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A Passion for Tzedek
The Holiness Code and the Hurricane inside Miami
An extract from the Torah teaching by Rabbi Mitchell Chefitz on
Rosh Hashanah morning November 2005
What can we do? When in doubt – learn Torah. Leviticus 19 will assist us. We’ll see that the fabric of our civilization is wearing thin. But we’ll also see how we might begin to weave it back together. Torah does not deny the existence of different social classes. It also does not exalt one status above another. What it says is that differences in potential are a given. They are part of the natural law. There will be wind. There will be waves. There will be rich. There will be poor. But in matters of moral law people have the potential to make a difference – immediately.
Where there is inequality in resources and opportunity, resources and opportunity must flow to allow not only for the sustenance, but the development of life. Those who have fields have an obligation to leave a corner of the fields for those who do not have land. The people who work the fields must have a life. We may not withhold the wages of the poor, because it is their life. They need it from day to day to put food on the table. In a day when there are abundant hands to be hired, when supply exceeds demand, we cannot lower wages to the point that we take the life of a person away.
Get to know the people who make your life convenient. If such a person works earnestly and honestly a 40 hour week and cannot provide for his or her family, then takes on another 40 hour week, and the household partner still another 40 hour week, and they have children to raise – this family has no life. Such families shatter. What do we do? We turn and accuse fathers who leave such families, who shirk their responsibility. But they leave in despair because they cannot provide a livelihood, and that’s the situation we have a few blocks to the west. So we ask the government to step in to provide food stamps and tax relief and health benefits.
It’s written You shall not curse the deaf or put stumbling blocks before the blind. I challenge you who have a college education and graduate degrees to find and complete the forms, to learn where and how to submit the forms to receive food stamps, tax relief, health care. You will learn quickly we have put a stumbling block before the blind. The holiness code has broken down.
What to do? Individually we can become more charitable, leave larger corners of our fields for those who need them. If we are lawyers, doctors, business people, the corners of our fields are the pro bono work we do for those in need of legal help, medical help, and business help. Many of us do this already. Bless you. More difficult is making the corporation over in the divine image so the bottom line becomes the welfare of the employees, not the profit for the shareholders. We have a voice in this – by extending a hand in signing a proxy, establishing a global set of values.
The holiness code requires self sacrifice from those of us who have abundance, recognition of the divinity in all of those about us. Should we establish this, then even a real hurricane can deal Miami only superficial damage.
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