Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster2013-05-20T01:06:57-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=rabbi-rachel-kahntrosterCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Rabbi Rachel Kahn-TrosterGood old fashioned elbow grease.Counting the Days: It Is Time to Close Guantanamotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32614252013-05-13T10:31:30-04:002013-05-13T10:33:38-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
Immediately after Shavuot, we'll mark another set of days, one with only despair and no celebration. May 17 will be 100 days since an ever-increasing number of the detainees held at the prison at Guantanamo Bay have been on a hunger strike. At this point, the government has confirmed that more 100 hundred of the 166 remaining detainees are on a hunger strike. Eighty six of the men have been cleared for released, but remain because of restrictions on transfers of prisoners to Yemen and barriers put in place by Congress (and signed by the president) severely restricting what can be done to try or transfer the detainees.
In its recent report on torture and indefinite detention, the Constitution Project's bipartisan Task Force on Detainee Treatment unequivocally called the force-feeding of detainees torture. This stance is backed up by the American Medical Association, which in an April letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reiterated their opposition to force-feeding a prisoner who is mentally competent. In response, Guantanamo leadership stated their commitment to keeping the prisoners from starving to death and to treat them humanely, but to those of us on the outside, it seems that those are mutually exclusive statements.
It has been easy to forget the men languishing at Guantanamo. Out of sight, out of mind. Early in his first term, President Obama urged us all to look forward on issues like torture and indefinite detention. Most of us did, assuming that the president who on his first full day in office in 2009 signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo might follow through with that promise.
These men have been waiting as our attention went elsewhere. In December 2008, right after President Obama was elected, two attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees spoke at a T'ruah conference, and their words have come back to haunt me with each day of the hunger strike, as the prisoners get closer to death. Thomas Wilner said that to the detainees, the worst abuse was not the physical abuse, but being stuck in Guantanamo without a hearing, without a chance to defend oneself (read his recent op-ed in the Washington Post). And Gita Gutierrez called out all Americans, herself included, on our complacency in the face of first the torture we knew was going on and now the ongoing legal quagmire. She challenged us: "We did not do enough eight years ago, we did not do enough six years ago, or four years ago, or even two years ago and the men are still imprisoned there." She reminded us that even being released did not restore to former prisoners the years that were lost or heal the physical and emotional trauma. And she asked to commit to getting those men released.
That was more than 1,600 days ago. The men are still there and now they are dying to remind us they are there.
I will not eat until they restore my dignity. ... I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one. ... there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.
T'ruah's leadership are among 38 faith leaders who signed a recent letter to President Obama from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture reiterating that both torture and indefinite detention without trial -- especially for the significant number of detainees cleared for release -- violate the inherent dignity of the human being. The letter states: "As the nation's most visible and painful symbol of torture and indefinite detention, Guantanamo Bay is a constant reminder of a deep moral wound that will heal only when it is permanently closed." Sending these men home is not just a legal but also a moral obligation. While the president continues to state his commitment to closing Guantanamo, his actions tell a different story, as he continues to sign legislation that restricts his ability to transfer detainees and fails to robustly pursue other options.
After the Israelites receive the Torah, they famously declare Na'aseh v'nishmah, "We will do and we will hear" (Exodus 24:7). The odd choice of order of the commitment is understood to mean that a commitment to action must precede a full comprehension of the terms. The moral imperative to act, to receive God's word, is so great that it ends discussion. We've heard enough about and from men dying at Guantanamo. It's all been talk. As Shavuot passes and the 100th day of the hunger strike arrives, the balance of this dynamic must change to action. Recently, Thomas Wilner told me, "What is happening at Guantanamo is simply no longer tolerable. It is a terrible human tragedy, and it is also a continuing outrage to our values as Americans. These few Arab men, many of whom have long been cleared, are stranded at an island prison and ignored because they have no domestic constituency to speak on their behalf -- except for us. We must do so."
For more on the Counting of the Omer, join the HuffPost Religion virtual community by visiting the liveblog, which features inspiration and teachings for all 49 days of spiritual renewal between Passover and Shavuot.]]>Thankful for a New Day for Florida Farmworkers: Publix, Join the Fair Food Programtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21692162012-11-21T11:00:02-05:002013-01-21T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/shehechiyanu, thanks God for granting us life, sustaining us and bringing us to the particular moment in our lives that we are grateful for. In a rushed world, we slow down to savor the present, and to reflect on steps brought us to this time. No moment of blessing happens in a vacuum. On Thanksgiving, when we sit at the table and reflect on the food before us, we know it didn't get there by magic. We take a moment to thank the cooks for his or her hard work. And maybe we say a prayer, to thank God for the blessings of the land and of the harvest.
Of course, we know that many more hands touched that food on the journey between God's blessing of the earth and our holiday table. The farmworkers who picked the food, the workers at the packing plant, the staff at the grocery store: as our food travels, its story grows. The Jewish blessing for bread recognizes the human component in the bounty of our table. It thanks God "for bringing forth bread from the earth." But bread doesn't come from the earth fully formed. It takes human participation -- to harvest, process, sell and bake -- to make bread. We are partners with God in the blessing of producing food from our earth.
Over the past year, I have visited Immokalee, Fla., to see both the suffering that this production can bring and the new day that is dawning for farmworkers. Most of the tomatoes we eat in the winter come from Florida, and farmworkers daily face extremely difficult conditions, including modern-day slavery. The situation for farmworkers in Florida is so bad that one federal prosecutor called the Florida agricultural sector "ground zero" for human trafficking in America.
Forced labor and slavery in Florida is just the extreme end of a continuum of worker exploitation that includes sexual harassment, dangerous exposure to pesticides, wage theft and violence. The average wage paid to farmworkers for picking tomatoes in Florida has not risen in more than 30 years, preventing them from earning a living wage. Farmworkers want real solutions, not charity. As a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Gerardo Reyes has repeatedly said, "Why do I spend every day harvesting food for the rest of America and then have to stand in line at a food pantry on Thanksgiving for a plate of food?"
There is a solution: an amazing, worker-led organization in Florida called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is bringing transformation and justice to the tomato fields. Their Fair Food Program is grounded in human rights and dignity for farmworkers. Under the Program, retailers (such as major fast food companies and grocery stores) commit to paying an extra "penny a pound" premium for tomatoes directly to the farmworkers (raising their wages without raising costs for growers) and to only buying from growers that have instituted a strict human rights code of conduct in the fields. The first farmers agreed to implement these agreements in 2010, and last year was the first year that the Program was in place in more than 90 percent of Florida's tomato farms.
