E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 classic Small is Beautiful introduced many of us to the concept of “enoughness” — the antidote to scarcity and the moderation of excess. It’s a concept that I hope calibrates my consumption habits wherever I am — at a kiddush lunch in California, a coffee farm in Kenya, or a supermarket on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The fact is, I do not always meet my own standards of reduced consumption.

Several months ago, I felt the physical intensity of “enoughness” when I joined 6,000 leaders, mostly from faith-based organizations, in a week-long fast to show solidarity with the millions of people in developing countries who go to bed hungry every night and who are at risk of losing critical U.S. food aid. For two days, I drank only water and then for the next five, I also took in clear liquids. Light­headedness and a low-grade headache followed me as I kept up with my regular routine of meetings, conference calls, and donor solicitations. Although I knew my fast would end and I would soon return to eating and drinking whatever I wanted, I spent much of the week reflecting on what hunger must feel like for someone whose life is defined by never having enough. More recently, I took the “food stamp challenge” — in which participants use the average food supplement benefit of $31.50 as their budget for food for one week.

What does Jewish tradition teach us about the role of “enoughness” in achieving kedusha — holiness — in the world? Rambam teaches that it is easy to be fooled into thinking that if we are consuming what is permissible, the quantity of our consumption does not matter. But according to Ramban, one who abuses the resources of the world by rationalizing that these resources are not explicitly forbidden is deemed “naval bereshut haTorah” — a “vile person within the delineations of the Torah.”¹ To prevent such overconsumption, Ramban notes that the Torah adds the general commandment of kedusha, “That we should be separated from excess…”²

It is all too easy to ignore the fact that we frequently consume too much. Food plays a dominant, sensory role in the lives of most Americans and certainly in the lives of American Jews. It is, in many ways, a map of our history. Meals, recipes, and the acts of eating and drinking express who we are, where we come from, and where we live. Food is accessible, enjoyable, and meaningful.

But when nearly 1 billion people around the world are malnourished, we need to adopt a food ethic that enables everyone to experience the sweetness of having enough; to experience food as a human right, not a luxury.

Ethical consumption is not only about being mindful of where we shop and what we ingest. It’s also about reforming government policies that perpetuate a cycle of poverty and widen the gap between “too much” and “not enough,” making ethical consumption nearly impossible for even the most conscientious among us.

For example, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. government sent food aid to Haiti, mostly rice. In the short term, this rice helped feed thousands of earthquake survivors who had lost everything. But U.S. food aid had an unintended — and sometimes devastating — consequence on local farmers. The influx of free rice from abroad brought the price of Haitian rice so low that Haitian rice farmers could not compete in the global market. They couldn’t earn an income from their crops and, tragically, could not purchase seeds for the next year’s crop.

The U.S. Farm Bill, a piece of legislation that is re-authorized every five years and that dictates the direction of our global food policies, is up for revision in 2012. Since the United States is the largest donor of global food aid, we must ensure that our policies support local farmers, not undermine them.₃

It’s easy to forget that this imperative has deep roots in our religious tradition. In his legal code “Laws of Giving to the Poor,” Maimonides, a 12th-century philosopher and Jewish legal scholar, argues that helping people achieve self-sufficiency — far more than ensuring that they have food on their table for just one night — is the highest form of tzedakah and an essential part of developing a responsible Jewish food ethic.₄

Furthermore, two rabbis from the talmudic era offer a way to think about our own ethical consumption amid today’s global food crisis. Rabbi Natan bar Abba wrote, “The world is dark for anyone who depends on the tables of others.”⁵ By contrast, Rabbi Achai ben Josiah wrote, “When one eats of his own, his mind is at ease.”⁶ These words tell a true and powerful story. For the most part, we have sated bellies, and it is therefore up to us to help ensure that people around the world can feast from their own harvests and put food on their own tables.

Ruth Messinger is president of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development organization that works to alleviate poverty and advance human rights for marginalized people in the developing world. Prior to joining AJWS in 1998, she spent twelve years on the New York City Council and served eight years as Manhattan’s borough president.

¹ Ramban is an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi, (1194 – c. 1270), a master of Jewish scholarship, including biblical, halakhic, and kabbalistic topics, who was born and raised in Spain and eventually moved to Israel. This is his commentary to Levitcus 19:1.

² Ibid.

³ See “Reverse Hunger: Ending the Global Food Crisis,” an AJWS campaign to put Jewish values into action on behalf of better food policies (http://bit.ly/oy0iNE).

⁴ “Laws of Giving to the Poor,” Chapter 10:7-14

⁵ Beitzah 32b

⁶ Avot d’Rabbi Natan 30

The New York Times recently profiled a Silicon Valley Waldorf school because the school bans Internet technology for its students (both within the school and at home). The school is striving to create an environment that is conducive to learning at a core level, trusting that students will have plenty of time to learn technology as older teens and adults.

