My Musings

Last Sunday I was a paid cooperative at the Weaver’s way Coop. For those of you that do not know a paid cooperative is a member of the Co-op who is paid to work and I’m guessing it’s because the store did not get any members to volunteer for a particular shift. It’s pretty chilled work and working there is kind of cool especially after a long week or day of rabbinical school.  My shift started at 7:30 in the morning about an hour and half before the store opened. I was assigned to bakery duty. They ordered a ton of bread that day and my job was to sort it, price it and put it in it’s proper place. As I was putting rolls, bagels, baguettes  and buns in their proper places it dawned on me that next Sunday will be Pesach.

This got me to thinking, if they call me next Sunday morning to work and they want me to work in the bakery, can I? The over whelming answer that I found was no. So the mere handling of chametz is also forbidden?

The Torah commandments regarding chametz are:

• To remove all chametz from one’s home, including things made with chametz, before the first day of Passover. (Exodus 12:15).
• To refrain from eating chametz or mixtures containing chametz during Passover. (Exodus 13:3, Exodus 12:20, Deuteronomy 16:3).
• Not to possess chametz in one’s domain (i.e. home, office, car, etc.) during Passover (Exodus 12:19, Deuteronomy 16:4).

This is something that I had not thought of before. One of the reasons that I work at the Co-op is for spending money. The money I make there will not make me rich, it will not pay my bills, but every time I work there I get cash and it keeps me from going into my own bank account. As I started putting the bread away I wondered what if this were my real Job or your real job and you were just an hourly employee with no paid vacation time, no union and basically could not afford to take a week off from work? What would you do? What would I do?

I started to wonder if these laws really work in today’s society. I have never been one of those Jews that was worried about my food. I mean, sure I refrain from eating chametz but for me, I had always thought about Passover being about freedom and redemption not about chametz being near me.

I talked to a rabbi friend of mine and she told me to look at the prosbul. To me this initially sounded like some kind of sporting event.  The Torah mandates a Sabbatical year, known as Shmita, every seventh year. During the Shmita year all debts are cancelled. This is one of the many laws in the Torah meant to protect the poor and disadvantaged, affording them a chance to escape from eternal debt. In chapter 15 of D’varim the Torah teaches us that part of the observance of the sabbatical year must include forgiveness of loans made to fellow Jews. And G-d also warns us that, as this year approaches, we should not refuse loans to our poor brothers and sisters because this would be viewed by God as a sin. The wealthy refused to loan money during the latter years of the seven year cycle refusing the poor even a temporary opportunity to make ends meet. The rabbis, under the guidance of Hillel created a legal loophole in Jewish law. The Rabbis enacted a rabbinic exception to Jewish Law in which a loans were to be transferred to the courts as the law of remission does not apply to loans within the public domain, and lenders knew their money was safe even following the Sabbatical year, and they were likely to loan to the poor.

Could we do this today? Why? Why not? I ask because Pesach for many families creates additional burdens, and families incur additional cost and my concern is with how the custom of worrying about food changes the experience of Pesach from what the Torah envisioned both practically and ideologically. In this country, most Ashkenazi Jews are forced to change their purchasing patterns to a much greater extent than the original law required. For example, high fructose corn syrup, because this ingredient is in so many products many Jews buy special forms, of products at extra cost, that without this custom could be permitted in their usual forms.  I wonder have we changed the experience of Pesach from what God ordained in the desert and if the rabbis could change one Torah law, to benefit the poor can we change another law that is mandated in the Torah?

***Update: I worked at the Co-op last night and was on bakery duty

In Parshah Mishpatim we transition in Exodus from a narrative, a story of a people, their enslavement, and their journey to freedom to

“now these are the laws that you Moses, shall set before them.”

Why do we care about this? The Israelites didn’t know how to act as a free people after all they had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. And needed guidance on how to behave as free people. Since the Israelites had left slavery it should not be surprising that the first set of laws mentioned in this parshah are laws about slavery. Exodus 21:2-6 says:

If you buy a Hebrew slave he is to serve you for seven years. But the seventh year, he shall go free.”

What is surprising to me is that the Torah does not abolish slavery. Instead it lists a serious of laws on protecting the slave. The legalized slavery of the Torah only comes to correct some of the pitfalls of slavery. Slavery did exist during this time as an institution, as long as it existed, the Torah gave us laws to protect slaves from abuse and mistreatment. It’s almost as if the Torah could not imagine a world without slavery. Why doesn’t the torah just abolish slavery? Jonathan Sacks says:

“The Torah has already given us an implicit answer. Change is possible in human nature, but it takes time: Time on a vast scale, centuries, even millennia….So slavery is to be abolished, but it is a fundamental principle of Gods relationship with us that he does not force us to change faster than we are able to do of our own free will. So Mishpatim does not abolish slavery, but it sets in motion a series of fundamental laws that will lead people, to abolish it of their own accord.

Slavery, has existed probably since the beginning of time. Before modern era, slavery was not based on race, it was based on debt, crime or war. In the case of war, when one group of people defeated the other group, they would often enslave the loser and often these were women.

When slavery came to the New World, there was such a demand for labor that slavery became a whole new animal. Slavery in the United States was not based on debt, war, or a crime, it was only based on biological traits, what we now call race. And slavery became inheritable. I mention this because slavery in this country was wrapped in religious conviction. Meaning that on one hand according to Fredrick Douglass’ autobiography the cruelest slave masters and overseers were devout Christians, usually folks that had some kind of a conversion experience or today we call them born again. Further reading of Douglass’ does not imply that he believed christians were evil. He makes a clear distinction between Christianity of America and the Christianity proper. These slave masters used text in the Torah, to justify slavery. On the other hand you have folks like the Quakers, Methodist and the early evangelicals, campaigning to end slavery. These devout christians were also driven by religious conviction, inspired albeit by the narrative of the Exodus story.

As an American, a woman, a Jew and a person of color I feel intimately connected to the history of slavery. Not only the slavery mentioned in this weeks Torah portion but the history of slavery in the United States and the slavery that continues today. These verses in the Torah reflect the time when the Israelites had crossed over the line and moved from slavery into freedom. You were strangers in the land of Egypt, but now you are a free people and never allowed to forget the experience of slavery.

The laws embedded in this week’s portion, and the ones that will follow stress, that we are to cherish freedom, abhor oppression and deal honestly and equitably with both those whom we love and those whom we hate. We are called upon to build a society that promotes individual responsibility and provides legal protections for all its members.

microaggressions:

I was walking behind a male coworker when he stopped in his tracks and began backing up into me, dancing, while singing “Big Booty Bitches.” I’m a woman. Made me uncomfortable, angry, demeaned.

Crazy

(Source: microaggressions)

Started keeping a fitness blog here Sandra’s Journal

Master of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone;
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day
Among the trees and grass—among all growing things
And there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with
the One to whom I belong.
May I express there everything in my heart,
And may all the foliage of the field - all grasses trees and plants -
Awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into
the words of my prayer
So that my prayer and speech are made whole
Through the life and spirit of all growing things,
Which are made as one by their transcendent Source.
May I then pour out the words of my heart
Before your Presence like water, O Source of All,
And lift up my hands to You in worship, on my behalf, and
that of my children.
​Reb Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810)

“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions….” -Audre Lorde