Source: Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America 2011

Three years ago, I traveled with several JRC members and nearly 1,500 others to Postville, Iowa. We went to show our solidarity with 400 immigrant workers of the Agriprocessor kosher meat packing plant who had recently been arrested and imprisoned. It was, at the time, the largest single-site workplace raid in US history.

After participating in an interfaith service, we marched through the streets of Postville. As we reached the downtown area, we met up with angry counter-protestors, many of whom were holding signs condemning the invasion of “illegal immigrants” into their communities. One woman held a large sign that still sticks in my mind – it read: “What Would Jesus Do? Obey the Law.” I distinctly remember pointing out the irony of this sign to a fellow marcher, considering Jesus is actually considered to be one of the earliest practitioners of civil disobedience.

Now, I certainly don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong when people of faith invoke religion to support their political positions.  From the prophets to Martin Luther King, faith has played a powerful and important role inspiring movements of political transformation.

But on that day in Postville, I was reminded that religion generally works best as a force for social good when it is leveraged on behalf of the the vulnerable and the oppressed.  But when those in power use faith as a justification for their oppression of the weak – frankly, that’s when we tend to witness religion at its worst.

To put it in the most basic terms, I’d say religion and politics mix well when they are used for the purposes of liberation. When they are used on behalf of empire – when they are wielded in what my Christian colleagues might call a “Constantinian” fashion – religion and politics generally tend to make for a pretty fatal mixture.

That’s why I reacted so instinctively when I saw that sign in Postville. “What Would Jesus Do? Obey the Law.” Really?  Even if those laws are oppressive?  Even if those laws are enacted by an all-powerful empire and wielded as a weapon against the weak?  Now I’m not a Christian theologian, but I was always led to believe this was exactly the kind of thing that used to drive Jesus nuts.

However you might choose to read your Bible, this much is fairly clear to me: if our religious tradition teaches us anything useful at all about laws, it’s that we need them to safeguard the well-being of the poor, the stranger, the widow the orphan. For their sake and ours, we are obliged to use the rule of law on behalf of the weakest – to protect those who are most at risk in our community.

I mention this because I strongly believe there has been a growing backlash against these kinds of laws in our country over the past few decades.  Government’s role in creating a stable foundation for the most vulnerable is currently under vicious political attack. And I’m very sad to see this political backlash supported by growing religious rhetoric.

Indeed, politicians, clergy and pundits, are increasingly invoking God when they attack the role of government. They preach that the real evil in our midst is “Big Government,” that higher taxes are immoral. The mere suggestion that society has a responsibility to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth  – well, this simply represents secular, godless (or God forbid) “socialist” values.

Now that the 2012 campaign is gearing up, this religious rhetoric is entering our political discourse in some pretty surreal ways. Recently, for example, Michelle Bachmann responded to Hurricane Irene by saying it was God’s warning to Washington to rein in taxes and runaway spending.  And not long ago. Texas governor Rick Perry gave an ersatz Dvar Torah in which he compared the government to Pharaoh, claiming that we’ve all “become slaves to the government.”

One of the most popular financial gurus in the country, a Christian fundamentalist named Dave Ramsey, preaches the same sort of gospel.  His signature advice to his followers is to handle money “God’s way.” What would it mean for our country to run its economy “God’s way?” According to Ramsey, God’s ways would not include Social Security, since God would not want to invest for the long-term at such a modest rate of return. God’s ways also don’t include progressive taxation, since God desires us to emulate the habits of the wealthy. And God’s ways certainly do not mean creating government programs to protect the vulnerable, since God commands people to help themselves.

Now I know we’re tempted to chuckle when we hear this kind of stuff. But lest you think these views only reflect the feelings of a radical few, you should know that these kinds of religious ideas are finding traction – and they are growing increasingly popular.  According to a just-released study by Baylor University,  approximately one in five Americans believe that God opposes government regulation and champions the free market.  As one researcher put it, there is a significant demographic that actually believes “the invisible hand of the free market is really God at work.”

There are so many things that trouble me about these kinds of religious ideas – but I think what troubles me the most is their inherent moral insensitivity. For me, saying “God helps those who help themselves” is just a theological version of “the poor and the hungry will just have to fend for themselves.”

So I’ll go out on a limb here and say that big government is not our enemy. On the contrary, I’d say it is our central religious imperative.  In fact, I think that those who bash big government have got it backward.  The real religious issue here is not that our government is oppressing American citizens or that we need to minimize its role in our lives.

No, if there is one critical religious and moral concern facing our national community – the concern that frankly we should be shouting from the rooftops – it’s that the US, the wealthiest nation in the world, has the greatest wealth inequity of any Western industrialized nation.  It’s that the top 1 percent of the households in our country hold 40 percent of our country’s wealth.  It’s that government as enacted laws that enable the rich to get richer while the laws that protect the poor are slowly but surely being dismantled.

Along these lines, I’d add that our religious concern should be aroused by the fact that the number of people currently living below the poverty line is almost 47 million – the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau. Or the fact that in the world’s wealthiest nation, one in four children under the age of six live in poverty. That 33 million adults and 17.2 million children live in food insecure households.  And of course,  it’s the fact that these numbers all across the board are significantly higher for people of color.