Similarly, Pirkei Avot 5:24 offers a delineation of the age-related challenges we master: At 5 years of age, a child begins to learn the Torah; at 10, the Mishnah; at 13, the commandments. Both of these frameworks rely on layering — that is, building on that which comes before. Only once the core is mastered should a child be encouraged to move on to the next phase. To do otherwise would be like asking a first grader to do calculus before he or she has mastered simple mathematical skills.

The Waldorf approach provides not only an unusual educational experience in today’s climate of highly technological classrooms and teenagers, it also creates an important barrier between young people and the Internet. From cheating to bullying, gossiping, and “sexting,” the Internet is filled with potential ethical infractions. Because we, as Jews, are concerned with the ethical lives of our children, and we create many boundaries and restrictions to prevent inadvertent lapses, should we consider creating walls between our children and Internet activity?

The Talmud (Kiddushin 29a) enumerates three specific requirements for what parents must teach their children: the Torah, how to make a living, and how to swim. The first two seem obvious, but how to swim? Swimming, literally, is a life-or-death matter. The authors of the Talmud recognized that parents must teach their children how to survive — how to come out on the “swim” end of “sink or swim.” Even if we live far from water, even if we think our children will never accidentally enter a pool area, even if we ourselves hate water, we must ensure that our children have the basic skills necessary to survive.

We must also teach our children how to swim in the virtual sea — how not to be sunk by a cyberbully and how to keep their heads (above water) and maintain their core values when faced with an anonymous blog post. I believe that we have an obligation to teach and to demonstrate to our children appropriate and positive ways to utilize and enjoy technology. Like swimming, we cannot pretend that our kids won’t ever go near a pool.

The ethical challenges of interacting online aren’t based in the technology itself. Technology is simply the tool or medium. Rather, ethical questions emerge within the realm of interpersonal interactions, and because of the nature of the Internet, ethical infractions loom larger than those offline. Our responsibility, as parents, teachers, and caring adults, is to teach and demonstrate how to swim in this new pool through taking responsibility for our words, moderating ourselves, and being cognizant of when we need to take a conversation or situation offline.

Genesis 1:3 teaches that God created the world through the spoken word: “And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” Words have enormous power to create, to beautify, to refine. But this power comes with responsibility. The text could have simply said, “There was light,” but it gave God credit for those words and for all that came after them. Social media platforms provide opportunities to share opinions, often anonymously. That anonymity can be tempting, but we must model taking accountability for our words as well as our actions.

No longer does lashon hara, gossip, travel from one person to another. Today, gossip spreads with the click of a mouse. Young people need to see adults modeling behavior online that demonstrates consideration before posting.

We teach our children to swim but also when to call for a lifeguard; we must also teach our children to recognize when they’re “in over their heads” online. Cyberbullying and inappropriate sharing of personal information and emotional or sensitive conversations all signal that a young person should bring in an adult or move offline. Putting down our smart-phones to talk about our personal lives can demonstrate which situations demand a face-to-face encounter.

There are real, immediate, and challenging temptations and opportunities for our youth when they engage with technology. But as adults, we cannot throw our children into the deep end and expect them to swim. We must model and make explicit how the core ethical issues of interpersonal relationships and our responsibilities as ethical Jews translate into virtual activity. By demonstrating appropriate applications of our values to the current technology, we will provide a solid framework for our young people as they engage with each other through social media platforms.

Building dynamic Web sites involves numerous variables, not the least of which is that Web site owners often don’t know what they want or need in advance of building the site. While they might not know what they want in terms of specifications, they typically want to lock in the cost of the project.

It’s not unusual for a vendor to be required to commit to a fixed price in order to get the bid. This pressure can lead the vendor toward engaging in unethical business practices. Vendors may pad their proposals significantly in order to account for what clients might need, but don’t know they need, at the time a contract is signed.

Alternatively, vendors may be stuck working essentially without pay to complete a project because of a miscommunication between the vendor and client — each understanding the proposal differently. This conundrum is exacerbated by the quickly changing environment in the digital space.

What are the ethical obligations of Web site builders and owners in developing their contractual relationships?

In early 2005, I was the director of education at the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF) — the organization that oversees Reconstructionist synagogues. Due to budget cuts, I was tasked to oversee the JRF’s growing Web site, which was in transition. We had contracted with a professional Web developer to redesign the site from its initial conception years earlier by a visionary lay founder. In discussing the predicament of managing 500-plus Web pages with our developer, Sharon Cooper, I learned that we could probably manage the large amounts of content better by using databases to organize the information.

We decided that we would bring order to the site incrementally by looking for content areas within the site where the data was most easily structured and would therefore fit most easily into a database. Our first two candidates were the congregational listing and the bank of divrei-Torah.

