Thursday, April 11, 2019

Testimony on the Fair Share Amendment at the Massachusetts State House, April 11, 2019





My name is Rabbi Barbara Penzner, rabbi at Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in West Roxbury, home to Jews from across Greater Boston. I am also the co-chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee and I am here today to testify in support of the Fair Share Amendment.

The people of Massachusetts are hard-working people. From the janitors who clean our offices to the CEOs of the biotech firms who create medical devices, we are proud to contribute to the economy of Massachusetts. Every worker does their part to create a society that works for everyone.

For those who have the blessing of wealth, which comes from hard work as well as inheritance, investments, and access to the best of our education, housing, health care, and transportation, keeping those foundations of society strong and sustainable for everyone is in their best interest. Employers need workers who are educated. Employers need workers who can travel to their jobs and get there on time. Everyone benefits when our infrastructure works.

Let’s look at a basic moral principle. Namely, human society thrives when we share our blessings. In the Book of Deuteronomy we read:
“There shall be no needy among you, since you will be blessed, but if a needy person comes to you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand; give readily and have no regrets when you do so, for you will be blessed in all your efforts.”  (Deut. 15:4, 7,10)
When we share what we have our blessings multiply.

A second moral principle is that no individual is required to carry the burden of the whole; this is the responsibility of the community. As we read in the book of Leviticus (19:9-11):
“When you reap your harvest, you shall not take everything on the land; you must leave the corners of your fields for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. In addition, whatever gleanings fall from your hand, you leave them for the poor and the stranger. When you pick the fruit of your vineyard, do not leave the vines bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard, you shall leave them for the poor.”

You can be sure that those with bigger fields left bigger corners.
The extra dollars that we leave on the table can save lives, while we hardly notice.

A rabbinic tale describes how we are all in the same boat. A group of travelers are sitting in a boat when one takes a drill and starts drilling a hole under his own seat. As the water begins to pour into the hull, all the other passengers protest. The one with the drill responds, what business is it of yours? I’m only drilling under my seat.

Prosperity comes to those who share their wealth. We are not asking the wealthy to give away their hard-earned earnings. We are asking them to contribute a small fraction, the corners of their fields, to build up the roads and bridges, to improve the trains and buses and subways, and to create a shining educational system that raises up all people.  We are in the same boat, and together, we can keep the hull strong enough to carry us all.

Thank you.

To learn more about the Fair Share Amendment and Raise up Massachusetts, go here.

Monday, April 8, 2019

Meet our new grandson, Isaiah Levin


Isaiah Levin

To our friends, family, but most importantly Isaiah,

We want to tell you a little bit about your name. We chose both names impulsively (one of them may or may not have been drunkenly selected in a hot tub), but the more we’ve reflected, the more we’ve realized they reflect our deepest hopes for what kind of person you will be.

Let us you tell a little bit about the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah lived in the 8th century BC during the Assyrian destruction of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian captivity which followed.. The book of Isaiah is filled with much of the best poetry in the Bible, such a beating swords into plowshares, the radical statement of monotheism “I am the first and I am the last” and the voice in the wilderness. But our favorite verses, which were always your mother’s favorite part of Yom Kippur and your father  discovered in a book by Will Durant is Isaiah 58:5-7:

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
In the first line, Isaiah rejects empty ritual and self-centered acts of pseudo-asceticism as guides towards living an authentic, ethically meaningful life. Holiness will not come by sticking rigidly to the dictates of tradition. Isaiah does not grope towards an imaginary past.

But Isaiah does not reject the idea of a fast.  Rather than focusing on the damn Babylonians, he focuses his critique on what his people can control - their own complicity in the highly marketized, deeply stratified Eastern Mediterranean economy. Like any good prophet, Isaiah is furious at the hypocrisy and injustice of the world around him, and demands something better. Isaiah turns the power of God into something beyond idolatry and dreams of national vengeance, into an instrument for criticizing the social order. He’s angry about inequality, poverty, debt-peonage, and slavery. I hope that when you see these things in the word around you, your heart burns with anger, and the that your lip curls with disgust. To quote our late, beloved Professor Silberman (zichrono livracha) I hope you’re always ready to fight the bastards.

But Isaiah also articulates a vision of holiness grounded in community and our ethical obligations to one another. When he says “hide not thyself from thine own flesh” he’s describing a radical act of empathy in which my fate is bound up in yours and acts of justice involve physical connections between people. Bring poor people into your home. Cover the naked. Feed the hungry. It’s easy to believe in the principles of a just world. But what’s more difficult is actually living the way Isaiah describes. Getting your hands dirty, and not being afraid to touch your brothers and sisters. “Thine own flesh” is an expansive definition of family. He could of said kin, but he instead he encompasses all humanity (and maybe not just humanity) in shared  physical connection that demands empathy.

I know that’s a lot for a little baby. Or 8 year old watching this video waiting for the good part, of moody adolescent trying to engage in some futile voyage of self-discovery. Living this life of radical empathy, really seeing and not being afraid to touch the people around you. It’s something that’s hard for all of us, every day, and that’s why it’s our hope for you.

Now, Isaiah’s a prophet. He like, lives in a cave and yells at people all day. What would it look like to actually live by his principles? For that, we wanted to name you after a weirdo who could have been one of your college uncles, Konstantin Levin.

Your mother finished Anna Karenina in a feverish daze over a week in DC the summer after our first year of college. She stayed up all night reading while we schemed bus trips to come visit each other. Most people think of Anna Karenina as the story of a tragic love affair, which is crazy, because that’s only half the book, and it’s missing the best part! Levin, who forms the other half of the book’s narrative, is a young country aristocrat struggling to be a good person in a rapidly modernizing late 19th century Russian society that he knows is unjust.

Levin’s far from perfect. He’s awkward, temperamental, argumentative, and impulsive. But he’s also thoughtful and sincere. He spends the book arguing, studying, passionately engaging in agricultural modernization projects - . It’s a great book. Seriously, we’re not selling it well. There’s an awesome part where Levin cuts wheat with some peasants then drinks some vodka, and it made us both cry.

But the book ends with Levin’s epiphany, which both acknowledges its difficulty and echoes Isaiah’s embodied vision of love.  He says:

I shall continue to be vexed with Ivan the coachman, and get into useless discussions and express my thoughts blunderingly. I shall always be blaming my wife for what annoys me, and repenting at once. I shall always feel a certain barrier between the holy of holies, of my inmost soul and the souls of others.”

But:

“I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and men living now—peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good.”

While acknowledging that authentic connection with others is difficult and temporary, he realizes that these brief, shining moments are what gives life its meaning. Levin accepts that there is a barrier between him and his fellow man, but sees his duty in life as poking through that barrier whenever he can. The world is broken and unjust; we’re not perfect, and neither are our brothers and sisters. But that shouldn’t stop us from loving each other.

Isaiah Levin, in Jewish tradition the Bris is meant to be a covenant between God and the people of Israel. But today you’re entering into a covenant with all people, surrounded by wisdom that echoes across centuries and millennia, and so many people who love you. Feed your brothers and sisters, cloth them, see them, love them.

We love you so much already, and we can’t wait to see the person you become.


Ima and Dad (Aviva and Colin)

Isaiah was born March 27, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois