Earlier today (early in April) I was out in my pathetic little garden pulling a winter's worth of weeds and letting all the various disparate input of the past weeks roll around in my head -- often my version of daily prayer -- when a bunch of them knit together into a discernible pattern for a moment! At the top of my brain were, in no rational order: events in Kosovo; a million specifics of my Pesach celebrations, which are still going on as I write; the Sabarneh family near Bethlehem, a Palestinian family facing demolition of their home; a conversation last night with Cecile about interfaith activities, the next Bar/Bat Mitzvah class, on the medieval Jewish philosophers; a luscious (to palate and heart alike) visit with my mom; an inspiring e-mail from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, saying in part that he sees a renaissance of activism in the Jewish world and wants it to be based not only in politics but in Jewish values and teachings; Shabbat dinner with Mina and Jeff and friends last Friday night, during which my hero, Arnold Sternberg, told a story of Waskow's first reawakening to Judaism during the March on Washington in '68; and, for reasons you'll see in a moment, ruminations on the amazing Betty Deutsch (among others) and all the great good works she does, in our community and in the world. Below all this immediate stuff (what a rich life I lead!) was the ongoing central question of life, which is, of course, what best to do with each day???
This question needles me in a particular way. My own specifics, which are not unlike many people's up here, is that I have a colorful past as a full-time hellraiser, in my case trying to agitate for justice for homeless people in Los Angeles. It was amazing, exciting, sometimes even successful, and ultimately not a path I wanted to (or could, no doubt) stay on forever. A lot of you were activists in the past too, Freedom Riding, organizing and teaching in places like the South Bronx, resisting the Vietnam war, serving in the Peace Corps, fighting for abortion rights and the ERA. Maybe more recently you've been involved with Central American refugees or with the great struggle over the forests and waters among whom we live. Nowadays I, like many of us, do smaller, more local good deeds, less intensely, more sporadically, with a lot less drama. And I wonder often, what really matters? The big struggles out at the edges of human suffering? Or the smaller deeds of normal kindness, which help to preserve a healthy community? A year ago I asked that question in the Family Class. Almost everyone gave the latter answer, the young people especially. "Just be a good person," they said in all kinds of ways. I wasn't so sure then, and I'm not so sure now.
Until, that is, I solved it in my garden. And not just for myself but for all of us! There is a concept in Jewish law called "lifnim mi-shurat ha-din," literally, "between the lines of the law." "Din," the law, tells us what is required of all of us; that which is beyond those requirements ("between the lines") is considered to be meritorious but not mandatory. Thus it is considered "din," mandatory, for every Jew to give a percentage (between 5 and 20% says Maimonides) of their income to the larger community. One might consider that to be like taxes. Giving beyond that level, "between the lines of the law," is meritorious (crazy, says Maimonides, actually...)
In my garden today I realized that for each of us there should be a level of involvement in making justice which is mandatory and a level beyond which is "between the lines." One more distinction is necessary here. This one comes (as do so many crucial clarities in my thought and many of ours!) from conversation with Ira Rosenberg. Ira considers it important to distinguish between charity and justice work. In his thought, and consequently in mine too, charity work maintains the safety net, while justice work addresses injustice. (I just heard Arnold make the same distinction when talking to the youth group. He calls one "social service" and the other "social action." Same point, though. He, not surprisingly, likes "action!") Justice work goes to the place where wrong is being done, or right is being neglected, and it agitates for change. Thus there is inevitably a challenge, a fight, in working for justice. There is a way of doing charity work (this is now Margaret again, though I think Ira might agree) so that it is also agitates for justice -- for example building food banks and shelters that not only meet immediate needs but also, by their very success, underline the gravity of hunger and homelessness in our communities and cry out against the policies that impoverish people in the first place. So here is the din, the mandate: every one of us should have both a short term and a long term involvement in creating justice or at least assuaging its absence. In the short term there come moments of emergency, such as the present one with regard to Kosovo, when the world is called upon to cry out against a grave wrong. I'm sure all of you, like me, have been thinking, praying and struggling to find some kind of personal "emergency response" to the ethnic cleansing of Albanian Moslems by Serbs under the leadership of their President Milosevic. These responses don't have to be brilliant, but they have to be quick. Here I think back to the wisdom of another good friend, Mary Ellen Burton-Christie, who said a long time ago, back when boatloads of Southeast Asian refugees were fleeing Vietnam and Cambodia, "I couldn't think what else to do, so I gave enough money that it hurt me." Always a good response -- help to fund the people who thought ahead and are already there, doing the work (suggestions below with regard to Kosovars...) Urgent letters and calls to political leaders are also good, time-tested emergency responses.