I asked Sharon for a proposal with a fixed price for building the congregational listing. The proposal was approved and we started to work. Soon after, the excitement and collaboration began to deteriorate. The good feelings were replaced by palpable tension — primarily because I kept changing the plan. During the planning stage, the give and take between us was easy. However, in the implementation stage, each time I made a change, Sharon had to ask: “Does this change take the project beyond the scope of our initial proposal?” Rather than focusing on whether the suggested changes improved the project, Sharon found herself defensive, needing to protect her time and her livelihood. I hated the change in our relationship.

Having worked with Sharon for some time, I trusted her. I suggested: “How about we pay you on a straight hourly basis? That way, when I propose a change, you can respond with your expert opinion without worrying about appropriate compensation.” She responded that she much preferred to work hourly but most clients weren’t willing to work that way.

As a manager with a limited budget for these Web projects, I asked Sharon to report to me often on how many hours she spent on each small phase of the project. The reality of a limited budget helped to keep the project focused and productive. By paying hourly, the budget management was just another aspect of the collaboration. When we were working on a fixed price, the burden had been put solely on Sharon as the contractor.

While the best option would be to carefully plan a project that would not require change, changing course midstream is a well-accepted development approach. It’s called “iterative” design. With so many variables, the most important being the user’s experience of what is created, a project is more likely to succeed if it is built in small chunks, each iteration punctuated with as much feedback as possible.

Is there an ethical imperative toward efficiency and building productive relationships? Sharon’s behavior was ethical when she defended her time by evaluating whether every change I proposed would break the terms of the contract. But if the terms of the contract cause inefficiencies and negative feelings, should not the basic assumptions of the contractual terms be questioned?

I struggle with these issues on a daily basis. I tend to start projects with a fixed contract, in which I’ve written in some protections for myself, and then allow the relationship to evlolve into an hourly one as I develop more trust with the client.

Why are good video games so compelling and why are the answers to that question crucial for Jewish education today?

Good video games model complex systems. They provide immediate feedback, and keep the player just at the edge of her or his competence — neither over challenged nor bored. Players take on roles and special abilities, engaging their imagination. The fun of play is built upon elaborate rule systems. Players are invited to problem solve and strategize based on those rules. Players of good games will work for hours to reach the next challenge, mastering the intricacies of the game system.1 Add the networked, online layer, and now players can team up with friends and make new friends while navigating these compelling problems together. Lest you think games are for boys only (I believe games are one key way to re-engage boys in Jewish learning), it is important to note that more women play web-based games than men2 and games have been used to increase girls’ self-esteem through computer programming.3

Good gaming, like good learning, is exhilarating. James Gee notes that the sweet spots that good games hit are the same sweet spots that we strive for, but all too seldom reach, with education. In the disciplines of digital media and learning (DML) and the learning sciences, researchers explore how media and technology can best improve education. The research often stresses collaborative, project, and inquiry-based learning. Learning-sciences projects often take advantage of networked computers alongside face-to-face teamwork and stress the importance of students learning through designing.

Secular grant-funders such as the MacArthur Foundation have dedicated millions of dollars to expand DML and improve secular education. One example of digital-age education is New York City’s Quest to Learn (www.Q2L.org), a public school with a curriculum entirely based on games and game design. The Avi Chai Foundation has started to explore DML, recently sending nine Jewish educators, myself included, to the eighth annual Games for Change Festival in New York (www.gamesforchange.org).

How can DML and the learning sciences inform Jewish education?

Let’s take game design, for example, which I use in the process of teaching Jewish sacred texts. Both analog (board and card) and digital game designers model complex, rule-based systems, often with narrative elements. Rabbinic literature is replete with rule-based systems (halakhah) as well as narrative (aggadah).

When learners in my workshops design or prototype a game, they collaborate to create a model based on the text. They must take into account outcomes, resources, conflicts, probabilities, and more. They must work though a variety of scenarios, tracing the possibilities of play. As the rabbis of the Mishnah and Gemarah performed astoundingly complex scenario planning, so must a game designer think through the consequences of rules and interactions. Games are also fantastic for modeling geography. Imagine playing out scenarios on a map — either a fictive sci-fi environment modeled on the Ancient Near East, or the neighborhood of a Jewish farmer in Mishnaic times. Game boards and screens can allow for visualization of scenarios typically fettered to words on a page. Designers delve deep into material — becoming teachers through their game.

The process of game design can allow for modeling of values in action. I recently led a workshop in which a student “modded” (modified) a Settlers of Catan game board, based on two mishnaic texts. In this young man’s game, the winner not only had to reach ten points through resource management and expansion, but also had to demonstrate care for his competitors. As the rules of Exodus 23:5 teach, you might think you can refrain from helping your enemy raise his donkey. You may not.