Now, I know there are many in the religious community who do share these concerns and who work tirelessly to alleviate them.  People of faith make up a large percentage of those in the trenches – and they know better than anyone the real spiritual concerns facing poor and middle class Americans today.

But for too many reasons, these concerns have not been politically mobilized. They are being drowned out by a louder religious voice in our political culture – one that attacks the role of government and insists that the best way we can help the poor and the unemployed is to insist, in essence, that “God will provide.”

And that’s a real shame, because one of the ethical  glories of Biblical tradition – a tradition that is shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike – are the myriad of commandments that demand society distribute its wealth equitably – so that the most vulnerable among us may never slip through the cracks.

So, my friends, it’s time for a little Torah study. I’d like to try something that in today’s cultural climate might be considered sacrilegious. I’d like to make the religious case for big government.

Let’s start with Deuteronomy 15:11 – one of the Torah’s most famous teachings on economic justice:

The poor will never cease from the land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kinsman in your land.

At the heart of this commandment is a profound challenge. For whatever reason, the world is a broken place. Economic inequity will forever be a constant for society – and so we are told we must never accommodate it at face value.  We are bidden to take responsibility for the poor in our midst and consistently do what we must to alleviate their burdens because they will always be among us.

It’s also interesting that the commandment “open your hand to the poor” is written in the singular – like most of the laws in Deuteronomy.  As such, it commands each and every one of us, as individuals, to honor the value of tzedakah.

But at the same time, God commands these laws to the nation as a whole. Economic justice is at once an individual and a collective responsibility. In other words, individual charity is desired and important, but it is not enough. At the end of the day, the Bible views the creation of economic equity as a communal obligation as well.

Another famous example of this comes in the book of Leviticus, where the Israelites are subjected to what might be called significant “government regulation.” Indeed, those who use religion to bash big government might be surprised to discover that the Bible contains a commandment that all Israelite farmers must leave the corners of their fields unharvested so the poor and the stranger may glean from them. And they’d probably be appalled to learn that every fiftieth year, on the Jubilee Year, all land reverts back to its original owners and all debts are automatically forgiven.

And when it comes to taxes, the Bible makes no bones about it: “thou shalt pay.” Far from being a necessary evil, paying tax is viewed as a sacred obligation. Examples of taxes abound in the Torah: the Israelites are commanded to pay a 10% tithe for the poor, a tithe for the Levites, offerings for the priests and a flat shekel tax for communal sacrifices.

Neither does this kind of anti-government, anti-tax mentality exist in any meaningful way in Jewish tradition itself.  On the contrary, in a classic line from Pirke Avot (3:2), Rabbi Hanina teaches,

Pray for the well-being of the government; for were it not for fear of it, each person would swallow the other alive.

Jewish law has little specific to say about the government redistribution of wealth, since when halachah developed Jews were living exclusively under the rule of foreign governments.  However, the Rabbis made a point of ruling that Jews are obligated to pay taxes imposed by the governments under which they lived unless they were patently unjust. The ruling stems from the famous Talmudic principle, “Dina d’malkhuta dina.” (Bava Kamma 113a)  Literally, “the law of the land is the law.”

In general, the rabbis created a system in which the rule of law ensured a society of equity and economic justice.  This is not to say they advocate “class warfare” (to use a term being bandied about a lot these days). Equity means ensuring the protection at of the weak, without compromising the welfare of the strong. In her book “There Shall Be No Needy,” my colleague and friend Rabbi Jill Jacobs, sums this idea up well:

(Jewish Law) aims to mitigate inequity so as to prevent one person from exploiting or degrading another. It tends to favor and protect the more vulnerable party, while still looking out for the well-being of the more powerful one. Thus the law prevents selling needed medicines for more than the going rate, while also allowing doctors to accept money for their work; permits workers to leave in the middle of the day, while also limiting this permission when the labor market is tight and the crops are in danger of spoiling; and prevents a landlord from evicting a tenant suddenly, while also allowing the lease to be broken if the landlord loses his or her own home. When the balance tilts too far to one side, the principle of tikkun olam (in its earliest rabbinic manifestation) allows for adjustments to the legal system such that society functions more equitably.

These religious values express a certain essential world view about society and human nature.  At the end of the day, we’re being taught that issues of human poverty and wealth imbalance are too massive – and the stakes simply too high – to be left to individual noblesse oblige.  We are taught to never assume that left to their own devices, those who have will naturally take care of those who don’t.  And it’s downright dangerous to claim that God, working through the divine machinations of the free market, will somehow provide.

This does not mean that markets are bad or that they are immoral. Markets are by nature amoral – sometimes the results of market processes are good and sometime they are bad. That’s why it’s morally dangerous to rely on markets to protect the public good. While markets are incredibly useful and productive institutions, they are only moral insofar as they are structured to act morally. And that’s why we need government as a way to pursue our moral goals – so that we can do the right thing when the market fails to do so.

