JEWISH TEXTS, TEACHINGS AND LITURGY ON SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR THE HIGH HOLIDAYS
JEWS UNITED FOR JUSTICE
“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism and falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope and the vision.”
--Abraham Joshua Heschel
JEWS UNITED FOR JUSTICE HIGH HOLIDAY MATERIALS
Jews United For Justice is pleased to distribute our first packet of materials that provide social justice text and readings for the Jewish Holidays. We are grateful to Rabbi Randy Fleisher from Central Reform Congregation for his work in compiling these materials and to Rabbi Janine Schloss from Shaare Emeth for her work to distribute these materials to members of the Rabbinical Association. We hope these materials will provide you with food for thought, inspiration and discussion among your families and congregations.
L’Shana Tova
WHAT IS JEWS UNITED FOR JUSTICE (JUJ)?
Jews United For Justice-St. Louis is dedicated to working in coalition with partners and allies for the goals of economic, social and racial justice in the St. Louis metropolitan area. JUJ was organized to be a progressive presence in the Jewish community and a Jewish presence in the progressive community.
As part of its founding principles, JUJ determined that all of its projects must meet the following criteria:
• Be an active hands-on project
• Address a Jewish principle
• Have an impact on a substantial social issue
• Have an impact on a substantial racial issue
• Make a fundamental change
• Have a St. Louis impact
• Unique action as compared with other Jewish community efforts
• Contain an active role for Jewish community efforts
• Have an opportunity for meaningful impact
• Have an opportunity to make an important issue and/or JUJ more visible
• Have an opportunity for large Jewish community involvement and grassroots involvement
• Have an opportunity for partnership with other community groups
We are currently working with the St. Louis Black Leadership Roundtable to tackle the serious problem of the gap in academic achievement between white students and African American students. We are also working with partners in the health care field to improve the conditions of workers and the care of patients at area nursing homes.
HOW TO USE THESE MATERIALS
These social justice prayers, materials, and readings for the High Holidays are organized in three sections:
• Rosh Hashanah
• Yom Kippur
• General High Holiday materials
They may be used in a variety of ways and settings including:
• as prayers or readings for High Holiday services
• as part of High Holiday liturgy or sermon
• as part of a religious school lesson
• as materials for synagogue bulletins
• as prayers or readings for High Holiday family meals and gatherings
Any feedback or suggestions you have about what worked for you or what would be useful for next year would be appreciated. Please send all comments to Jews United for Justice at leahanna@aol.com.
Reprinted from
A Silent Meditation for Young People
In these moments of silence I think of the new year just beginning. Ahead of me are new classes, a new grade, new friends, new hobbies, new challenges, new questions, new answers.
May I face the new with openness and excitement. When I feel weak, O God, help me to find extra strength and guide me to turn to those who can support me. Never let me think that asking for help is a sign of failure, but an occasion for reaching out to others.
Help me in the year ahead to build stronger friendships and closer bonds with my family. May I approach my new year of learning enthusiastically and take all my responsibilities at home seriously. Help me to remember the important part I play in building a home that is filled with love and shalom. Keep my mind open to hearing all sides of any discussion and guide me in seeking out peaceful resolutions when I disagree with others.
Although I am still young, dear God, help make me aware of all the ways that I can contribute to building a happier and healthier community. Open my eyes to every opportunity to perform “g’milut chasadim,” acts of loving kindness and participate in “tikun olam,” repairing the world. May I always remember to help those in need, provide food for those who are hungry and be ready to give of my time when it is possible for me to lend a hand.
May I continue to gain strength, to grow in health and in spirit, unafraid to seek you, O God, for inspiration and guidance. May my Judaism be a source of pride and my congregation a place of comfort, of prayer, of song, of study and of friendship. May the new year be a year of joy, contentment and peace for me, for my family, for my friends and for all the world. Amen.
Sowing Bread in the Sea: A Psalm for Tashlich
By Ted Merwin
Oh God, who is like you?
We come to you heavy laden
Groaning with the weight of our sins
And the sins of our community and elected officials
[we name the sins: racism, economic exploitation, police brutality, etc.]
Will You take us back in love?
Will we turn our hearts and deeds to You?
As You have brought forth bread from the Earth,
So we cast it into the sea
Renewing the cycle of life
Closing a circle which ripples into infinite circles
Like the many nested communities which make up our city,
Communities which strive to live together in peace
Ever-renewed themselves by the coming of immigrants
Ever struggling to feed and house and clothe themselves
Ever waiting for bread
God, we shed our sins and the sins of this city
As an animal slips from its skin which has withered and decayed
As a plant drops leaves and leaves fruit
As a molecule trades its membrane for a new coat of cells
If you keep account of sins, O Creator,
Who will survive?