Games are by no means a silver bullet for solving the problems of Jewish education, and there is the potential to misuse the genre of games. Note that above, I discuss good games. Simply calling something a game, neither makes it a game, nor makes it good. Bad games are boring, disengaging, and shallow, and they have little re-playability. With the increasing popularity of the game medium, Jewish educators are at risk of using the name “game” to deliver education that goes no further than trivia, rather than delving into deeper inquiry. Educators who wish to use Games for Learning (to promote inquiry, critical thinking, systems thinking, and increased engagement) take on the responsibility of game literacy: learning what makes a game “good”; studying at least the basics of game design (a serious professional and, now, academic discipline); and, yes, actually playing a variety of games.

In addition, balance is critical; video games are not without danger. The case of game addiction in Korea, for example, is serious. Many of today’s compelling games are focused on combat without reflection (though the best games ask players to question assumptions and address the consequences of their actions). We must guide our learners to find a healthy mix of playing great video games, enjoying thoughtful media, and spending time away from games — in nature and the outdoors (our mobile devices now can be used to integrate innovative games and outdoor activity as well). Part of learning game literacy is learning when to turn off the game. The Serious Games and Games for Learning movements look to take advantage of the best that games have to offer and to leverage those attributes to provide effective and compelling learning environments. Just as not all books, films, or paintings are “great,” the same goes for games.

¹ See James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

² Henry Jenkins, “Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked” http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html,The Video Game Revolution

³ See the Rapunzel Project at the Games for Learning Institute at New York University. J.L. Plass, R. Goldman, M. Flanagan, and K. Perlin, “Rapunzel: Improving Self-Efficiency and Self-Esteem with an Educational Computer Game,” proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in Education [CDROM] (2009), 682-689

Today, as our reliance on technological innovation continues to grow, certain questions arise: What are the consequences of engaging with the world in seclusion and through virtual means? How do changes in the ways in which we communicate affect our right to information and our right to privacy? Should expiration dates exist for online content, or are we to be forever shackled to our pasts? To what extent should one volunteer information in an increasingly open source environment? Does content now matter more than context?

An innate tension between technology and religion has always existed. While some viewed technologically-driven innovation as a violation of the Almighty, others saw our ability to improve the world, through technology, as a natural extension of divine will. Not only was the invention of Guttenberg’s printing press in 1440 an easier way to print and publish books, but it was also a way to spread the word of God. Surely, there is no better example of this in the Jewish world than the ways Chabad harnesses technology and the Internet to educate and share the word of HaShem.

As the technologies of an increasingly modern world became more commonplace, the organizational structures of Jewish communal and religious life began to shift. Arguably, the three most important inventions that impacted Jewish communal life were the telephone, the automobile, and the airplane. Suddenly, it was possible to live where one wanted, communicate with other Jews all over the world, and fly to Israel with relative ease. Jews could finally have their kosher meat and eat it, too. When the Internet and social networking were introduced, this “global Jewish community” was fully realized.

With the integration of each new technological invention into modern life, discussions surrounding the halakhic nature of their usage started cropping up — a majority of which revolved around what is and is not permissible on Shabbat and Yom Tov. In response to suburbanization, the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) issued a responsum, or teshuvah, in 1950 permitting the use of automobiles on Shabbat for the purpose of driving to synagogue. In response to the increasing use of sensors and human-triggered devices (e.g., lights in refrigerators, automatic doors, electronic hotel keys, etc.), the Zomet Institute was established to invent Shabbat- and Yom Tov-friendly technologies that are in accordance with the strictest views of Orthodoxy. And new technologies — for example, scanners that check for mistakes in Torah scrolls¹ — are improving the way halakhic supervision is conducted. But do more precise techniques render everything before “less” kosher? (The general consensus is no, and there is no need to utilize these technologies until such practices become commonplace.²)

In the 1990s, the popularization of video and audio conferencing by the masses forced rabbis to confront the question of virtual minyanim. Finally, in 2001, Rabbi Avram Reisner and the CJLS addressed this issue in a teshuvah entitled, “Wired to the Kadosh Barukh Hu: Minyan via Internet.” Reisner’s main argument in favor of virtual minyanim was the notion that a person has fulfilled the mitzvah simply by hearing the shofar or the Megillah in passing.³ His main argument against virtual minyanim was that “The ten [members of the minyan] must be in one place and the leader with them.”⁴ In requiring the quorum, rabbis clearly wanted to ensure that the community would come together instead of fulfilling one’s obligations in isolation. In the end, Reisner concluded, “One location remains the rule for constituting a minyan. Once a minyan is in existence, however, even one who is not in the minyan, but simply overhears, may respond and fulfill obligations thereby.”⁵ In 2008, using the teshuvah’s ruling, Winnipeg’s Shaarey Zedek Synagogue became the first synagogue to allow users to access a live audio broadcast of its services (set up to record before Shabbat).