In Immokalee, I hear stories of how the Program is changing lives. One man tells of how he used to get up hours before his children to go to the fields, just to sit unpaid waiting for the work to start. Now, because there are time clocks in the fields that require payment for all hours on the job and which discourage unpaid time in the fields, he leaves later and can see his children in the morning for the first time in their lives. Another man was the subject of both wage theft and a subsequent denial by the grower that he had ever picked tomatoes in those fields. After an investigation by the Fair Food Program, the grower had to acknowledge that he had worked there, and the man walked through the front door of the company to receive his paycheck. Complaints of violence or harassment are taken now serious and investigated, and there are market consequences for failing to appropriately respond to sexual harassment or forced labor. Workers have received over seven million dollars of wage increase through the penny-per-pound pay increase, and they finally have the right to water and shade in the fields.
This year, I am thankful the Fair Food Program is making a difference. The Fair Food Program is unique among the various supply chain audits that human rights groups use because it prioritizes the wisdom and experience of the workers themselves in ending abuses in the fields. The workers educate each other about their rights, both under the Program and under American law. They now know there is a confidential way to report abuses that will be taken seriously.
This year, I give thanks for the 11 corporations who have already signed Fair Food Agreements, including two -- Trader Joe's and Chipotle -- who have signed in 2012. But many grocery stores have not yet committed to this new day in the tomato fields. For example, in the CIW's home state of Florida, Publix Supermarket has refused to sign a Fair Food Agreement. Publix founder, George Jenkins, said: "Don't let making a profit get in the way of doing the right thing." It is unfortunate that today, when there is such a clear way for Publix to "do the right thing," that Publix has not demonstrated that it values the hard work of farmworkers who make possible the food we share this holiday. They need to hear from us that it is time for that to change.
This Thanksgiving, as we thank God for the many people and their hands that produce our food, we can be thankful for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program. There is a story of real suffering behind our food, but today that story is changing, thanks to the historic partnership among workers and growers and retail purchasers established in the CIW's Fair Food Program.
This Talmudic cry points to the necessity of companionship for human life. Honi HaMa'agel, a Rip Van Winkle-like character, wakes from a long sleep to learn that his friends and family are long since gone. Life without companionship, he decides, is just not worth it. He chooses death over a life alone.
Can one imagine a life completely alone, with no meaningful human contact? Gabriel Reyes has been alone for more than 16 years. In a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Reyes (a prisoner and former hunger striker at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, imprisoned for life) describes a life of isolation and solitude. He eats alone and exercises alone in a cement enclosure he compares to a dog cage. He is not allowed phone calls and has not had physical contact with any member of his family since 1995. Reyes writes: "Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time, no one to confide in, and only a pillow for comfort -- for years on end. It is a living tomb."
On any given day in the United States, 80,000 prisoners are held in some form of isolation or solitary confinement. Rather than being a method for holding the worst prisoners, solitary confinement is often the punishment for infractions of prison rules, such as fighting, gang membership or obtaining contraband. Many of the mentally healthy who are placed in isolation develop psychological problems as a result. Inmates engage in self-mutilation, sit catatonic in their own waste, and demonstrate cognitive dysfunction, paranoia and depression. According to testimony presented in June by Dr. Craig Haney, a leading expert on solitary confinement, at the first ever Congressional hearing on solitary confinement, for many prisoners, "solitary confinement precipitates a descent into madness." As Sen. Dick Durbin, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which held the hearing, shared in his opening statement to that hearing, 50 percent of prison suicides occur in solitary confinement.
Many prisoners and human rights activists consider solitary confinement to be a form of psychological torture -- or in other words, torture, in our own prisons, in our own country. The human cost is staggering. Sen. John McCain, who spent time alone as a POW in Vietnam, boils down the experience to its essence: "It's an awful thing, solitary, it crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any form of mistreatment."
At the beginning of Genesis, we read: Lo tov heyot ha'adam l'vado -- "It is not good for the human to be alone" (2:18). From the very beginning of human existence, there is an awareness that people are social creatures, designed to be in community with others. The effects of being deprived of community are often irreversible. On June 19, I had the privilege of attending the Congressional hearing on solitary confinement. The most haunting testimony came from Anthony Graves, who served more than 18 years in a Texas prison before being exonerated of all crimes in 2010.
"Solitary confinement does one thing," he said. "It breaks a man's will to live, and he ends up deteriorating. He's never the same person again."
Graves described fellow inmates who gave up death sentence appeals simply to end the torment of their imprisonment.
Companionship or death.
Returned to society, Graves still suffers from the effects of his isolation, including physical pain and a fear of crowds. He cries when he tries to sleep.
Solitary confinement (and prison reform in general) is often not seen as a "Jewish" issue because we often don't see it directly impacting our communities and families. But it does. Let's not be naïve. Jews, too, serve time in prison and risk being placed in isolation. As Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps testified at the hearing, as 95 percent of those in prison are eventually released, the survivors of isolation (many of whom are released directly from solitary confinement into the outside world) are all around us.
As a community, we also cannot ignore the inhumane and degrading treatment of our fellow citizens. In our system of justice, being sent to prison is designed to be the punishment, not horrific conditions while in prison, of which isolation is the extreme. Graves testified at the hearing: "We as American citizens are driving other American citizens out of their minds." While it is important to respect the rights of crime victims and to ensure the safety of corrections officers, as Sen. Durbin said at the hearing: "What do America's prisons say about our nation and its values? ... We can have a just society and we can be humane in the process."
As Reyes wrote, "I understand I broke the law, and I have lost liberties because of that. But no one, no matter what they've done, should be denied fundamental human rights, especially when that denial comes in the form of such torture."
We have a moral obligation to uphold the dignity and the mental health of those currently incarcerated. The United States should do everything it can to reverse our nation's harmful and expensive reliance on solitary confinement.]]>Integrity and Justice: Tell Chipotle to Go Deeper Than Just a Slogantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17023622012-07-25T12:57:07-04:002012-09-24T05:12:25-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
This week, on Shabbat, the Jewish community begins its annual recitation of the book of Deuteronomy in synagogues. Reading parts of Deuteronomy can often feel like reading the Torah's code of justice, grounded in the often repeated admonition to love and protect the most vulnerable members of society (the widow, the orphan, the stranger) because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy's "slogan" is one that has become the hallmark of the modern Jewish social justice movement: "Justice, justice, shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). But this is backed up with clear directions for confronting the structural imbalances of society, such as protections for indentured servants, debt relief and injunctions against refusing to lend, or ensuring the right of day laborers to their wages immediately, among other laws. A more equitable society cannot simply be a marketing scheme.
The companies that produce our food today understand that food justice is a hot commodity. Walk into a grocery store or restaurant, and the worlds "local," "sustainable," "organic," "green" and "fair trade" blast at us from labels and signs. While we as consumers may have a hard time figuring out which of these terms are just slogans and which have real teeth, for the companies, the truth is more clear: if it looks more ethical, we'll probably buy it in our pursuit of a meal that makes us feel more virtuous about what we've purchased.