Past experience has shown us that corporations will not always provide safe working conditions or livable wages, that mortgage brokers will not voluntarily regulate themselves from predatory lending, that private schools cannot ensure that all our children get a decent education, that companies will not clean up their pollution on their own, and that “let the buyer beware” is not going to protect us from dangerous products. No, if we want to real social and economic equity in our country, we must acknowledge – in fact we must champion – the role of government in our national community.

Some might be surprised to know that one of the most eloquent American religious advocates of this point was none other than Dr. Martin Luther King. Most Americans view King primarily as a civil rights leader – but in fact at the end of his life, he was very outspoken against economic injustices in our nation. King wrote and spoke widely against the United States’ economic system for creating a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

To his credit, King understood that racial injustice could not be divorced from the deeper issue of socio-economic justice. To this end he publicly advocated a variety of government programs, including the creation of jobs by government and the institution of a guaranteed annual minimal income.

Of course, today our nation venerates King virtually on the level of a founding father. But as we prepare to unveil the new Martin Luther King memorial in Washington DC, I wonder what King would say about the state of economic justice in our country today. What he would say if he knew that this $120 million monument that was paid for largely through corporate donations – the largest being $10 million from General Motors, which now uses the King memorial in its car commercials?

As our nation celebrates Dr. King’s memory next month, do you think we’ll be prepared to honor his full legacy? To remind ourselves that he spoke passionately about the poor and working men and women, that he urged our government to create new programs and to guarantee a livable income for all American citizens?  And that these values came directly from his Biblically-inspired religious faith?

Now I am not saying that saying we should look to the government to be the answer to all of our problems. Of course a bureaucracy as large as the federal government is bound to be inefficient and wasteful in too many ways. But at the same time, I’d say it’s prejudiced in the extreme to cite inefficiency in order to question an essential function of government itself.

I’m also struck that those who rail against “big government” tend to use this term very, very selectively.  We rarely hear them use this claim, for instance, in reference to hundreds of billions of dollars our government allocates for defense spending – which include the maintenance of hundreds of military garrisons all over the world and the funding of two never-ending wars that a majority Americans believe we should not even be fighting at all.  We rarely hear “big government” directed toward federal laws passed in order to give significant tax breaks to the richest citizens in our country. And we certainly don’t hear conservative politicians and pundits refer to laws that outlaw abortion rights or same sex marriage as “big government.”

No, like everything else in politics, this term is a convenient euphemism. Underneath the slogan, I believe there lies an ideology of radical individualism – a value system that views social safety nets with disdain and believes that wealth will naturally trickle down from the wealthy to the rest of society.

But it’s just not working that way.  The “trickle-downers” tell us that the best way to create jobs and jump start the economy is to get government off the backs of business. For me, the most compelling argument against this theory is to simply take a look around. We’ve had more than three decades of government deregulation and what do we have to show for it? A steadily rising gap between the rich and poor, an increasingly squeezed middle class and ominously rising unemployment.  It’s simply not working.

We’re currently witnessing some encouraging signs that our administration is ready to take on this fight. Last week, Obama unveiled a deficit reduction plan that proposed $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and Americans earning over $250,000 a year. And thanks to the support of Warren Buffet, it also includes a tax on the super-rich.  And sure enough, already the mere suggestion that the rich should pay their fair share is getting slammed by many politicians and pundits as “class warfare.”

Class warfare. It takes some chutzpah to claim that in a nation where the top 1% hold 40% of the wealth, a modest little deficit reduction plan can be called “class warfare.” And anyhow, what’s wrong with a little class warfare?  When the Torah demands that society actively redistribute its wealth, isn’t that class warfare? Don’t we gather around the seder table every year to celebrate what is, after all, class warfare?  When it comes right down to it, isn’t economic justice worth fighting for?

For me, one of the ironies of all this is that while I do believe government has a role to play in ensuring equity, I’m not all that confident that our elected leaders will be the ones to lead the way to this kind of reform. I think one of the hardest lessons of these past two years was that so many of us were inspired by the Obama campaign to believe in the power of the government to effect real social change – only to have these hopes dashed as mere illusions.

To put it bluntly – when it comes to the work of social change, I think we’re placing far too much faith in our political leaders and far too little on ourselves.  I’ll return to what I said at the outset: religion works best as a force for social good when it is invoked on behalf of the the vulnerable and the oppressed – when it speaks truth to power in order to shift power.  Politicians to the left and to the right – no matter how inspiring they may be – are part of the power elite in this country. Who will hold them to account if we do not?

That is what religion at its best has always done – and that is what the faith community desperately needs to do today.  We in the interfaith community share a venerable religious vision that speaks directly to the crises of this country. It’s a religious vision that understands the world is a broken place and that it doesn’t get fixed by itself. A vision that disavows the simplistic faith that “God will provide” and is rooted in the conviction that society can never take the welfare of its weakest citizens for granted.

And we shouldn’t take times such as these for granted.  Alas, we know all too well that these are not merely theoretical issues for any of us.  We all know people who are suffering heartbreaking losses as a result of this horrid economy. There are members of our own congregation – people who are in this sanctuary as I speak to you who have lost their jobs, who have lost their savings, lost their homes.

