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“In the Beginning, Our Ancestors Worshipped Idols” “We Used to Own Our Slaves. Now We Just Rent Them.”

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“In the Beginning, Our Ancestors Worshipped Idols” “We Used to Own Our Slaves. Now We Just Rent Them.” THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH4HE2ABBINIC#ALLFOR(UMAN2IGHTSsWWWTRUAHORG “In the beginning, our ancestors worshipped idols” A 1903 #ne of $1000-$5000, in 2013 dollars, Use the following four images/texts as a Following Daru’s excited and would be worth roughly $60,000-$300,000. starting point for a conversation about the hopeful response, Rav Nachman (Based on http://www.measuringworth.com/ Legacy of American Slavery. resumes his own (disconnected) uscompare) allegorical re!ections on what Rav Nachman asked his slave ought to be recited on this 1. It may be surprising to learn that slavery Passover night. Despite the Daru, “What should a slave say existed into the 20th century. Why do you to his master who has freed him immediate presence of a real- think it was able to persist? life slave right before him, Rav and given him silver and gold?” Nachman remains pitifully Daru replied to him: “!e slave oblivious to the struggles, hopes, should thank him and praise and overall reality of his own him!” Rav Nachman said to servant. Daru: “You have exempted us from reciting ‘Ma Nishtana’!” JTS Talmud Professor Rabbi (Babylonian Talmud, David Ho"man teaches that this Pesachim 116a) exchange between Rav Nachman and Daru is a story about us. In the exchange above, Rav It is about the fundamental Nachman is speaking allegorically dissonance between the story we of the Passover Haggadah. But are living and the story we are Daru understands him literally. telling. Especially today, as we are Based on what Rav Nachman no longer an oppressed, enslaved just said, Daru anticipates his nation, we can use our resources imminent liberation by his master, and power to overturn structures but Rav Nachman is merely of abuse right before us. On this musing on the minutia of the Passover night, let us heed Daru’s Florida farmworkers in 1960, from the Peabody Passover Haggadah’s myths and call and answer it—wherever he is Award-winning CBS documentary Harvest of Shame rituals. in our lives. Continued on next page... - Raysh Weiss, PhD, JTS Rabbinical School class of 2016; “We used to own our slaves. T’ruah board member and summer Now we just rent them.” fellowship alumna; BYFI ‘01 – Florida grower quoted in the #lm 2. Do this picture and this quote surprise you? Why or why not? What do they teach us about the legacy of slavery in the United States? Courtesy of PBS, Slavery by another name, http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name 18 17 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH4HE2ABBINIC#ALLFOR(UMAN2IGHTSsWWWTRUAHORG TODAY TIMELINE OF TYPES OF Examples of Modern-Day SLAVERY IN AMERICA Slavery 17TH-18TH CENTURY U.S. vs. Bontemps, July 2010. Cabioch Bontemps Indentured Servitude and two others indicted Poor, often white by a federal grand jury on immigrants from Europe charges of conspiracy to were bound to work for a commit forced labor, holding set number of years. $ey 50+ guestworkers from were often mistreated or Haiti against their will in held for longer than their the bean#elds of Alachua Photo by the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, 2004 period of indenture. County, FL. $ey held the Photo by Fritz Myer, June 2010, Courtesy of the Coalition workers’ passports and visas. of Immokalee Workers. Note the title on the truck. 17TH CENTURY-1865 $e indictment states that Chattel Slavery Bontemps raped one of the $is looks like an ordinary apartment $e purchase and sale of building in Los Angeles, but in fact it’s workers and threatened her if 4. $anks to a 2005 Congressional report, we Africans as slaves. she reported it. $e Coalition a sweatshop in which seventy-two $ai know that slaves participated in the building of Immokalee Workers women were enslaved for eight years, from 1865-1944 of the Capitol. What does the juxtaposition trained law enforcement and 1987-19951. A group of tra%ckers lured the in this image say to you about our country? Convict Leasing helped with the referral to the women in with promises of good wages, then Prisoners were leased Department of Justice. DOJ forced them to work up to eighteen hours a out as workers to 5. How do we bene#t today from the legacy dropped the charges without day making clothing for well-known brands private (white) citizens. explanation, though likely of slavery in this country? for leading department stores. $e workers $ese prisoners were due to legal technicalities, in were not allowed to leave the compound. overwhelmingly black and January 2012. had often been arrested 3. What do you notice about this picture? on !imsy charges, such as vagrancy. Unable to leave the house. Involuntary servitude Domestic workers