However, the teshuvah on virtual minyanim is far from complete and raises many more questions than it answers. In a society that now predicates its existence on a virtual hyper-reality, does online communication destroy a sense of community, or does it help create it? As the prospect of a global wireless network increasingly becomes a reality, can the entire world be considered “one place,” enclosed in some form of virtual eruv? Is the relationship between an individual and his/her video-image representation merely that of an icon and index to its object,⁶ or is it possible for the video-image representation to be counted as a member of a minyan? If so, can the individual and his/her avatar be counted as two separate entities existing in two distinct minyanim?

The sheer breadth of information now available to us means that thousands of Jewish texts and arguments are no longer reserved for the exclusive study of members of select yeshivot. But does that democratization of knowledge reduce the authority of the learned rabbis? What does it mean to learn with the context of study being online rather than in a beit midrash? Can we have content without context?

In a 2010 New York Times article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” Jeffrey Rosen discusses the misuse of content and “how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post, and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever.”⁷ From a Jewish perspective, this raises the question of forgiveness and self-growth. According to Judaism, forgiveness is possible if one seeks it. Yet, in today’s world filled with digital reminders of past transgressions and lapses in judgment, can one ever really “move on?” Perhaps, society should place limitations on how long information can be stored online. And also, perhaps, we should use a little more discretion about what we volunteer online — otherwise are we not partially complicit if such information is decontextualized and used against us?

With the evolution of new technologies, these sorts of questions will continue to expand in complexity. Over the course of this year, Sh’ma will examine these issues; we invite you to join the conversation on our new blog at shma.com.

¹ Manfred Gerstenfeld and Avraham Wyler, “Technology and Jewish Life,” Jewish Political Studies Review, 18:1-2 (Spring 2006), www.jcpa.org/art/jep-gerstenfeld-wylie-s06.htm.

² Ibid.

³ Mishnah Rosh Hashanah and Shulkhan Arukh, Orah Hayim, 589.9.

⁴ Shulkhan Arukh, Orah Hayim, 55.

⁵ Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, “Wired to the Kadosh Barukh Hu: Minyan via Internet,” (New York: March 13, 2001).

⁶ As related to the Icon, Index, Symbol and photographic representation described by semiologist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914).

⁷ Jeffrey Rosen, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” The New York Times, July 21, 2010.

Over the course of this year’s Sh’ma conversation on the ethics of immigration — and in the larger national discussion — there is a reflexive assumption that the debate is primarily about illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants who entered the United States for economic reasons. Some have defined illegal immigrants as strangers who live among us, citing the Jewish tradition of tolerance toward outsiders within our gates. The anti-immigrant camp, on the other hand, turns to generalizations to define illegal immigrants as criminal and impoverished. Either way, illegal immigrants are “others” in a charged and polarizing policy debate.

What both sides of the debate seem to agree on is that illegal immigration is not specifically a Jewish problem. Illegal immigrants are, by definition, strangers outside our community. Few associate the names Bernstein or Cohen with being an illegal immigrant. But we should. Although little is written on illegal Jewish immigrants, they exist. They are also invisible.

As an immigration lawyer, I have met Jews who are living without lawful immigration status. They are from Israel, Romania, Russia, Latin America, Canada, and other places. What they share in common is an inability to become legal residents of the United States. A future green card is precluded. Many came lawfully on visas, but lost their status after a layoff or the breakup of a marriage. There are no statistics on illegal Jewish immigrants. Their Jewishness is erased when they are counted with other illegal immigrants.

How would any of us react if a family in our congregation were to be arrested and detained for overstaying a visa? I have met entire families in the Jewish community who face exactly this risk in America, the Goldene Medina — the land of golden opportunity.

Illegal immigration cuts across racial, national, religious, economic, and social lines. Jews comprise only a tiny portion of the 12 to 13 million illegal immigrants. While their numbers are small, their stories are compelling. I have met elderly Jews who worked for 30 years without lawful immigration status, only to learn later that the system does not permit them to collect Social Security benefits. I have met accomplished professionals who were brought to the United States as young children by parents who lost their immigration status. These Jews grew up culturally as Americans, but they are illegal. There is no mechanism for curing that status. While America is the only home they know, they live with a sense that their existence here is fragile.

I have met many young Israelis who underestimate the severity of the consequences for working without proper visas, only to learn later that they are accused of fraud or misrepresentation and that they face a lifetime ban against coming back to the United States. And I have met Jews who were oppressed in their native countries and who then came to the United States for a vacation — only to extend that stay for health or family reasons and then fall out of status.

Absent from any statistical data is important information about the subjective fear of bureaucracy that inhibits some of these individuals from seeking any resolution to an expired visa. Jews also get unwittingly swept up into the net of aggressive enforcement initiatives. This combination of unforgiving laws and increased enforcement has scarred many people who find themselves in our system without lawful status.