Many of us are just not used to thinking of ourselves as vulnerable – but as the middle class slowly shrinks in our country, we’re coming to grips with a truly painful reality. That our lives may never really have been on such firm ground after all.  That our children are growing up in a world that is more fragile than we might ever have dreamed.

I know we are all doing what we can to reach out to those in our community who need our support now more than ever. It is times such as these that challenge us to access our highest selves.  But at the same time, I do believe that modern democratic government and its programs are also a reflection of our best selves – our most decent selves.

And if this is truly so, then attempts to drastically cut taxes and shrink the public sector can only serve to diminish our ability to act as responsible moral beings. The more we Americans buy into a vision of government as bad, the more we stand by as this institution is weakened, the more we weaken our ability to redeem our world.

I know you all join me in my prayer that this be a better year – a year of dignity and prosperity for all. For us, for our loved ones, for those we don’t know personally but whose humanity is ours and for whose welfare we are ultimately responsible.

May we do what we can, what we must to create a fair and equitable world in our day – and may we bequeath future of genuine hope to our children.

Amen.

From the NY Times:

Much of the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, has been struck this summer by one of the worst droughts in 60 years. But two Shabab-controlled parts of southern Somalia are the only areas where the United Nations has declared a famine, using scientific criteria of death and malnutrition rates.

I commend to you this report from Charity Navigator, which includes essential information about this tragic, urgent crisis along with the highest rated orgs currently doing relief work in the region.

This past April, the Forward reported:

(The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) has reported that poverty is almost twice as widespread in Israel, 19.9% of the population, compared to the OECD average, 10.9%. The gap between the overall standard of living in Israel and that of the lowest tenth of the population was three times higher than the OECD average. In its latest release of data, made public April 12, the OECD reported that 39% of Israelis find it “difficult” or “very difficult” to live on their current incomes, well above the OECD average of 24%.

Those stats might explain this more recent news out of Israel:

More than 150,000 protesters took to the streets in 12 Israeli cities, calling for a change in the division of wealth and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In Tel Aviv, an estimated 100,000 protesters marched from Habima Square to the Tel Aviv Museum. “We are happy to see the people of Israel taking to the streets, each in their own city, each with their own troubles, but many troubles that are common to all of us,” said one of the organizers, Yonatan Levy.

This one is a game changer, no question, but the jury is still out on how much it might eventually change, or what the game even is. Indeed, as Dahlia Scheindlin and Joseph Dana have just reported in +972:

Every grievance is coming out: there are slogans against the huge concentration of the country’s wealth into the hands of a very few, slogans raging against enormous economic gaps between rich and poor in Israel, lists of demands for just resource distribution and for various elements of a welfare state, salary hikes and lower costs, better education conditions and health care; against the national housing committees law, against the government, for Tahrir. At 10pm on Friday night, when a song group spontaneously burst into chants of “The people! Want! Social Justice!” one young woman sang out beatifically, “The people! Want! All Sorts of Things!”

It’s also notable that one critical cause of this economic disparity is glaringly absent from the protesters’ concern, as Aziz Abu Sarah noted last week:

What amazes me is many Israelis’ inability to make the connection between the continuation of the occupation and the domestic problems Israel faces today; Israel is building constantly in the West Bank but it is failing to provide housing to its citizens within Israel proper. The current Israeli government’s focus on improving living standards in settlements while failing to do the same for the rest of the country is a moral failure.

According to a Peace Now report published on July 20, settlers in the West Bank receive 69 percent discount on the value of the land (so that buyers have to pay only 31 percent of the price of the land) and 50 percent funding of the development costs of the building project. In 2009 Israel investment of settlements public building (excluding East Jerusalem) was 431 million shekels, which was 15.36 percent of all public investment in construction for housing that year, despite the fact that they compose only 4 percent of the residents of Israel.

Scheindlin/Dana drive this critical point home in their article as well:

On Friday, some protesters hassled other Palestinian protesters, citizens suffering from housing crises. It came to scuffles. The diminutive Palestinian flags they hung were removed. Joseph recalls the struggles against apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow south. Can we imagine the ruling classes there demanding “social justice” without addressing their gravest internal injustices? What does the term “social justice” mean if so many who don’t have it are left out? Sure, let’s protest exorbitant housing costs – but why call it “social justice” if the very crux of social justice, namely equality, is not addressed? Can Israelis have a social justice revolution without speaking about the rights of people they control and occupy?

The remarkable power of these grassroots protests is undeniable – but just how far it goes in shifting power still remains to be seen.

(While we wait, however, at least we can enjoy this great mix by Israeli viral video satirist Noy Alooshe – see above…)

One of the bravest, most astute critiques of the priorities of the American Jewish community has come, from all people, David Simon, creator of the HBO series “The Wire” and “Treme.”

Simon, who is the son of a national public relations director for B’nai B’rith, was asked to speak at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations in New Orleans last November to speak about the good work the Federation is doing in post-Katrina NOLA (where “Treme” is filmed.) To the surprise of his audience, he took the Jewish community to task for not doing nearly enough to help non-Jewish residents there.