Chipotle's Mexican Grill is one national restaurant chain that is trying to meld the ideals of sustainable with the principles of fast food: affordable, accessible meals for the public. Their slogan is "Food with integrity," and they have a reputation with hungry consumers as being a more ethical place to buy a burrito or a sandwich. Chipotle's website states that their slogan is not mere marketing, but a commitment to understanding how their vegetables are grown and the animals that become their meat are raised.
What is missing from that vision of sustainability is justice and a living wage for farmworkers that includes the voices of farmworkers in crafting that conversation. If you eat a tomato in Chipotle that comes from Florida, it has not been grown with integrity. Ninety percent of the tomatoes we eat between November and May come from Florida, and workers who pick them have long faced extremely difficult conditions.
The situation for farmworkers in Florida is so bad that one federal prosecutor called the Florida agricultural sector "ground zero" for human trafficking in American. As Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation," said at last year's Slow Food Nation conference: "Does it matter whether an heirloom tomato is local and organic if it was harvested with slave labor?" Forced labor and slavery in Florida is just the extreme end of a continuum of worker exploitation that includes sexual harassment, dangerous exposure to pesticides, wage theft and violence. The average wage paid to farmworkers for picking tomatoes in Florida has not risen in more than 30 years, preventing the very hands who pick the food each of us depends on from earning a living wage on which to feed their families.
There is a solution: an amazing, worker-led organization in Florida called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is bringing transformation and justice to the tomato fields. Their Fair Food Program is grounded in human rights and dignity for farmworkers. Under the Program, retailers commit to paying an extra "penny a pound" premium for tomatoes directly to the farmworkers (raising their wages without raising costs form farmers) and to only buying from farmers that have instituted a strict human rights code of conduct in the fields. (You can read more about the CIW's work here, here and here).
But Chipotle is not part of this transformation. Over the years, the company has steadfastly resisted joining together with the CIW, even going so far as to insist that signing a Fair Food Agreement would have no impact on the lives of workers. But in the growing season that just ended, there was real change in the lives of workers, which I learned about first hand when I visited Immokalee in February. Guaranteed an hourly rate, they did not have to leave for the fields many hours before their children woke up. Educated about their rights, they knew where to turn when they faced violence or sexual harassment. The Fair Food Program was making a difference.
Chipotle's refusal to sign a Fair Food Agreement is especially frustrating because the CIW's Fair Food Program shows us that there is a better way to do business with true integrity. Ten major food retailers (including grocery stores Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and fast food restaurants like Burger King and Subway) have signed these agreements.
Chipotle, meanwhile, wants to have their cake and eat it to. They want to go at it alone -- promising to pay the extra wage to workers and only buy from the right growers -- without the transparency and accountability that would come from signing a Fair Food Agreement and agreeing to on-the-ground, third party monitoring. As a human rights activist, this is deeply troubling, because best practice for industry on human rights is a system of independent, outside monitoring of a supply chain. A constant on-the-ground enforcement mechanism is needed, as is the commitment to partner with empowered workers who know their rights and report violations.
Chipotle's slogan has little value if there is no justice for farmworkers. As the CIW has said, "Food with Integrity" is either a holistic vision that respects the men and women who harvest tomatoes for Chipotle's restaurants, or it's just another marketing ploy designed to cash in on a fad. It cannot be both." Chipotle, too, must pursue justice.
This week, activists across the country are holding actions at Chipotle's to demand that the company's values run deeper than just a slogan. If you eat at Chipotle's, you should join them, or take action as an individual by taking a letter to the manager of your local franchise. To find an action near you and to learn more, please visit: http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html#chipj25.]]>How Many Slaves Produced Your Seder?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14010492012-04-04T07:28:24-04:002012-06-04T05:12:02-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
This year, I keep getting questions about chocolate.
Passover seems to be the annual peak of Jewish chocolate consumption (perhaps because it makes an easy dessert when many of us find baking without flour difficult), and for the ethical, kosher-keeping consumer, a tension emerges. There is kosher-for-Passover chocolate. There is kosher fair-trade chocolate. But there is no kosher-for-Passover, fair-trade chocolate. Why is this important? There is a well-documented child labor and child slave labor problem in the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast, and it seems hypocritical to celebrate Passover by eating a product with such a problematic supply chain. The website Fair Trade Judaica has created a petition (with more than 300 signatures so far) demanding ethically produced chocolate for next Passover. And some of my friends are forgoing chocolate this year.
Then there are the tomatoes. Florida, where almost all of our October to May tomatoes are grown, has been called "ground zero" for modern slavery in America because of the high number of human trafficking cases that have been found in the fields. One federal prosecutor even said that one could guarantee that a Florida tomato had been picked by forced labor. Thanks to the amazing work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, more than 90 percent of Florida's tomato growers have begun to implement Fair Food Agreements that include a zero tolerance policy for forced labor and human trafficking in the tomato fields, among other basic protections of human rights. But so far, only two grocery stores (Whole Foods and Trader Joe's) have agreed to only buy Florida tomatoes from growers who have signed these agreements. So your grocery store might still be carrying slave-picked tomatoes -- and you would never know.
The list of products produced by forced labor could go on and on. Fish from Asia. Cotton from Uzbekistan. Tea from Uganda. As a consumer, there is just no way to know whether there is forced labor in the supply chains of the products we buy every day. Each autumn, the Department of Labor releases a list of goods produced by child or forced labor (in 2011, 130 goods from 70 countries), but does not provide details of specific brands or companies. Fair Trade certification is often (but not always) a proxy for ethically produced goods, but the number of products available is small and largely made up of luxury goods. For those of us who keep kosher and are used to looking for a heksher (a symbol of kosher supervision in production) on the food we buy, we wish that we could have a "slavery-free" heksher to help us when we shop. No one wants to be enjoying a delicious piece of chocolate or savoring a tomato and wondering if it was the result of slave labor, especially not at a meal dedicated to liberation like the seder.
This lack of transparency is extremely frustrating. We all might think that because we don't employ any slaves, we lack complicity in the human rights atrocity of modern slavery (with estimates of forced labor worldwide ranging from 12 million to 27 million people), but because of the degree of slave-made materials in the supply chains of products we buy every day that just isn't true. Many corporations fail to adequately police their supply chains, relying on the assurances of third party contractors or suppliers.
It is for this reason that the organization Slavery Footprint designed tools to empower consumers to demand products made without slave labor. By creating a visible demand in the market place, consumers can use their power to affect change on a system that enslaves millions.
Slavery Footprint's website allows people to visualize how their consumption habits are connected to modern-day slavery. You take an inventory of the goods in your home, and receive a score of how many slaves work to produce your lifestyle, based on what you own. Then, through the online action center and the "Free World" mobile application, you can take practical steps to demand products Made In A Free World by asking companies to check their supply chains for slave labor. Slavery Footprint's call to arms is for the ability for to buy things "Made in A Free World."