Our U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have become especially zealous in the past few years. Just last month, I spent many hours at an airport while my client, a Holocaust survivor from Israel, was interrogated about her visa and her intention to stay here only temporarily. It is hard to justify interrogating an Israeli Holocaust survivor on the pretext of security or law enforcement. Even as a lawyer who practices in this field, I am intimidated by the behavior of our government officials. This feeling of intimidation must be so much more personal and frightening for Jews who have experienced persecution.

Rabbi Bonnie Koppell’s October Sh’ma column suggests that we should have confidence in our law enforcement officials. And yet, in the immigration context, coercive abuse of power by various agencies is commonplace. Torah wisdom about boundaries also does little to advance our analysis. We need broad, sweeping immigration reform. Punitive state laws, such as Arizona’s AZ SB 1071, which would require law enforcement officials to collect racial and ethnic information from each pedestrian or driver of a vehicle they stop, are driven by populist sentiments and angry voters, not by justice. These laws target primarily Latino communities and are unconstitutional. Instead of repairing a problem, these laws are costly, and they produce litigation. Our community needs to speak out against these laws. We should do so as Jews and as fair-minded Americans, and especially on behalf of the invisible illegal Jewish immigrants who have no voice.

The United States Immigration and Nationality Act states that foreign nationals physically inside the United States are entitled to receive political asylum if they can establish that they have suffered “past persecution,” or have a “well-founded fear of future persecution, on account of … race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” This language mirrors the language found in the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

There is something deeply Jewish about the political asylum experience, perhaps explaining why such a large number of Jewish lawyers feel an ethical duty to accept political asylum applicants as pro bono clients. It is the common story of people persecuted — killed, raped, jailed, or denied employment or education — because their way of life is different from others who have power; it is a familiar tale of people needing a friend to lend a hand to pull them to safety. The political asylum epic engenders an ethical obligation that people who have access to justice should do what they can to help the persecuted find sanctuary.

The genesis of this ethical obligation to help refugees is the word of God, who told us to welcome the strangers who live among us — “and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) We learn that helping a sojourner, a foreigner, is a holy deed. In the first book of Torah, Abraham welcomed strangers into his tent and gave them refuge, a deed that pleased God. In Ezekiel 22, we hear God’s wrath because the Israelites in Jerusalem committed sins against God when they oppressed and mistreated “the alien,” denying him justice. God is looking for someone in the Israelite community to intercede, to stand in “the gap” that separates Israel from that space where human dignity is being denied. We have an ethical duty to offer respect and safety to the oppressed; as Jews, we seek to fill the gap.

My work with refugees and asylum seekers has been the most profound Jewish experience I’ve had — professionally or personally. I have represented political asylum applicants who fled torture in Africa, genocide in Cambodia, and terror in Colombia. Some of my asylum work has been for Jews, or persons perceived to be helping Jews: the 92 year-old Jewish bubbie from Lithuania who was raped as her tormentor called her “zhid”; a Moslem family from Albania who was targeted with hate and death threats because their father and grandfather had rescued Jews during World War II; the Jewish mother from Russia who begged her teenage son not to tell anyone he was soon to emigrate to Israel, only to find her son murdered with a swastika painted on his chest. All of these people fled their countries to seek safety, and by the grace of God they landed in the United States and found strangers here who felt an ethical duty to offer a helping hand.

For the thousands of lawyers who volunteer each year to work with political asylum seekers, there is no greater feeling than to be in front of an immigration judge, holding the hand of a shaking, desperate client, and hearing the words “I am going to grant this asylum application.” This is the moment when ethical obligation meets the thrill of victory, epitomizing the essence of why we became lawyers in the first place. It is truly the height of a professional career.

Sometimes I think that for thousands of years the Jewish people have longed for — and sometimes found — a really good political asylum lawyer. I wonder whether one of my colleagues or I could have won a political asylum claim for Hannah and her seven sons as they stood before Antiochus, the Greek monarch who commanded that the Jews bow down to an idol or be tortured and murdered. That family surely had a well-founded fear of persecution on account of their religion. I hope we would have felt an ethical obligation to try. I know I would have loved the opportunity.

“Do not oppress a poor or destitute hired hand, whether from among your brothers or from among your strangers who are in your land, within your gates.” (Deuteronomy 24:14)

Rashi empathizes with the destitute, who “long for everything.” Emma Lazarus welcomes “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” In America, the “homeless, tempest-tossed” soon had surnames like Cohen and Roth.