Simon was recently interviewed for Tablet, where he elaborated at length on his criticisms.  Here are a few choice quotes (to which I can only add a hearty “right on!!”):

- Upon hearing that most of the $28 million raised by the Federation to help post-Katrina New Orleans was spent on restoring and rebuilding the city’s Jewish community:

At the point when they were doing that, tens of thousands of New Orleanians were still living elsewhere and couldn’t get home…The average income of a Jewish family in New Orleans was $180,000 a year. The average income in New Orleans, $30,000 a year. And you’re subsidizing the Jews? That hyper-segregation of the Jewish community from the problems in the world, that alienation from tragedy that isn’t tribal is one of the most disappointing things to me as a Jew.

- On the response of Jewish leaders when he would raise this issue with them:

…They go to the anecdotal. I’m like, “Listen, I’m talking systemically. Don’t give me your anecdotal bullshit that you went and sang with some Baptist choir or you had some Baptist choir come to your synagogue. Or that you guys had a day where you took canned food down. Come on. There are lives in the balance down there. This is the community where the people are the most vulnerable, where the desperation is profound.”

- On the Jewish Federations’ concern about “Jewish continuity:”

The preservation of the Jewish faith and people-hood, while an essential task, says nothing to any other nation beyond our own, especially if we preserve ourselves for no purpose other than the perpetuation of one branch of monotheistic thought. Surely, the world needs the Jewish mind and spirit for something more fundamental than that.

Until there is a hard moment of real self-reflection here, younger and more secular Jews like myself—who were raised in the tradition and who still are proud of their Jewishness—are going to be increasingly abandoning organized Jewish giving and going directly at the actual problems.

- On his controversial comment at the GA that the black urban poor are victims of  “a Holocaust in slow motion:”

No, there is no barbed wire around West Baltimore. No, there is no political imperative to segregate them from the greater society, or ultimately, to murder them en masse. That would be a Holocaust at normal speed. Instead, we have simply participated—either tacitly or actively—in constructing a national economic model that throws away 10 to 15 percent of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens. There is no work for more than half the adult black males in Baltimore. Other than the drug corners, of course. Can anyone argue that the percentage of human destruction among adult males of color in these neighborhoods has not for generations approached the genocidal?

Right on.

Please check out these two wonderful pieces about the current labor struggles in Wisconsin by Leon Fink, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, JRC member, and a member of our recent trip to Israel/Palestine. (You may recall he posted about his experiences on our tour for this very blog.)

In a piece he wrote for the News & Observer last month, Leon offers a profoundly important history lesson about The Wisconsin Idea – “a forward-looking set of policies developed under four Republican governors (most notably Robert M. La Follette and Francis McGovern) that proved a blueprint for a nationwide Progressive Era.”

(The Wisconsin Idea) helped lift Wisconsinites from the doldrums of the great depression of the 1890s into a prosperous “mixed” economy combining the resources of farm and factory with science, engineering and human welfare expertise rooted in a state university system centered in Madison.

The policy initiatives were legion. After years of retrenchment, Wisconsinites turned to “tax fairness” as a way of redistributing the burden for vital government services, inaugurating an inheritance tax on the rich and raising rates for railroads, insurance companies and utilities. The wage-earners of the state – recognized as suffering under “unequal conditions of contract” – were rewarded with pioneering statutes in worker’s compensation, health and safety regulations and extension schools for adult education…

It was a formula that soon made Wisconsin the envy of the nation on questions ranging from taxation to industrial relations to land use policy. All told, the Wisconsin Idea suggested that through a close working relationship among major stakeholders, as pioneer labor economist John R. Commons put it, “order, intelligence, care, and thought could be exercised by the state.”

(What else is there to say except the times they have a’changed?)

The second piece is an op-ed from today’s Chicago Trib. The title really says it all: “Et Tu Barack? The President Takes a Powder on Workers’ Plight.”

Leon begins by noting Obama’s visible absence amidst legions of Democrats (and even some Republicans) who showed up at a mass protest against WI Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill in Madison last Saturday.

For those who had such high hopes that Obama would truly fight for the working men and women of this country (see clip above) the answers are not pretty. As Leon sadly concludes:

People in the streets in Madison recognize the need for shared sacrifice. All they see is the rich and powerful taking their pound of flesh from the poor and weak. For Democrats and workers, Gov. Walker has become the poster child for the raid on their democratic rights and standard of living. However, one wonders how long it will be until the attention is turned to that man behind the curtain.

If you want to cut through the morass of misinformation being disseminated about the siege of Gaza, you should read Gaza Gateway – a website created by Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.

GG presents essential information on Gaza Strip border crossings by carefully monitoring the amount of traffic that Israel allows to pass through.  They also provide critical background information, such as the amount of goods allowed through relative to the needs of the population of Gaza.

I particularly recommend GG’s latest post – an ironic piece they call “How to Market Gaza as an Israeli Success Story: The Complete Guide.” It was apparently inspired by a recent report by the Government of Israel that summarized Israel’s “humanitarian activities” for the Gaza Strip in 2009/2010.