As the seder begins, we say metaphorically, "This year, we are slaves. Next year, may we be free people." Let us hope that by next Passover, our feasts of liberation will be made without slave labor and that more people will be free.]]>'A Certain People Who Don't Obey the King's Laws': Purim and NYPD Surveillancetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13221042012-03-07T11:13:35-05:002012-05-07T05:12:02-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
So it was a bit of a shock one day on the playground when a kid out of the blue told me and my twin sister that we weren't real Canadians because we were Jewish. We didn't really know how to react. We'd experienced minor episodes of anti-Semetism before (like having pennies thrown at us on a walk to synagogue), but nothing that called into question our authenticity as members of the fabric of Canadian life. Our Judaism (rather than our actions or our actual beliefs) made us foreign, suspicious to this other child.
Jews have always been targets of claims of foreignness. In the Book of Esther, which Jews read this week on the holiday of Purim, the villain Haman tells King Ahasuerus: "There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king's laws; and it is not in Your Majesty's interested to tolerate them" (Esther 3:8). Haman has grievances against Mordechai, who refuses to bow down to the king's right-hand man and give him difference due to his position, and has transferred this anger to Mordechai's entire people.
To get the king's permission to punish the Jews, however, Haman does not summon his list of grievances. Instead, he preys on the king's fears. Hidden in plain sight in his nation is a foreign element, who act differently from everyone else and are not loyal.
This week, as we celebrate Purim, the idea of a foreign, disloyal people who follow strange, foreign laws has not left us. But today, we're not talking about Jews -- we're talking about Muslims. Since 9/11, American Muslims have been confronted with rising discrimination that paints them as an undesirable foreign element in American society. Numerous states have introduced bills that make Muslim law, sharia, illegal, either directly or indirectly under the guise of laws that target "foreign" laws. Congress has held hearing on the supposed radicalization of American Muslims without looking at similar elements in other faith communities, and plans to build new mosques have been met public protest that would have been unprecedented 15 years ago.
Here in New York, we have been reading the ongoing revelations from the Associated Press of the degree to which the Muslim community has been under New York Police Department surveillance, simply for being Muslim. The NYPD appears to have placed an entire community under suspicion, recording license plate numbers of people attending prayers at mosques, infiltrating Muslim student groups (for such noteworthy acts as praying or going white water rafting), taking pictures of Muslim businesses, and tracking the subjects of sermons given by imams. The motions of daily life became fodder for the NYPD's secret files, simply because they were performed by a Muslim.
"It is a distressing fact of life that mistreatment of Muslims does not draw nearly the protest that it should. But not just Muslims are threatened by this seemingly excessive warrantless surveillance and record-keeping. Today Muslims are the target. In the past it was protesters against the Vietnam War, civil rights activists, socialists. Tomorrow it will be another vulnerable group whose lawful behavior is blended into criminal activity."
The words of Esther, and its "certain people," ring in my ears. How easy it is to scapegoat an entire group of law-abiding citizens for the actions of a few, or because of their marks of difference and the way you perceive them as falling outside the narrative of "America."
It often feels too easy to take the "first, they came for the Communist" approach to standing in solidarity with others. We should support our Muslim brothers and sisters because no group should be singled out for suspicion because of their religion rather than their actions. But the Jewish community understands in our hearts what it means to be seen as an unwanted foreign element, no matter how loyal or "American" we are.
The Purim story has a happy ending, with enemies vanquished and Mordechai replacing his adversary Haman in a position of leadership. People of faith have a responsibility to ensure that today's story has a positive outcome, standing in solidarity with their Muslim friends, neighbors and colleagues. I applaud Mayor Bloomberg for his support of religious freedom, such as his outspoken support of Park51. But he, and the NYPD leadership, need to understand that religious freedom in America extends to the freedom to live and worship freely without the fear that it will place your name in a police file. Those charged with fighting crime and disrupting terrorism should not be allowed to criminalize daily life. No Muslim American child should have to worry that someone will tell them they aren't really American. That would be our happy ending.]]>Choosing Justice: We Can't Consume Our Way to a Better Worldtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12504412012-03-05T15:32:43-05:002012-05-05T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
To some degree, we reinforce this when we give tzedakah: We feed someone who is hungry, rather than attacking the root cause of hunger. We spend money to help the causes we care about the most. But we can't spend our way to a more just society, even if we gave every last penny to tzedakah. We have to be activists for justice.
Tzedek (justice) is not the same as tzedakah (charity). If you look at the websites of many corporations, they have a section dedicated to corporate social responsibility. They tout the ability of their employees to volunteer, the millions of dollars in funds they give away, and the products they donate. These acts allow the companies to see themselves as "giving back to the community." The donations they make have an impact on real lives. But they are not corporate social responsibility. After all, the highest rung of Maimonides ladder of tzedakah is allowing people to be self-sufficient, and many of the same corporations are involved in paying low wages, busting unions, and polluting the environment.
Whether you see these companies corporate social responsibility as a cynical attempt to divert attention from root causes of poverty or whether you give them the benefit of the doubt (and I do both, depending on the day) companies need to be taught that we expect tzedek first and tzedakah second.
I see this directly in my work on slavery and human trafficking. Slavery is a nasty word. No company wants to be associated with it, and many are increasingly willing to audit their supply chains to make sure there are no slave made goods (this is the root of the new law in California, the California Transparency in Supply Chain Act). Transparency and third party monitoring is critical in the fight against slavery because it makes corporations take responsibility for their products. But fewer corporations are willing to go further than just transparency and deal with root causes. Slavery, after all, is the extreme end of a continuum of labor abuses and extremely low wages. To truly end slavery, we have to be willing to fight poverty, and few corporations are willing to acknowledge their role in creating or sustaining poverty. That is why Rabbis for Human Rights-North America's major partner in fighting domestic slavery is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their campaign for justice in Florida's tomato fields. They end slavery by raising wages and creating a code of conduct for employers: through tzedek and not just tzedakkah.
This is a model we have to embrace as ourselves as well. We must make ethical buying choices because it is the right thing to do. But we can't end there. We must raise our voices and tell the corporations that we will not eat or wear the products of exploitation. It's hard. It's paralyzing. It's exhausting. And it is what tzedek really is.
Originally published by Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas as "Choosing Justice."]]>Choose Our Highest Values, Reject Feartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11422822011-12-15T15:27:15-05:002012-02-14T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/b'tzelem elohim, is more critical. The inherent sacredness of each person, friend and enemy, becomes the basis of the Jewish opposition to torture and standard by which American policies are evaluated.
