

Sustenance for the Whole Person

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:53:59 -0500

By Robin Yasinow
Congregation Beit Tikvah

Organizers who work with the homeless disagree about the best way to support beggars on the street. Many recommend providing a meal, rather than cash. It may take a few extra minutes to pick up a sandwich, or to bring a beggar a cup of coffee and a donut. But in the end, the person on the receiving end will have a more tangible interaction with a caring human being. Most beneficial would be a contribution to a local shelter and advocacy on behalf of affordable housing, in addition to a one-to-one relationship on the street. Rabbi Barbara Penzner from RRC's Guide to Jewish Practice, Tzedaka

If a community lacked a synagogue and a shelter for the poor, it was first obligated to build a shelter for the poor. Sefer Chasidim

Here's a modern variation of that twelfth-century precept: Open a community's houses of worship as temporary shelter to families who are homeless. Assist them in their quest for independence by providing not only meals and professional resources but also companionship and emotional support.

The manifestation of this idea, known as the Interfaith Hospitality Network, is at work right now in more than 105 U.S. communities.

After two years of planning, Congregation Beit Tikvah and 13 other congregations of various faiths launched the Baltimore Interfaith Hospitality Network, or BIHN in January. Every six weeks, members of Beit Tikvah share the responsibility of hosting up to 14 guests at a neighboring congregation, Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

In Baltimore, homeless parents of dependent children often face the challenge of finding a single shelter that will accept all family members. Typically, families must split up, with men and older boys going to one shelter, and women, young children and older girls going to another. By working together, the 14 BIHN congregations offer what few shelters can: a chance for families to live together in a safe, supportive environment.

Guests of the network, many of whom are homeless for the first time, receive the guidance of BIHN's executive director and only employee, a licensed social worker who helps them develop a plan for achieving self-sufficiency.

At the heart of BIHN are its volunteers, who spend evenings and weekends with guests sharing meals, playing games, doing homework, watching television and engaging in common activities of everyday life. Rather than telling guests what should happen, volunteers do their best to listen for and honor guests' needs, whether they be ingredients for meals, extra blankets or some quiet time in the evening. By extending to guests the same kind of hospitality one might receive at the home of a close friend, BIHN volunteers try to provide a sense of normalcy, privacy and autonomy that many other shelters cannot.

Food, family sleeping quarters, showers and laundry facilities - all are provided and certainly appreciated. But it's the personal attention and compassion of the network's volunteers that graduates of IHN frequently say is most essential to their success:

I found patience and understanding... when I had no one else to lean on. My children and I felt safe there, and learned to trust again. Guest, Pennsylvania
When I came to IHN with my children... there were people who really cared. It's a feeling that made me want to get up in the morning and get out there and work hard to accomplish my goals. Guest, Kentucky
When I first learned I would be in a shelter, I pictured a "shelter." But I found caring and concerned people who made the darkest time in my life brighter.Guest, New Jersey

Think about programs provided by municipalities and organizations for the poor and homeless, including programs and projects you're involved in:

What concerns or needs do these programs aim to address?
How do they fulfill people's need for emotional support?
Do any attempt to address the whole person -- a full range of human needs?
How might existing programs be enhanced, even slightly, to integrate more meaningful human interaction?
Through our congregations' programs, how can we open our doors, literally and figuratively, to those in need?

Robin Yasinow is co-chair of the Tikkun Olam committee at Congregation Beit Tikvah in Baltimore.