Here’s a taste:

Take things out of context. When you say that, “41 truckloads of equipment for the maintenance of the electricity networks were transferred”, you do not need to mention that those spare parts were waiting for many months for clearance, and that, at the end of 2009, the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company reported that 240 kinds of spare parts were completely out of stock or had dipped below the required minimum stock. Likewise, “There was a significant increase in the number of international organization staff entering the Gaza Strip” does not require explanation that, were the productive sector in Gaza not almost completely paralyzed, so many aid workers would not be needed and the number of aid recipients would not be so high. You also don’t need to explain that the high number of staff you quote might be misleading, since it’s likely you are counting individual entrances and not unique visitors (the same international aid workers enter and exit multiple times per month).

Demonstrate impartiality. Present the transfer of 44,500 doses of swine flu vaccine as having nothing to do with you. There is always a chance people will forget it is a border-transcending epidemic and that the head of the Gaza District Coordination Office himself said an outbreak in Gaza would endanger Israel.

Make it look like you are paying the bill. Use vague language such as “In 2009, Israel continued to supply electricity to the Gaza Strip”. Count on the fact that most people don’t know that Israel charges full payment for the electricity by deducting the amount from the VAT and taxes it collects for the Palestinian Authority via import into its territory.

And here’s a PS on my last post:

The Associated Students of UC Berkeley met Wednesday evening to debate and vote on whether or not to override their Presidents veto of the divestment resolution. After a marathon nine hour session, the vote came up short. As the evening ended, they voted to table a final vote on the bill. So it’s stay tuned…

In the wake of the terrifyingly tragic earthquake in Haiti, it has been gratifying to see private citizens give so generously to relief efforts. At the same time however, we shouldn’t forget that our own country’s policies can have a considerable impact on Haiti’s recovery. Check out what constitutional lawyer/human rights activist/Katrina survivor Bill Quigley has to say in his piece, “Ten Things the US Can and Should Do for Haiti.”

Item #3, for example:

Give Haiti grants as help, not loans. Haiti does not need any more debt. Make sure that the relief given helps Haiti rebuild its public sector so the country can provide its own citizens with basic public services.

Today was the second monthly fast day for Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza. To mark the occasion, a series of public vigils were held around the country (including one at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia) and as far away as Glasgow, Scotland. Here in the Chicago area, it was my honor to lead a vigil at the Evanston lakefront with my good friend and colleague, Rabbi Rebecca Lillian. Here we are with some of the participants, below:

Our campaign continues to grow. As of this writing we currently have 627 supporters, including 71 rabbis. I encourage you to join us, if you haven’t already – just click on the link above to become a supporter. We are continuously uploading important articles and resources, so be sure to check in regularly.

Speaking of important resources on the Gaza crisis, I commend to you the new report from Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement entitled “Red Lines Crossed: Destruction of Gaza’s Infrastructure.” See below for the full report. Click above to watch “Lift the Closure – Give Life a Chance” – a new online film recently released by eight Israeli human rights organizations to mark the two years of closure that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip.

Check out their impressive new Jewish Guide to Fair Trade – it has to be the most comprehensive resource of its kind.  It’s even more remarkable when you consider that it is the product of a wide-ranging coalition that includes every major British-Jewish denomination.

This campaign is but one project of Tzedek, a British org that self-describes itself as

…a voluntarily led Non-Governmental Organisation that draws upon the skills and resources of the Jewish Community to better the lives of those less fortunate. Tzedek aims to nurture and empower open-minded Jewish community leaders to promote the fight against extreme poverty.

Their new guide is much more than just Jewish lip-service to Fair Trade. It’s filled with lots of substantive info, including Jewish sources and curricula.

Any chance that the large Jewish community on the other side of the pond might follow their lead?

Click below to read:

Before I begin my remarks to you today, I’d like to do a brief review of my words from last night. For those of you who weren’t here, or who might have forgotten overnight, I talked about the concept of “sustainability”  and I shepped some naches over the ways that JRC has committed itself to the sustainability of our world. I also explored the concept of spiritual sustainability and how critical I believe it is for our lives. And toward the end of my remarks, I suggested briefly that our recent financial meltdown might well a sign that our country has been living an unsustainable manner – and that we’re currently experiencing the dire consequences of our behavior.

Now I know this word, “sustainability” is bandied about a great deal these days, in a variety of different contexts. Some might even consider it to be something of a buzzword. But the thing about buzzwords?  Sometimes it’s true, they do reflect temporary fads or the concept du jour. But in some instances the popularity of a particular word might just indicate an idea whose time has come.

So what does it mean when we say that something is “sustainable?” In the most basic formulation it simply means that something has the ability to thrive with permanence and continuity without exhausting limited resources. This is a fairly straightforward concept, but it is obvious that it becoming increasingly difficult for us to grasp.  In the Western world we tend to take our sustainability for granted.  In our country in particular, I believe our power and privilege creates the illusion of permanence – we take for granted that our resources are somehow inexhaustible; that everything upon which we’ve come to depend will somehow be magically sustained on its own accord.