But we cannot forget the importance of Rabbi Akiva's assertion that the Jewish version of the Golden Rule is the highest value in the Torah. Our own desires for safety, well-being and peace are transferred onto our fellow, sacred human beings. The rabbis stated that one good deed leads to another, and that with one act of wrongdoing, another inevitably follows. If we follow the Golden Rule, we set an example to both our friends and enemies for honorable behavior, even in difficult times. And if we treat others abominably, no matter how much they wish to harm us, then we create justifications for torture and cruelty.
When we imagine how America should treat suspected terrorists in its custody, we have to keep in mind how we would want our own troops treated if they fell into enemy hands. Indeed, a desire to keep safe our sons and daughters serving our country is one of the primary reasons that many Americans oppose the use of torture against suspected terrorists. We have already seen the effects of the photos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in stirring anti-American sentiment, and oppressive regimes around the globe justify torturing pro-democracy activists by labeling them "terrorists." When President Obama signed an Executive Order his first day in office making the Army Field Manual the standard for American interrogations, he reaffirmed the centrality of the Golden Rule in keep us safer.
But there are those who would jettison the Golden Rule out of a misguided concern for security. During the recent debate on the Ayotte Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would have allowed for a classified list of interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual, Senator Lieberman argued for terrorizing detainees. Concerned because the Army Field Manual is a public document, he insisted that for interrogations to be successful, detainees had to be in a state of fear about what might happen to them in American custody.
Senators Lieberman and Ayotte insisted that the Amendment would not promote a return to the classified use of torture because torture is illegal under national and international laws. But our recent past shows how easy it is for a new Administration to twist the law to define torture out of existence when creating extreme interrogation methods. And if those methods are classified, we as citizens will never know that torture has returned -- all in the name of frightening suspected terrorists.
A man once came to the sage Hillel and asked to be taught the entire Torah while he stood on one foot. Hillel replied: "What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary." Hillel understood that without the Golden Rule, all other rules lose their grounding.
As a nation, we must not lose sight of our goal of maintaining safety while promoting American values through embodying them in laws and behavior. Our country should be focused on ending terrorism, not on terrorizing others. We do not have the privilege to jettison our values in the name of safety. While Senator Lieberman has served honorably in the U.S. Senate, and is well-known for his deep and abiding faith, he is wrong to believe that our country should focus on instilling terror in others. He and others in the Senate who supported the Ayotte Amendment forget that America is made safer when America lives by the values it professes. We must inspire -- not fear in suspected terrorists but democracy, compassion and a community of nations guided by the Golden Rule.]]>Celebrating International Human Rights Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11356902011-12-10T08:10:22-05:002012-02-09T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the UDHR), which was proclaimed 63 years ago this Saturday, Dec. 10, 1948. She used to offer a nightly prayer that ended by asking God to "Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new." This dual understanding of human nature -- both the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting on each other and the heights that we can achieve if only we know the way -- is at the heart of the document she helped create. The Preamble and 30 Articles of the UDHR cover just about possible permutations of social, political, cultural, economic and civil rights that might need to protected, because at some point, every single one of them has been denied.
I'll admit that prior to coming to work for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America nearly five years ago, I had never read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Most of us probably haven't. If I thought about human rights at all, I probably thought about political prisoners in oppressive regimes or war crimes. I didn't think, or more probably I didn't want to know, slave-made goods in our supply chains or trafficked domestic workers in my home community. I didn't think about police brutality or solitary confinement as forms of torture. And I had never considered that social and economic rights were as much human rights as civil and political rights. It is as much a human right to be able to join a union as it is to be able to vote!
The UDHR is both inspiring and challenging. Inspiring because of the ideal world it describes, insisting even that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." (Article 28) A world where everyone has the right to work, live free from fear, and be assured the same rights as their neighbor? Who wouldn't want to live in that world? And challenging because the reality is the world the UDHR describes feels very remote. We know what our rights are but now we have to work to make them reality.
The Jewish community in particular cannot forget that the UDHR was written as a reaction to the Holocaust and other atrocities inflicted on civilians during WWII. RHR-NA's founding chairman, Rabbi Gerry Serotta, has encouraged International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10th) to be seen as a yom tov (a holy day) for Jews everywhere. This yom tov is a both a day of celebration of a groundbreaking document and a call to action. We understand in our guts what can happen when the failure of one person to see another as fully human is magnified to a grand scale, and so we must pledge ourselves to promoting universal human rights as fundamental to all human interactions.
This pledge is true for us both as nations and as individuals. As nations, it is too easy to point fingers at where other countries are failing on human rights. Make no mistake, there are countries that have horrific human rights records. But for those of us who live in democracies, we have to admit that we aren't always living up to the rights we profess to maintain. Housing is a human right -- how many Americans are homeless? Food is a human right, and yet how many people will spend this holiday season not knowing where their next meal is coming from?
But human rights should also govern our individual actions. Jewish tradition teaches us that inherent human dignity, k'vod habriot, is so fundamental as to override even biblical commandments. What would it mean to approach each interaction with other person with their inherent dignity in the forefront of your mind? Acting towards each other "in a spirit of brotherhood" (in the words of the non-gender neutral UDHR), would we still hang on to deep-seeded prejudice? Would we discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation or physical ability? As individuals, we must commit ourselves to the grassroots changes in human society that no government can legislate. And those changes are very difficult.
Human rights are aspirational. They challenge us to be our best selves, both as nations and as individuals. Like Eleanor Roosevelt, we know there is a possibility of a world made new. This year, as we celebrate our modern yom tov, let us make her vision a reality.]]>A Just Harvest for Sukkottag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10002592011-10-12T12:23:18-04:002011-12-12T05:12:02-05:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
Fifteen rabbis and I had travelled to Immokalee, Fla., to meet with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants advocating for dignified wages and working conditions in the tomato fields. My colleagues and I spent the day learning about CIW's Campaign for Fair Food, which includes not only a penny-per-pound of tomatoes wage increase, but also a code of conduct in the fields, enshrining zero tolerance policies for sexual abuse, wage theft and slavery, among other basic rights.
To bring attention to the campaign and to highlight the disturbing fact that the grocery industry (especially Publix and Trader Joe's) has steadfastly refused to sign Fair Food Agreements, we were holding a prayer circle around the tomatoes, singing songs of justice. Apparently, the manager of the store was OK with a group of rabbis in tallitot (prayer shawls) circling the tomatoes, but once we started singing and drawing more curious onlookers, it got to be too much for her and we were asked to leave.
Just what rabbis do every day, right?
It has been more than 50 years since Edward R. Murrow's groundbreaking documentary "Harvest of Shame" highlighted the labor abuses found in America's fields, and today, huge problems still persist. Farmworkers are still paid by the piece, not per hour, with wages often falling far below minimum wage. They often face physical abuse, wage theft, sexual harassment and harmful exposure to pesticides. Sometimes conditions are so horrific that they meet the legal standard for human trafficking; indeed, one federal prosecutor has called Immokalee "ground zero" for modern slavery in America, with more than 1,000 workers freed in the past 10 years.