As the trees turn over their leaves,
And the canopy of green turns to crimson and gold,
Then shudders and shatters and subsides
Let us repaint the colors of our lives
In a city too often painted starkly Black and White
In which the contrasts between rich and poor are
Etched so deeply that Your
Wrath is ever kindled anew
By Your work the heavens were made,
By the breath of Your mouth, all their host
Have been true to the spirit of Your creation
You heap up the ocean waters like a mound,
And hoard the deep in vaults, but
Most of it we cannot see
Most of the time we are blind to the wonder of Your world
Just as we are blind far too often to the oppressions with which
We have tarnished Your creation
For poverty and inequality ad violence are our own inventions
With which we bludgeon, intimidate and abandon each other
As the season turns, as we choose a mayor, begin a school year
Let us be reminded that everything in life
Renews itself
All evil, all that is deadening and rot can be case away
We know tomorrow we may eat
Of the fish who consume this bread
We put our trust in You, Creator of All
That You will ever keep watch upon us,
Saving us from death
Preserving us from fear
Sustaining us in the spiritual and moral famine
Which threatens to engulf and overwhelm us all
We cast this bread as a token of our faith in You
As a pledge to ourselves to take care of each other better,
To attend to the needs of all in our communities, to the good of the city as a whole
To attune ourselves to the spirit of Your creation
We let loose and let free
The little pieces of ourselves
That have dishonored us
The little pieces of ourselves
That have betrayed our neighbors and blighted our common good
The little pieces of ourselves
That have helped erect and not dismantle injustice in our name
In order to more perfectly love
You, ourselves and each other
If you have committed many misdeeds, then do many righteous deeds to match them. - Vayikrah Rabbah 21:1
When and how did you use your political or economic power to correct the injustices under which many people suffer?
To what injustices did you fail to respond?
Was there a time this year when an action you took was based on prejudice? Whom did you hurt?
What activity that you did over the past year had the biggest impact on the environment?
List three ways in which you will help bring justice in the coming year:
1.
2.
3.
For the sake of peace, and for the sake of Torah, whose ways are peace, the non-Jewish poor may gather unharvested produce left over in Jewish fields, in the same fashion as the Jewish poor. The non-Jewish poor shall receive food and clothing from the community Tzedakah fund the same as Jews. If the non-Jewish sick have no friends, they should be visited by the same as the Jewish sick. If no one claims the body of a non-Jewish dead, it shall be buried by the Jews, the same as the Jewish dead. When Jews see non-Jews at work in the field, they should greet them with the same words of blessing. - Talmud, Gittin 61
On Justice for All Children
O God, forgive our rich nation where small babies die of cold quite legally.
O God, forgive our rich nation where small children suffer from hunger quite legally.
O God, forgive our rich nation where toddlers and schoolchildren die from guns sold quite legally
O God, forgive our rich nation that lets children by the poorest group of citizens quite legally.
O God, forgive our rich nation that lets the rich continue to get more at the expense of the poor quite legally.
O God, forgive our rich nation which thinks security rests in missiles rather than in mothers, and in bombs rather than in babies.
O God, forgive our rich nation for not giving You sufficient thanks by giving to others their daily bread.
O God, help us never to confuse what is quite legal with what is just and right in Your sight.
--Marian Wright Edelman
Guide My Feet: Prayers and Meditations on Loving and Working for Children (Alternate suggestion: This poem can be recited in
the form of Al Chet: for example: “For the sin we have committed before You by letting small babies die of cold quite legally in our rich nation.” Etc.
etc.)
© 1995 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995)
(This prayer can also be used in Avinu Malkenu: “Chamol alenu v-al olalenu ve-tapenu.”)
SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE JEWISH TRADITION
Hallalujah. Praise the Lord, O my soul.
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises unto my God while yet I have breath.
Put not your trust in princes,
In a mere man in whom there is no help.
When his breath departs, he returns to dust,
In that very day his thoughts perish.
Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
Whose hope is in the Lord his God,
Who made heaven and earth,
The sea, and all that is within;
Who keepeth faith forever;
Who rendereth justice for the oppressed,
Who giveth bread to the hungry;
The Lord setteth the captives free.
The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind;
The Lord raiseth up them that are bowed down:
The Lord loveth the righteous.
The Lord protecteth the strangers;
He upholdeth the fatherless and the widow;
But the way of the wicked He doth confuse.
The Lord shall reign forever
Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations.
Hallelujah.
--Psalm 146
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bonds of tyranny, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless and the unfortunate into your home, that when you see the naked you clothe him, and that you do not hide yourselves from a fellow man?
--Isaiah 58
CLOTHE THE NAKED, FEED THE HUNGRY
A member of my congregation told me this story. He was having a sharp debate with an Orthodox friend, who criticized him for not being religious enough. My congregant protested, saying, “I am religious, and I am also somewhat observant, according to my own standards. You, on the other hand, are observant, but not truly religious.”
“How so?” asked the traditional friend.
“Tell me,” asked my congregant in a challenging way, “what is the Haftarah on Yom Kippur afternoon?”
The answer came back swiftly. “The Book of Jonah, of course. Everyone knows that!”