But of course it isn’t so. The earth’s natural resources are not inexhaustible. Nor are the human resources of our communities. Nor are the economic resources of our nation. And if we continue to plunder or exploit any of these impermanent commodities, our wells will eventually run dry. This may seem patently obvious, but if it is, we certainly don’t seem to be getting it. The only way we will sustain the precious but limited resources of our world is if we ourselves take responsibility for their sustenance.  If we understand that their care and maintenance are up to us and only us. If we live mindful disciplined lives, taking care at every turn not to squander our blessings. Indeed, it is only when we see ourselves as primary agents of sustainability that we truly ensure a future for ourselves and our world.

The notion of a sustainable world is also a profoundly religious concept.  As a matter of fact, it’s the very first teaching in the Bible. In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God creates an ordered and orderly world – and along with it, God creates the means for its ongoing sustenance. The earth, in turn brings forth “seed-bearing plants…each true to its type, with its seed in it.” (1:2) God also creates the various species of the animal world each with the power to procreate and commands them to be fruitful and multiply. When God creates man and woman, God also commands them to be fruitful and multiply but then God goes one step further. God puts the ongoing care and sustenance of the earth in their hands.

For whatever reason, God doesn’t just take care of the world alone, nor does God create a world that can simply take care of itself. This sacred job is given to humanity just as creation is barely out of the starting gate. A famous Midrash – an early Rabbinic teaching – makes this point radically clear for us:

When God created the first human beings, God showed them around the Garden of Eden and said to them, ‘Look at my handiwork, my creation, how beautiful and balanced it is. Be careful not to ruin or destroy my world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.

The point here, I think, is clear. The world was designed to be sustained, but it is not self-sustaining. The future of the world, quite simply, is up to us.

By now, we are all too familiar with the environmental implications of this teaching. And it’s gratifying that we seem to be witnessing a major sea change in green awareness in this country. The explosion in sustainable building and the increased production of hybrids and fuel-efficient cars could be a sign that maybe, just maybe, we’re starting to get it. Of course, as important as it is for us to promote green living as private citizens, we won’t see a true environmental impact in our world until nations themselves make policy to fundamentally change the way they consume energy.

And as a nation, America has to come to grips with the fact we are by far the most extravagant consumer of the world’s energy. In fact, we’re the most extravagant consumer of energy in the history of the world. America, a country with less than 5% of the world’s population currently uses 25% of the world’s energy.  Of course it is true that since our economy is larger than any other country, it requires more energy to sustain it. But it is also true that our lifestyle is twice as energy-intensive as that of other affluent countries – and about ten times the average globally.

Personally, I believe that energy over-consumption is only part of a larger sustainability problem in our country. It’s not simply an environmental issue. If we’re going to be totally frank, we’ll have to admit that our country is squandering precious resources on almost every level at an ever-increasing rate. In this regard, we’re heading down the road in which empires have traditionally traveled. And like all empires, we’ve begun to buckle under the weight of our own power and ambition.

The most recent example of this, of course, is our recent financial meltdown. It’s true, Wall St. has been living in an economically unsustainable manner for some time, and now their chickens are coming home to roost. But what did we expect?  If we want to be entirely honest, our entire nation has literally been living on borrowed time. Though our GDP for now is still the highest in the world, the world’s only so-called superpower now has a national debt that is nearly $10 trillion and increases at an average of $2.32 billion every day.

And look at how we’ve set our national priorities – we’re squandering our nation’s wealth the way all empires historically do: on increased military power. We maintain a military presence in virtually every corner of the planet.  Our country’s 2009 defense budget is $515.4 billion, roughly equal to the total military budgets of all the rest of the world’s nations combined.  But this doesn’t include money for fighting the so-called “War on Terror.” Since 9/11, Congress has approved a total of about $859 billion for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and for military base security. We’re spending $500,000 a minute on the Iraq war alone.  By the way, it’s been estimated that the money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families, health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity.

In other words, we’ve been spending more and more money we don’t have to shore up our power and privilege at the expense of our own citizens. As is typically the case with empires, our nation’s wealth been has increasingly controlled by an ever-narrowing elite. In the last twenty-five years, 60 percent of American households have lost real income despite working longer and harder.  At the same time, all gains in income went to a mere five percent of the population. And for the top one percent, income quadrupled between 1979 and 2004.  Meanwhile, the financial safety net for the most vulnerable among us is disappearing quickly.

This is the inevitable outcome of an overall system that offers breaks and rewards almost exclusively to the wealthy and powerful, while assuming the rest will simply trickle down to everyone else. Meanwhile the wealthiest nation in the world cannot find the financial wherewithal to ensure basic health care for all its citizens. Our job market is shrinking, we’re making increasing cuts in education, social service programs for the growing numbers of hungry and homeless – you certainly know the list as well as I do…

And in addition to the well-being of our citizens, we’re also failing to ensure the well-being of our country’s essential infrastructure. While so many other nations around the world are investing in 21st century technologies, our levees are bursting, our bridges are collapsing, our transit systems are decaying. It has become so serious that many are suggesting we cannot reasonably be considered a developed nation in certain parts of our country. A non-partisan coalition of local and state leaders, recently estimated it would take at least $1.6 trillion dollars over the next five years to address the US infrastructure crisis.