The people who harvest our food deserve dignity and a fair wage for their hard work. Geraldo, member of the CIW, lamented, "Why do I spend every day harvesting food for the rest of America and then have to stand in line at a food pantry on Thanksgiving for a plate of food?"
Sukkot, which begins this week, is the Jewish version of Thanksgiving. All of three of the pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot) are connected with a harvest, but Sukkot, coming at the end of the fall growing season, really bursts with agricultural celebration. We wave around the lulav and etrog, celebrating God's gift of the harvest with all of our senses, and fill our sukkot with the beautiful gifts of the ground: apples, cranberries, gourds and Indian corn. Sukkot is also a creation festival, a celebration of the renewal of God's world.
And yet, while we may understand that we are partners with God in creation, including the gift of the food that we eat, we often forget to acknowledge the workers, like Geraldo and the members of the CIW, who are the divine middlemen and women. Without them, the food would not make it out of the fields, let alone to our table.
The prophet Hosea teaches: "Plant righteousness for yourselves; harvest the fruits of goodness" (Hosea 10:12). The agricultural metaphor for creating a more just world is apt: if we start small, planting tiny seeds of justice, then nurture those seeds through the obstacles of the growing season and whatever challenges society throws in our way, then we will be rewarded in the end with the fruits of goodness. But what I particularly like about this verse is that it insists that we must be our own agents of change. We must plant righteousness for ourselves, neither planting on behalf of someone else nor waiting for someone to plant righteousness for us.
A large part of what makes the CIW so remarkable is that they are agents of their own change. Rather than waiting for the growers or the retailers to raise wages or improve working conditions, they have fought back to change their own reality. They went straight to the top of the supply chain, initially by-passing the growers to negotiate directly with the large corporations who purchase the tomatoes. Many of us recall their successful campaigns over the past 10 years with corporations such as Taco Bell, McDonald's, Aramark and Whole Foods. A major victory was achieved just last fall when 90 percent of the members of the Florida Tomato Growers' Exchange agreed to sign Fair Food Agreements if their purchasers would sign on as well. But that is where things have stalled, as the grocery stores have refused to comply.
As Sukkot begins, and we remember the farmworkers who picked the harvest we are celebrating, we at Rabbis for Human Rights-North America want to do more than just sing songs of justice around some tomatoes in Naples. We are calling on the Jewish community to support the CIW in its Campaign for Fair Food. A just harvest cannot mean tomatoes picked by slave labor or for sub-poverty wages. Only once we have fair food can we truly harvest goodness.
For more on RHR-NA's support of the CIW, please visit RHR-NA.org.]]>Cheney May Have No Regrets About Torture -- But We Shouldtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9570822011-09-15T12:14:22-04:002011-11-15T05:12:01-05:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
The torture program Cheney and Bush authorized in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11 10 years ago was illegal according to both American and international law. The CIA's use of torture in interrogations was considerably less effective than the rapport-building techniques of the FBI, and it produced evidence that could not be used in court. And while Cheney and others defend the use of torture as a means for keeping us safe, the horrific images of torture and news of waterboarding that spread around the world helped to mobilize our enemies against us. The dark side is a dangerous place to be.
But as we reach the 10th anniversary of the event that incited the government to initiate the use of torture, we must get beyond arguments about its efficacy and legality. Laws can be -- and have been -- re-written and reinterpreted. What we have lost since 9/11 is the underlying value that there are limits on what we can do, even in the name of safety. A recent Pew poll demonstrates yet again that American support for the use of torture continues to rise, while those who feel that torture is "never justified" is an ever-shrinking group, especially among the young. We are living on the dark side.
Safety is not an end unto itself. After all, isn't remaining safe simply the first rung on a ladder of protecting all that we hold dear as a nation? Charles and Gregory Fried, in their book "Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror," argue against the temptation, even in the most difficult times, to give ourselves over to the dark side. Mere survival is not enough, they state, because we have to question what we will survive as once we allow ourselves to permit the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture. We cannot survive as monsters, but torture is the work of monsters, unjustifiable under any and all conditions. I ascribe to the philosophy of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which reminds us again and again that torture breaks us as human beings, destroys our divine spark and corrupts our souls. We must continue to insist that the use of torture is never justified and contradicts out most cherished moral values as Americans.
The legacy of 9/11 must not be the dark side. Dick Cheney may have "no regrets," but for Americans of conscience, we must have more than regrets. We have a moral obligation to fully investigate our government's past use of torture, not to brush it under the rug or excuse it in the name of national security. Join me in calling for a Commission of Inquiry that fully investigates all aspects of the use of torture by the United States and demanding accountability for architects of torture like Vice President Cheney. Let us truly close out this tragic chapter in American history before we reach the next round of anniversaries.]]>Stories of Loss and Chaos: The Ninth of Av and the 10th Anniversary of 9/11tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9181502011-08-08T17:00:33-04:002011-10-08T05:12:02-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
I was in New York on 9/11. From a bus entering the Lincoln Tunnel, I saw the fireball go up when the second plane hit the twin towers, and I remember that in the days that immediately followed, every gathering or chance encounter began with the telling of our 9/11 stories. Over time, as the chaos and pain and ruin moved into the background, the ritual of the telling of stories diminished, only to resurface as summer moves into fall, reminiscent of a blue-skied day when the world fell apart.
The Fast of Tisha B'Av, which begins this year on the night of Aug. 8, has been a way for the Jewish community to confront and contain trauma through the telling of stories. First established to commemorate the destruction of First Temple in B.C.E. 586, it has become the day to relive the trauma of many other national calamities: the destruction of the Second Temple, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the Holocaust, among others. While some have decried the over-identification of calamities with this date (surely, not everything bad that has ever happened to the Jewish people began in late July or early August), there is something to be said for containing all the communal rage and pain to one day, and then on that date, letting it all pour out. We read the Book of Lamentations, and imagine ourselves to be the survivors of a ruined and desolate nation, wondering where God had gone.
The rabbis tell the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua visiting the ruins of the Second Temple after it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. Rabbi Joshua bursts into tears, anguished that the place where Israel atoned for its sins had been destroyed. Rabbi Yochanan comforts him, declaring that deeds of lovingkindness (chesed) had more power to achieve atonement and heal a broken world than sacrifice ever could. Chesed is not just something God shows us; it is our obligation to our fellow human beings in light of unimaginable tragedy. Chesed and not hatred or revenge.