“Now tell me what Haftarah is read on Yom Kippur morning.” The traditionalist could not answer. My congregant continued, “In my way of thinking, the Haftarah from Isaiah on Yom Kippur morning is more important than the one for Yom Kippur afternoon. It deals with clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and freeing the oppressed. That is the real meaning of the fast, explains Isaiah. If you don’t even know what the Haftarah is about, then you are not truly religious!”
I am not sure whether we can judge anyone’s religiosity or level of observance from one instance. But surely it is a terrible shame that so few people are in synagogue early on Yom Kippur morning to hear the bristling words of Isaiah, calling upon our conscience to be more just, more kind, more involved in relieving the pain of the oppressed, and helping to solve some of society’s most difficult problems.
--Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins
Reprinted from:
Days of Awe...and Justice
The Jewish Social Justice Network’s Resources for the High Holy Days
© JSJN, September 2001
JEWISH FUND FOR JUSTICE (New York City)
Yom Kippur Study Session
Worker’s Rights in the Jewish Tradition
Isaiah’s Vision
Probably the best known practice associated with the observance of Yom Kippur is the day-long fast. It is often taught that Jews refrain from eating and drinking on Yom Kippur so they can devote themselves wholeheartedly to prayer and the process of teshuvah, or repentance. By not expending energy to meet our physical needs on the Day of Atonement, traditional sources state, we are free to concentrate on higher matters. We are free to focus on our relationship to God, to our people, and to all humanity.
The act of abstaining from food and drink, then, is more than merely a physical process. It is also an attempt to create a more moral life for ourselves and for those around us, and to examine those impediments, whether they be personal or societal, that stand in the way of this vision. Indeed, as the Yom Kippur morning Haftorah reading from the Book of Isaiah makes clear, if we fast without pledging to change ourselves and our community, we have missed the main purpose of the day.
Consider the words of the prophet in Chapter 58: 5-7:
Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when the Lord is favorable?
No, this is the fast that I desire:
To unlock fetters of wickedness,
To untie the bands of perverseness,
To let oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.
The Plight of Low-Income Workers
Many of the social ills that Isaiah laments can be linked to economic hardship--not having enough money to eat, to have decent shelter, or to finance life’s necessities. In our own time, we, too, see the consequences of people not having enough money to survive day-to-day. Though the country seems to be prosperous, our soup kitchens are filled to the brim, our homeless shelters are unable to accommodate all those who need help, and tens of millions are unable to afford basic needs: adequate health insurance, reliable transportation, or access to banking services and lines of credit.
Many of these ills, it is widely acknowledged, would be alleviated if all people who were capable of working could find decent jobs at decent wages. While policy makers, economists and business leaders debate the best way to achieve this goal there is an economic fact that is often overlooked in this discussion: millions of Americans who work full-time do not make enough money to lift themselves, or their families, out of the stranglehold of poverty. Indeed, someone who works 35 hours a week at a minimum wage job at $5.15 an hour would barely raise him or herself above the poverty line (which is just $8,600 for a single person), and would fall far short of lifting his or her family above the poverty line, which is $13,032 for a family of three, and $17,184 for a family of four.
According to the Bible, Jews are required to pay special attention to the needs of low-income workers. In Deuteronomy 24 we learn:
You shall not abuse a needy or destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of communities of your land.
You must pay him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is needy and he sets his life on it; else he will cry to the Lord against you and you will incur guilt.
Medieval commentary on this passage offers insights into the concerns of low-income workers, both ancient and modern. Nachmanides, a 13th-century Spanish scholar, tries to explain why the Torah insists that one must pay a day laborer on the same day he or she completes the job. He writes:
“Like most day-laborers, he is poor, and ‘he sets his life’ on this wage--so he can purchase necessities, buy food and stay alive....the intention [here] is that we should pay him at the end of the day, for if we do not immediately pay him when he leaves from his work, he will go home...and he will die of hunger at night.”
Another scholar, Rashi, writing in 11th-century France, offers an explanation for the words “and he sets his life on it” in Verse 15:
“For this wage, he exposes his life to potentially deadly situations--he mounts a steep staircase, or hangs off a [high] tree to do his work.”
Employers Need To Follow “Local Custom”
The mishnah, compiled around 220 C.E., emphasizes our responsibility to treat low-income workers according to local custom. in many cases, this standard exceeds the letter of the law. Consider this statement in Baba Metzia 7:1:
If one hired day-laborers and asked them to work early [in the morning] or late [in the evening], he has no right to force them [to do so] in any locality where it is not customary to work early of to work late; where it is the custom to furnish them with food, he must supply them [with it]; if it is the custom to provide them with sweet candies, he must provide it--everything should be according to local custom.
In light of the Mishnah paragraph, evaluate this contemporary statement by Michael S. Perry, former executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee:
“The right to appeal to local customs as a source of authority has echoes in a number of contemporary industrial relations practices, such as the requirement that builders on federally or state-funded construction projects pay ‘prevailing wages’ to their w