Several previous columns in this ongoing Sh’ma conversation about the ethics of immigration have referred to countless mitzvot that demand ethical treatment for immigrants and workers. These sources reveal detailed proscriptions against economic exploitation of immigrants, which are framed as flashbacks to our own ancestors’ struggles. “Do not oppress the stranger; you yourselves know how it feels to be strangers, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Today, the Jewish community’s overall financial success has distanced most Jews from the daily struggles of immigrants in America. I work as an advocate for low-wage workers in Los Angeles, and in that capacity, I have not met a single Jew who works as a hotel housekeeper, car wash worker, grocery store worker, food service worker, farm worker, truck driver, agency-employed security officer, or home care provider. If Jews no longer work in immigrant-related jobs, how might we still relate to worker communities of color? Are we “our brothers’ keeper”? When considering domestic workers, our answer is critical.

Domestic workers, excluded from labor law protections established by the Wagner Act in 1935, include housekeepers, nannies, care providers for the elderly, and others who are hired to maintain their employers’ homes and family needs. The 1930s witnessed the exclusion of domestic workers and farm workers from labor laws because of racism; protecting these predominantly African-American workers and other people of color, it was argued, would undermine the economy. Similar arguments were made in the South to preserve antebellum slavery.

Today, the data are startling. Most domestic workers earn poverty wages (on average, between $22,000 and $24,000 annually), not enough to pay rent and buy groceries. They almost never receive overtime salary; only 20 percent of them earn enough to support a family of four, though most (54 percent) are the family breadwinners. Eighty-three percent do not receive even ten-minute rest breaks, and 78 percent do not get basic meal breaks, endangering the wellbeing of the families they serve and jeopardizing their own health. Worse, worker intimidation is horrific: Twenty percent are insulted or threatened; 10 percent experience acts of violence and/or sexual harassment; and wage theft results in 31 percent working more than their contracts require. Nearly a quarter are illegally underpaid, and many employers feel free to exploit these workers; many, if not most are undocumented, living in continuous fear of deportation, and thus easily susceptible to the most egregious exploitation imaginable.

California’s domestic workforce is 94 percent women, and 99 percent foreign-born.¹ Only 5 percent receive health insurance coverage, a disgrace, considering how many Jews employ domestic workers in our homes.

Nevertheless, as Jews, we can also be proud. A New York based nonprofit, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ),² recently played a key leadership role in a coalition of employers, workers, and community advocacy groups to pass the nation’s first domestic workers “Bill of Rights,” which establishes an eight-hour work day, overtime pay, a day of rest, vacation time, prohibitions against discrimination, sexual harassment protections, and worker’s compensation standards.

Here are several questions we might ask ourselves as we head to our seder tables this upcoming Passover, as we relive our Egyptian servitude and subsequent liberation: How do we, as Jews, live our values at home? Will we be Pharaoh, enslaving workers, or will we be Abraham, welcoming strangers into our tents and nurturing them? The Haggadah provides a grounding for the answer: “In every generation, one is obligated to see oneself as if redeemed from Egypt.”

Meanwhile, does your Honduran nanny have healthcare coverage?

¹ “Behind Closed Doors: Working Conditions of California Household Workers”; March 2007. http://www.datacenter.org/reports/behindcloseddoors.pdf)
² http://www.jfrej.org/

Oshek, to oppress the laborer, is forbidden by the Torah — as it is written: “Lo ta’ashok,” “You shall not oppress a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay 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.” (Deuteronomy 24:14-15) Rashi interpreted the prohibition of oshek to include agricultural workers. “It is he who risks his nefesh [his soul], climbing up a ladder or hanging from a tree to do his work.”¹ Rashi also taught that an olah, the biblically prescribed and sanctified food offering, would be invalid if it was the product of stealing.² What was being stolen? According to a commentary on Isaiah 61:8, it was the wages of the farm worker.³ In the mid-1940s, Rabbi Israel Meir HaCohen, the Chofetz Chaim, moved us from the sacrificial table to the kitchen table when he taught that it is forbidden to make a blessing over stolen food.⁴ We understand, then, that food, if it is harvested by workers whose wages have been stolen, cannot be sanctified.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the Reform movement affirmed this linkage. Following the 1969 resolution of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism) supporting the launch of the United Farm Workers (UFW) grape strike, the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1976 voted to support the UFW campaign to organize farm workers to bargain collectively. They called upon “…all persons of good will to seek out and purchase UFW Black Eagle label grapes and iceberg lettuce…” and to boycott non-union produce.⁵

Farm workers today still suffer from oshek; they are still oppressed. The average farm worker makes only $10,000 a year.⁶ They routinely work without bathrooms nearby and with no clean drinking water. Because of these and other dangerous conditions — the demands of stoop labor, the hazards of working with farm machinery, the toll taken by exposure to pesticides and blistering heat — farm work is considered one of the five most dangerous occupations in America.⁷

Adding to the dire situation of the farm worker is the lack of comprehensive immigration reform. It is estimated that 85 percent of farm workers today are undocumented laborers.⁸ They are easily oppressed. According to longtime UFW spokesman Marc Grossman, the oppression includes the withholding of wages, the sexual harassment of female farm workers, and the failure to alleviate terrible working conditions, even as employers use the threat of deportation to silence farm workers who try to organize or speak out about the abuse.