Over the past six months, I struggled with how Rabbis for Human Rights-North America would commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 as an organization. What is the message of a Jewish human rights organization, particularly one that has focused on the darker legacy of 9/11, the use of torture in the War on Terror and the rise of bigotry against Muslims? Would anything we said be heard as prophetic admonition, or an inspiring challenge to hold fast to our most cherished values as a nation? Doesn't the anniversary belong to those closest to the events, the survivors and families of victims, the first responders and the disaster chaplains?
One theme that has emerged in some of theinterfaith settings I have posed this question to is "Remember Sept. 12." The memory of the day after 9/11 is one of unity: people reaching across boundaries of faith, race and class to connect with their neighbors, with their friends and with perfect strangers. Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists and agnostics, we were together in our shock. It was the strength of unity that helped us survive those first days of trauma. Out of the trauma, chesed.
But it is important to acknowledge that for many people, this message of unity and chesed is completely false. After I posed "Remember Sept. 12" as a theme to a group of rabbinic colleagues, there were loud objections to what was seen as a glossing over of the experience of real pain and suffering. Many of my colleagues had counseled those who had lost family members. For some who had been in New York and D.C., the visceral memory was the fear that the planes were just the first wave of a larger, more sustained attack. Some complained that one dishonored the memory of 9/11 if he or she did not also talk about the two wars that have followed (both the soldiers who have fought and the politic quagmires that have resulted). "Remember Sept. 12" seemed like a rosy nostalgia for a day that never really was.
More recently, when I participated in the interfaith "Our Better Angels" master class for Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith leaders, one of the Muslim participants challenged the entire paradigm of telling stories about 9/11. Certain stories get privileged over others, she reminded us. For example, who remembers those people turned away from the intake centers at the piers because they lacked documentation?
How do we acknowledge the fact that one's experience of 9/11 is profoundly affected by his or her race, class and religion. How can we have unity when we aren't clear what story we are telling?
I don't know the answer. Maybe we'll just have to wait to see what Sept. 12, 2011, feels like. It took the Jewish people generations to figure out what the narrative of the destruction of the Temple on Tisha B'Av was, and we still incorporate new episodes of pain and loss into the commemoration. Even the official story is still open. As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, may we have the wisdom to hear other, competing stories with hearts of chesed.
]]>Teaching Our Children: Ethics and Shavuottag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8709722011-06-07T10:54:05-04:002011-08-07T05:12:02-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/disturbing report was released by the American Red Cross. After speaking with hundreds of American teenagers, it became clear that the generation that has grown up since 9/11 is woefully uneducated in the rules of war. Most of them have never heard of the Geneva Convention, and more than half believe that there are times when it is acceptable to torture an enemy prisoner. 56 percent believe that retaliatory killings of prisoners is acceptable. Even more shocking is the statistic that 41 percent believe that is acceptable for an enemy under some circumstances to torture American troops.
This is the generation raised on "24," convinced by the narrative that torture keeps us safer and unengaged in the moral question of whether torture is ethically permissible regardless of its efficacy. In the past 10 years, we have seen a normalization of torture in popular media. It's what the good guys do to win, and winning means doing whatever it takes. That is the compass that guides actions, not our covenant with other nations or the American commitment to conduct just and ethical wars.
These teenagers, of course, will soon become our soldiers, and nearly 80 percent of them believe that the United States should do a better job of educating youth in humanitarian law before they are of the age they can enlist. I find that statistic heartening: teenagers are smart and they know why they don't know what they don't know. If they have failed to learn, it is because we have failed to teach them. If they believe torture is OK, it is because they have seen the United States torture and the architects of torture go unpunished. As we contemplate our laws and moral obligations as a nation, we are both performing them in the present and modeling them for the future, for our children.
What does it mean to obligate ourselves both for the present and the future? Starting the night of June 7, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, the night that we received the Torah at Sinai. Coming just seven weeks after our redemption from Egypt at Passover, Shavuot is a celebration of the covenant between God and Israel. This sacred moment transcends time: just as at the Seder, we say that each one of us needs to see ourselves as though we personally left Egypt, Jewish tradition teaches that every member of the Jewish people, past, present and future, was present at Sinai. As a result, we all consented and have a stake in the ritual and moral imperatives contained in the Torah, the Jewish constitution.
There is a beautiful midrash that teaches when God offers Israel the chance to receive the Torah, God asks for a pledge in return as a guarantee that they would keeps its laws and ethical teachings. The Israelites offer God several different possibilities: first, their sacred ancestors (like the first monotheists, Abraham and Sarah); then, their prophets (fiery defenders of injustice like Isaiah and Amos); and finally, the Israelites offer their children, the generations to come, as their pledge. God accepts this, saying, "Your children are a good pledge. For their sakes, I will give you the Torah."
Why are the children such a good pledge? The Israelites understand that a commitment this serious cannot be made on the merits of the past but through a commitment to future action. They cannot know for sure that their children will follow the laws and ethical imperatives they are receiving. They are making a commitment to that through the lens of their own deeds, their children will also come to behave as God demands. The Israelites are pledging hope to God, rather than memory, in return for the Torah.
Right now, we're celebrating Shavuot, but June is also Torture Awareness Month, a month when we recognize and support victims of torture (from regimes all over the world) and pledge ourselves to accountability for American use of torture in the War on Terror. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (of which my organization, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, is a key member) has made the theme of this month "Repairing the Brokenness," an awareness that until we acknowledge as a nation what we allowed to happen in our names, until we take responsibility for our actions, we cannot truly repent and move forward, as President Obama has asked us to do.
The Red Cross report reflects our national brokenness. Why should torture be wrong and why do our enemies deserve humanitarian protections? If they are willing to do anything, ask our children, why shouldn't we?
But in return, just like the Israelites, we must also pledge hope. We must recommit to teaching through our actions that every human being, even our enemies, are created in God's image -- and that entails responsibilities in how they are treated, even if they would not do the same in return. As a nation, we must once again embody a commitment to waging just warfare and to upholding humanitarian law. The Torah teaches us that just because we can do something, our higher ethical commitments mean that we should not. We must show our children that this is what it means to be the good guys.
]]>Building Bridges of Freedom: The Interfaith Movement to End Slaverytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8659692011-05-26T13:00:56-04:002011-07-26T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and Sister Estrella Castalone of Talitha Kum, it is the fierce desire to see an end to modern slavery. David's organization harnesses the power of socially responsible investing and shareholder resolutions to demand that corporations eliminate slavery from their supply chains. Sister Estrella heads an international coalition of orders of religious women who fight trafficking and bring comfort and support to its survivors. And Rabbis for Human Rights-North America is the moral conscience of the American Jewish community, mobilizing our members to speak out against this largely invisible human rights atrocity.