We’ve all been deeply shaken by this current crisis, but I hope we are able to understand that it’s really only the financial symptom of a larger road our nation has been going down for some time. We’ve been living in an unsustainable manner. We’ve been living literally on borrowed time. Like all empires, we’ve been operating under the illusion of invulnerability, but it was inevitable that sooner or later, our bubble was going to burst.

So what’s a crumbling empire to do? Where do we go from here? What are the alternatives?  Well, one thing I’d like to point out is that we Jews have had a long history with empires. Whether it was the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires – we’ve lived among them, we’ve been oppressed by many of them, and we’ve witnessed many a mighty empire rise and fall over the centuries.

This, in fact, is one classical rabbinic interpretation of the story of Jacob’s dream. A well-known Midrash tells us that the various ascending and descending angels on Jacob’s ladder represent the rising and falling fortunes of the various empires to which the Jewish people would be exiled. First the angel representing Babylonia ascends 70 rungs, (for seventy years of exile) then falls down. Next the angel representing the Persian Empire ascends and falls, as does the angel representing the Greek empire. Only the fourth angel, representing the Roman Empire keeps climbing higher and higher into the clouds. Since Rome was represented in the Rabbinic imagination by Jacob’s twin brother Esau, Jacob fears that his children would never be free of Esau’s domination. But God assures Israel that in the end, even the mighty Roman Empire will fall as well.

I’d also like to point out that Biblical tradition has a great deal to say about the sacred importance of building a sacred nation. Before they enter the Promised Land, God tells the Israelites they are about to enter a land flowing with milk and honey – a land that contains all they will ever need. But God also says it will all be lost to them in a second if they do not uphold the covenant and create the kind of holy nation they have pledged to create.

God commands the Israelites repeatedly that they will have a future on the land only if they are worthy of it. If they ensure the sustenance of all their citizens. If they commit to the equitable distribution of resources. If they protect the vulnerable in their land: the orphan, the widow, the stranger. And most of all, if they realize that in the end, this land does not ultimately belong to them. The land belongs to God and they will always be but resident aliens upon it. And what happens if they forget all this? If they refuse or fail to live up to this sacred covenant? The Bible describes the consequences with its inimitably colorful language: the land will surely vomit them out.

On his new album the great Randy Newman sings, “The end of empire is messy at best.” That may historically be true, but it doesn’t have to be.  The world is indeed changing quickly and we seem to be realizing that we’re approaching a critical turning point. Other countries are quickly leveling the playing field and I believe it is safe to say there are going to be drastic and dramatic changes in the international community over the coming decades.   This change may indeed be painful, profoundly painful for many of us, but also represent an opportunity. Indeed, some of the most important movements of social change in this country have emerged from periods of social turmoil. Though it can often be difficult for us to see when we’re in the midst of it, crisis can very often be the midwife of rebirth.

We’re hearing a great deal about change these days, so I might as well weigh in myself: I would suggest the most critical change we need is a change from the culture of empire to a culture of sustainability. We can either do down like all empires, kicking and screaming, or we can recognize that the world is changing and if we are to survive we’ll have to change as well. We’ll have to make some sacrifices in the way we live, we’ll have to accept that amassing power and privilege will not make us stronger. And like the ancient Israelites, we will have to learn to live covenentally: to create a nation in which the community is accountable to the individual just as much as the individual is accountable to the community.

I’m not naïve. I have no illusions how difficult this is going to be. So I’ll end with just a few suggestions. And as tempted as I am, I’m not going to trivialize this issue by discussing the election. Now, I don’t disagree with those who say this is the most critical election any of us will ever face in our lifetimes and I also agree that there is so much riding on this election. But in the end, we need to accept that the problem goes much deeper than can be solved by the changing of just one leader.  Please don’t get me wrong: I want a change in the White House as much as anyone, believe me. But I think we also need to come to grips with the truth that in the end, wise leadership is only part of the answer.

Indeed, the day our new President takes power, these profound structural problems are not going to magically disappear.  We need to remind ourselves that we entrust our leaders with enormous power. And if are going to turn back the road to empire, if we do seek to promote a culture of sustainability for our country, then it will be our job to speak truth to power, to keep the power honest, to demand that the power remain accountable to those they serve, no matter who our leaders might be.

In this, I believe our religious communities have a critical role to play. As the popular saying goes, religious communities don’t only exist to comfort the afflicted, they also exist to afflict the comfortable. Hasn’t this been the job of religion at its best from time immemorial? To warn against the deification of human power? To affirm that no matter how powerful we may become, there will always be a Power greater than even our own? To remind leaders and nations that in the end, it is not by might and not by power that God’s world will be sustained?

For the Jewish community, it is a season of new beginnings, of new opportunity, new hope. If this will be a truly new year, it will not just be up to our leaders to make it so – it will be up to us as Americans, as people of faith, as communities of conscience – to do what we must to promote a vision of sustainability in our country.  In the meantime, whatever change may come in the short term, I know that you join me in my prayer for the most vulnerable members of our nation: the homeless, the unemployed, the uninsured, the undocumented. During the terribly difficult days ahead, may they find sustenance and security, comfort and hope.  May our country come through this painful time even stronger in spirit. And may we all do we can to make it so.

Ken Yehi R’tzoneinu – May it be our will.