Our earliest history teaches us to include the ger, the indwelling noncitizen. “When the stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) Through resolutions and efforts like GreenTable, JustTable, Uri L’Tzedek’s Tav HaYosher, and Heksher Tzedek, many rabbis and lay leaders have spoken out against the oppression of farm workers and for comprehensive immigration reform. HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, has combined several Jewish community organizations under the banner, “We Were Strangers, Too,” putting much of the Jewish community solidly behind the AgJobs Act, a bill to “improve agricultural job opportunities, benefits, and security for aliens in the United States, and for other purposes.”⁹ This comprehensive immigration bill has the support of leading national growers, along with that of the UFW and many Democrats and Republicans. It would provide a path to earned legal status that would allow farm workers the security to speak out against any abuses. Despite much support, the bill is being blocked by the anti-immigrant prejudice of many American citizens.¹⁰

We must do more than bless the food we eat. We must sanctify it by working harder to stop the exploitation of farm labor; we must work to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

¹ Rashi Commentary, M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, eds. (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company), p. 119.

² Ibid, p.2b.

³ Isaiah 61:8. Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem: The New Jewish Publication Society of America 1988), p.749.

⁴ Sefer Mishna Berurah, 696:31, Volume 6 (Israel Meir Ha-Cohen, New York, New York, M.M.Y. Zaks, 1946), p.326.

⁵ Resolution on Farm Workers adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1976.

⁶ www.nfwm.org, the National Farm Worker’s Ministry website (Farm Worker Conditions).

⁷ www.nfwm.org.

⁸ Interview with Marc Grossman, long-time spokesman for the UFW, December 16, 2010.

⁹ www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2414.

¹⁰ www.ufwm.org: The Take Our Jobs campaign, a national campaign of the UFW, offered a farm labor job to any American citizen who wanted one. More than 30,000 people checked out the website and some 8,600 inquired about getting a job. In the end, only eight citizens took a farm labor job. This disproved one widely held prejudicial view that undocumented farm workers take jobs away from American citizens.

On Saturday, December 18, 2010, Jews in synagogue read Parashat Vayechi, while in the U.S. Senate, the Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors Act — the DREAM Act — went down in defeat.

Vayechi closes the story of Joseph, who was brought to Egypt as a teenager — not of his own volition. He integrated himself into Egyptian society and utilized his talents to benefit his adopted country. Eventually, he brought his family to Egypt, and they flourished there for generations. However, they never escaped their status as outsiders.

In the Senate, DREAM activists held an ecumenical prayer vigil, a study-in at the Senate cafeteria, and celebrations for the young people who had walked from Florida to Washington to support the bill — people who had sat in and been arrested at Senate offices around the country, and who had gone on hunger strikes to call attention to the issue. These students told their stories of being brought to the United States as undocumented children, of graduating from American high schools, and of entering college or the U.S. military. For these young people, and for anyone who is currently an undocumented worker, there is almost no way to get a green card — not by graduating at the top of one’s class, not by going to college, not by joining the military. If undocumented immigrants are offered a job, they can’t take it. They aren’t eligible for federal college loans. Forty states deny them in-state tuition rates, even if they have lived in the state since they were toddlers. Like Joseph, they remain outsiders.

The DREAM Act would have created a path to citizenship for these young people who were brought to the United States as children, for these Josephs. On that Shabbat in December, though, Americans legislators remained stuck in the narrow place, the Mitzrayim, the Egypt; they chose to keep out children who have so much to offer.

Ironically, on the same day that the DREAM Act died, the Senate voted to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Sixty-five senators supported the bill to end this institutional discrimination. In repealing the ban, the Senate recognized that rejecting people who seek to serve the country, to belong to its vital institutions, is ultimately self-defeating. Unfortunately, that lesson did not translate into supporting young students whose primary goal is to be fully American. Twelve Senators who supported gays in the military opposed the DREAM Act; five Democrats and seven Republicans.

The irony is that as overt bigotry against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people becomes less acceptable — though it certainly has not disappeared — anti-immigrant xenophobia is on the rise. Smears and generalizations about immigrants are routinely aired in the media and on the floor of Congress. American Jews should be mindful of past antisemitism, and of our presence as a tiny minority in this country; we should reject any moves to scapegoat, stereotype, or make false generalizations regarding any group.

American Jewish support of LGBT rights is a point of pride. However, as a community, we cannot commend ourselves for defending the rights of the individual if we do not zealously champion immigrant rights as well. The Torah explicitly requires this of us as descendents of Joseph and his brothers: “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)