Last week, thanks to the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and St. Thomas University, we spoke together in Rome to ask how faith communities, government, non-profits and the business sector can work together to end slavery. "Building Bridges of Freedom: Public-Private Partnerships to End Modern Slavery" brought together leaders from all these constituencies to share knowledge, promote best practices, and to stratigize about coalitions to fight human trafficking and modern slavery. We were challenged: How can faith communities do more than just provide services to victims? What corporations are leaders for transparency in supply chains and what legislation is needed to ensure that others follow? How do we engage the human rights community at large to focus more on the problem of slavery? How can we work together to be most effective in a time when resources are stretched?
Let's not use euphemisms when talking about the problem. Not slave-like conditions, not low wages or lack of benefits, but slavery. Slavery may be illegal everywhere, including for nearly 150 years here in the United States, but it flourishes. More than 800,000 to 2 million people are trafficked across borders each year, including nearly 20,000 to the United States. Add to this number the millions of people held as forced prostitution, child soldiers, indentured domestic servants and debt laborers within their own countries, and estimates of the number of modern slaves rises to a range of 12 million to 27 million people -- and some of the activists I have spoken with think these estimates are conservative. There are more people enslaved today than at any other point in human history. And human life is cheap: You can easily buy another person for $50 to $100, a price point that makes it more effective to buy a new person than to heal a sick one. As Ambassador Luis CdeBaca said, "Human trafficking is not a crime of movement, but of exploitation."
Slave-produced raw materials are found in the supply chains of the clothes we buy and the food we eat. I think, in our hearts, most of us realize that there are compromises being made for the low price of the food that we eat and the clothes that we buy. We chose to look away because it is overwhelming not to. I was speaking recently with another activist rabbi about an article on Trader Joe's refusal to sign onto the Campaign for Fair Food of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which fights slavery in the Florida tomato industry. The other rabbi was troubled and she said to me: "You know, food justice is just something I don't want to look at, because once I do, once I know the problems and human rights abuses in every stage of production, I'm just going to be paralyzed every time I go to the grocery store." And I understand -- after all, that's what it's like to go grocery shopping with me -- and none of us want to think about child slavery in the Ivory Coast as we eat a chocolate bar. We have to acknowledge that our decision to not know is a choice, pretending for a moment that we live in a just world so that we can finish our grocery shopping and get on with our daily lives.
Jewish values demand that we protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We're just past Passover, when we celebrate the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and the Jewish experience of having been slaves becomes the basis for the Jewish moral code. Because we were slaves, we are expected to protect the stranger in our midst -- to know their heart. So important is the commandment to protect the stranger that the Torah mentions it more than the laws of keeping kosher or observing Shabbat. Victims of human trafficking are today's stranger.
So what do we do? How do we tackle a problem that seems entrenched and unsolvable? This is where the partnership model behind the conference in Rome becomes so important. Non-profits, communities of faith, businesses and the government have to work together. For the past 10 years, American anti-slavery efforts have focused on three Ps: prevention, protection and prosecution. But to be effective and reach the heart of the causes of modern slavery, we need another P: partnership. None of us can end slavery alone.
Fighting slavery cuts across political lines. This year, Congress will pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the cornerstone of the American effort to end slavery at home and overseas, and it is a bipartisan piece of legislation, representing a moral consensus: Slavery is wrong, and we should not benefit from unpaid labor.
If we do this together, we will face our responsibility toward the most vulnerable members of our society. The Talmud teaches (Shabbat 54b) that any who can protest against something wrong in the whole world and does not speak up, is accountable together with all citizens of the world. We cannot feign ignorance any longer, especially not in today's interconnected global community. Older systems of morality privileged those who were close at hand because one's sphere of influence was more limited -- we weren't responsible for people hundreds or thousands of miles away because our choices would neither help nor hurt them.
Today, our complicity and our responsibility radiate outwards. As Abraham Joshua Heschel said: "Few are guilty, but all are responsible" ("The Prophets," p. 19). It is amazing to me how many victims of modern slavery have been found because an individual saw something that didn't seem right and took responsibility. The State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has a list of 20 steps you can take to fight slavery. It's a great start.
]]>With Bin Laden's Death, Torture Is Still Not The Answertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8580162011-05-05T13:28:09-04:002011-07-05T05:12:01-04:00Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Trosterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-rachel-kahntroster/
But the truth is that torture did not help America find Osama bin Laden. And torture did not keep us safer. It created enemies, passionate enemies, who feel compelled to respond to the degradation and inflicted pain. It is well accepted that the pictures of Abu Ghraib were used as a recruiting tool by al Qaeda since they became public in 2004. News of the torture program has also cost us the good will of potential allies in the search for bin Laden, who could have helped us locate him years earlier.
Torture debases the persons tortured, as well as the torturers, and it violates the basic tenets of all major religions. It is illegal and it is immoral. As the Statement of Conscience of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture states, "Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear ... It contradicts our nation's most cherished values. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable."
There are two truths that are common to most people of faith: that every human being is created in God's image and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, the innumerable variations on the Golden Rule.
Being created in God's image is not trivial sentiment. If one takes God seriously, as Americans of faith do, then one has to take the image of God seriously, to recognize every person, even one's enemy, as sacred. Torture desecrates the image of God found in the victim. Not even our own survival permits us as a nation to torture, because if we desecrate the image of God to do so, then we have survived as monsters.
But the Golden Rule is also a powerful moral compass. We cannot do to our enemies what we would not want done to our own troops. Indeed, Americans of all religious backgrounds are less likely to support the use of torture when they understand that it permits those who would harm us to inflict these techniques on American soldiers.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in response to the horrors of the Second World War. It begins with the sacredness and equality of all human beings, stating: "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." Article 5 prevents the use of torture and the Convention Against Torture, signed by 77 countries including the United States is a result of that Declaration. It prohibits the use of torture under all circumstances, without exception. Indeed, torture regarded in international law as so reprehensible that it is akin to genocide or slavery. But the proponents of torture now claiming success restricted the American legal understanding of torture to allow for a range of illegal interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.
In the days after 9/11, we were told that the world had changed and that the gloves needed to come off in dealing with our enemies. Appealing to moral values, to the values that have held in the United States since the Revolutionary War (when George Washington would not torture British prisoners) is painted as weak. But it is actually a sign of strength, a counterbalance of the impulse for revenge. Acting out of revenge is easy. Finding God in every human being is hard.
The proponents of the Bush torture program still do not understand that torture was not -- and is not -- the answer to keeping America safer. They cannot use bin Laden's death as a cover for having permitted the United States to break American and international law on the use of torture. This is the time to establish a government-sponsored Commission of Inquiry with full subpoena power to let the public know the full extent and consequences of the torture program. The vehemence of the proponents' support for the torture program and the lack of a complete record of what the United States government did in the secret prisons, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram demand a full accounting. The supporters of the Bush torture program should welcome a Commission of Inquiry. If they believe what they say, they should not be afraid of the facts. We all deserve to know the truth about torture.