are Does anything surprise you? What does Forbidden to answer the among domestic workers among the most exploited this picture tell you about tra%cking in the MID 19TH-MID 20TH door. Cut o" from her and nannies is one of workers in the world. Over United States today? CENTURY family. Worked fourteen to America’s most hidden the years, tra#cking victims Sharecropping sixteen hours per day. Paid crimes. Like domestic have told me they never Black tenant farmers nothing. !reatened with 1 violence, it occurs behind expected to be exploited here. For more information: http://www.sfgate.com/news/ worked a portion of the deportation and harm to her closed doors. Like tra#cking “Not in America,” many article/70-Immigrants-Found-In-Raid-on-Sweatshop- owner’s land, in exchange family. Someone called in a into other sectors, the have said. “!at does not $ai-3026921.php and http://americanhistory. for a share of the crop. tip. She escaped. victimization can involve happen in America.” But it si.edu/sweatshops/elmonte/elmonte.htm . One of the $ey had to purchase rape and sexual violence. does. In America. And all Another tipster called extraordinary and heartbreaking aspects of this case supplies and seeds from Like other forms of around the world. the national hotline. She is the crimes the tra%ckers were charged with—all the owner. Tenants, tra#cking, the abuse leaves reported a woman in the relating to facilitating illegal immigration, rather than often illiterate and at the deep scars. Unlike most - Martina Vandenberg, neighborhood who never modern slavery—and the fact that, at least initially, mercy of unscrupulous tra#cking, some of the Founder and President, left the house, except to the survivors were threatened with deportation if they landowners, frequently perpetrators are diplomats, Human Tra%cking Pro take out the trash. !e FBI were found to be undocumented. Since the passage of ended up only breaking who bring in domestic Bono Legal Center investigated. !e woman the Tra%cking Victims Protection Act in 2000, both even—or even further workers on special visas. had been held in forced labor perpetrators and survivors would be treated di"erently. in debt—at the end of a for four years. season. 20 19 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH4HE2ABBINIC#ALLFOR(UMAN2IGHTSsWWWTRUAHORG Summing Up: Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, senior rabbi at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in How We Remember America Every Passover, I sit with my Elkins Park, Pa., and visiting professor friends and family to tell the story of American Jewish history at Princeton, ָָםקַיּוֶֶָ־ךדחלָשׁמ of our people’s liberation from “A new king arose [says]…$e Passover narrative…didn’t Slavery was “normal,” constitutional. Slavery built the ﬠַ ל־מִ צְ ָר יִם אֲ שֶׁר slavery in Egypt. As we tell the over Egypt who story, we are asked to imagine become an abolitionist-related story until USA. Slavery is regulated, that ָדַֹעי־אל ”.after World War II and the Civil Rights era. knew not Joseph that we ourselves were once slaves is to say allowed, in our Talmud. ֶאוֹי־תסֵף: Originally, Passover was theological. It’s“ in Egypt and now we are free. (Ex. 1:8) In 1861, when Reform Rabbi about redemption and the power of God. It’s David Einhorn preached, “Is As an African-American, during not really about setting human beings free in it anything else but a deed of וַ יִּ ְ שַׁמע ֱאִלהים God heard their“ ,Amalek, rebellion against God ֶאת־ַנֲאָקָתם וַיִּזְכֹּר Passover, I often think about my a universal way. $e text says that God frees ancestors who were brought to the Hebrew slaves because God loves the cry, and God to enslave human beings created in His image?” he was driven ֱאִלהים ֶאת־ְבִּריתוֹ this country as slaves. I imagine Hebrews. God doesn’t free all slaves for all of remembered God’s they found comfort in the biblical from Baltimore by a mob that ֶאתַ־אְבָרָהם ֶאת־ humanity or send Moses out to become the covenant with story of the Exodus; seeing William Lloyd Garrison of the ancient free included Jews. Orthodox Rabbi ִיְצָחק ְוֶאת־ַיֲﬠֹקב: themselves as the Israelite slaves world.” Abraham, Isaac, Sabato Morais went beyond the halakha of his day, in 1864, to ַו ַיּ ְרא ֱאלִהים ֶאת־ and the slave owners as the and Jacob. God thunder, “What is Union with ֵי ְנבּ ְֵָלִארישֵׂדַַעיּו Pharaoh. I imagine them praying -“Passover in the Confederacy,” by to God for freedom and never Sue Eisenfeld, !e New York Times, 4/17/14 saw the Israelites human degradation? Who would again a%x his seal to the bond ֱאִלהים: ”.giving up hope. and God knew Although few Jews, like other Americans, (Ex. 2:24-25) that consigned millions to [that]? As a Jew and an African- opposed slavery at the [Civil] war’s outset, Not I, the enfranchised slave of American, I carry the memories many came to feel that the su"ering of Mitzrayim.” Today it is disruptive of people who were once enslaved.
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