Beyond the emergency response, I believe that it is 'din,' incumbent upon every one of us, to use our particular gifts to make a long-term commitment to seeking justice in some particular place where justice is lacking. Maybe you have travelled someplace and seen a need first hand, or you know someone who is doing work that moves you, or you have a special talent that lends itself to a particular kind of endeavor. Or maybe your heart just moves you to be active in a particular area. It is my belief that "emergencies" arise because there is never enough of the long, slow, patient work of seeking peace and justice through smaller tasks over years and decades. I recently received a letter from the folks at the Campaign for Secure Dwellings, who are organizing advocacy on behalf of Palestinians whose homes have been demolished or who face demolition. They present documentation showing that letters, phone calls and lobbying visits to protest the demolition policy have saved half the threatened homes AND made home demolition a top political issue in Israel and in the US with regard to Israel. Amnesty International, over many more years, can show something similar -- the long, slow campaign to advocate against torture of prisoners of conscience has saved individual lives and also made human rights a higher political priority in many diplomatic settings than it would have been otherwise.
When we look back and try to discern in retrospect what ended the Vietnam War or caused the dismantling of apartheid or garnered voting rights for women or African Americans or gained a moratorium on nuclear testing or on logging old growth forests (from my mouth to God's ear on the last two!) sometimes it appears that there was a decisive event. But you don't have to look too closely to realize that millions of small acts of advocacy and resistance paved the way for the action that seemed to turn the tide. The big social struggles are fought for years, decades and lifetimes, mostly in small deeds. Sometimes, as with poverty or racism or militarism, it hardly seems that there is any gain at all. But we can certainly imagine how much worse the world would be were it not for tireless advocacy on these fronts over many years. At our Yom Hashoah service Mina spoke eloquently about "
thinking globally and acting locally." I think, especially in light of the world events of the day, I might phrase that slightly differently: "Think globally; act sThere's nothing I can do about things happening halfway around the world specifically." Lots of people have been saying, "d." "Nobody is asking me what Clinton should do about Kosovo..." Usually I think acting locally is plenty. But today it seems that, while no one has handed any of us the power to stop large-scale injustice single handedly, we're just abdicating if we don't weigh in even on the "big" questions.
Rabbi Tarfon taught: "Ours is not to complete the task, but neither are we free to abdicate from it..." The point is to do something, regularly, vigorously and diligently, in some area to make a better world. Deeds done in one area flow into another: what is done locally affects other locales. The struggle for independence in India -- led by Mahatma Gandhi of blessed memory, but actually executed in millions of specific acts by thousands of ordinary citizens -- set the stage for the nonviolent civil rights movement in this country, which in turn paved the way for the antinuclear movement, which in turn had lessons to offer for those taking up the struggle for animal rights and forest defense. I'm not sure that quantity matters so much, even, as simply the long term commitment to tackling some area of injustice. The tasks are great, greater than most of us. But our deeds are also of greater consequence than we often think they are.
It's not often (I hope!) that I say in this column, "This is something you SHOULD do." But yes, today I offer a prescription for whatever it is worth: a long term commitment to specific deeds of justice, coupled with emergency responses when they are called for. And then, God willing, plenty of time for the garden.
Copyright 1999 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Last updated 04/17/99 (rge)