THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH 4HE 2ABBINIC #ALL FOR (UMAN 2IGHTS s WWWTRUAHORG
“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 4RUAH 4HE 2ABBINIC #ALL FOR (UMAN 2IGHTS s WWWTRUAHORG
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 $ey had to purchase rape and sexual violence. does. In America. And all Another tipster called extraordinary and heartbreaking aspects of this case supplies and seeds from Like other forms of around the world. the national hotline. She is the crimes the tra%ckers were charged with—all the owner. Tenants, tra#cking, the abuse leaves reported a woman in the relating to facilitating illegal immigration, rather than often illiterate and at the deep scars. Unlike most - Martina Vandenberg, neighborhood who never modern slavery—and the fact that, at least initially, mercy of unscrupulous tra#cking, some of the Founder and President, left the house, except to the survivors were threatened with deportation if they landowners, frequently perpetrators are diplomats, Human Tra%cking Pro take out the trash. !e FBI were found to be undocumented. Since the passage of ended up only breaking who bring in domestic Bono Legal Center investigated. !e woman the Tra%cking Victims Protection Act in 2000, both even—or even further workers on special visas. had been held in forced labor perpetrators and survivors would be treated di"erently. in debt—at the end of a for four years. season.
20 19 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH 4HE 2ABBINIC #ALL FOR (UMAN 2IGHTS s WWWTRUAHORG
Summing Up: Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, senior rabbi at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in How We Remember America Every Passover, I sit with my Elkins Park, Pa., and visiting professor friends and family to tell the story of American Jewish history at Princeton, וַיָּקָם מֶלֶך־חָדָשׁ of our people’s liberation from “A new king arose [says]…$e Passover narrative…didn’t Slavery was “normal,” constitutional. Slavery built the ﬠַ ל־מִ צְ רָ 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 לֹא־יָדַע ”.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. אֶת־יוֹסֵף: 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 יִּשְׁמַ ע אֱלהִ ים God heard their“ ,Amalek, rebellion against God אֶ ת־נַאֲקָתָ ם וַיִּזְכֹּר Passover, I often think about my a universal way. $e text says that God frees ancestors who were brought to the Hebrew slaves because God loves the cry, and God to enslave human beings created in His image?” he was driven אֱלהִ ים אֶ ת־בְּרִ יתוֹ this country as slaves. I imagine Hebrews. God doesn’t free all slaves for all of remembered God’s they found comfort in the biblical from Baltimore by a mob that אֶ ת־אַבְרָ הָ ם אֶ ת־ humanity or send Moses out to become the covenant with story of the Exodus; seeing William Lloyd Garrison of the ancient free included Jews. Orthodox Rabbi יִצְחָ ק וְאֶ ת־יַﬠֲ קֹב: themselves as the Israelite slaves world.” Abraham, Isaac, Sabato Morais went beyond the halakha of his day, in 1864, to וַ יַּרְ א אֱ להִ ים אֶ ת־ and the slave owners as the and Jacob. God thunder, “What is Union with בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּדַע Pharaoh. I imagine them praying -“Passover in the Confederacy,” by to God for freedom and never Sue Eisenfeld, !e New York Times, 4/17/14 saw the Israelites human degradation? Who would again a%x his seal to the bond אֱלהִ ים: ”.giving up hope. and God knew Although few Jews, like other Americans, (Ex. 2:24-25) that consigned millions to [that]? As a Jew and an African- opposed slavery at the [Civil] war’s outset, Not I, the enfranchised slave of American, I carry the memories many came to feel that the su"ering of Mitzrayim.” Today it is disruptive of people who were once enslaved. the war needed to be about something to ask—and keep asking when I hold on to our collective 1. What do these verses teach us about important: the end of slavery and the ignored—“Who grew this food memory of our escape from forgetting and remembering? creation of a di"erent America…As we’re eating? Who sewed our Egypt to freedom. And like my clothes?” Even more disruptive historian Howard Rock sums up, “$e war ancestors, I pray for the freedom 2. America prefers to whitewash its history to answer and then say that our was a transformative moment for Jews’ of all who are enslaved, and I am of slavery. What do we most often remember tradition calls us to act. Do I have hopeful that next year we will all understanding of American democracy.” about the history of slavery in America? the guts to emulate our gedolim be free. -“Jews Mostly Supported Slavery— What do we most often forget? Why do you and disrupt what’s normal? Or Kept Silent—During Civil War,” by - Sandra Lawson, think this is the case? Ken Yellis, !e Forward, 7/5/13 - Rabbi Robin Podolsky, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Senior Adult Educator, College Class of 2018, 3. $e sequence of verbs is: God hears, Temple Beth Israel of T’ruah summer fellowship alumna remembers, sees, and knows. We often need Highland Park and Eagle Rock, 4. Do you think the Passover story is a to have multiple kinds of contact with an Los Angeles, CA helpful lens through which to view America issue before it sinks in for us. What is your today? What are some of the strengths and experience—what does it take to move you weaknesses of this paradigm? from hearing about an issue to internalizing and acting on it?
22 21 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA: A Haggadah on Fighting Modern-Day Slavery 4RUAH 4HE 2ABBINIC #ALL FOR (UMAN 2IGHTS s WWWTRUAHORG
As we sing “Vehi she-amda,” we remember RABBIS IN ACTION that in every generation, people have been held as slaves, and God has been their At Yavneh’s core is the belief support, if not their complete redemption. that the Jewish values and ethics the students learn are only realized when put into action, so integrated throughout our וְהִ יא ֶ שׁﬠָמְדָ ה לַאֲבוֹתֵ ינוּ וְלָ נוּ curriculum are opportunities ְ שׁלֹא אֶחָ ד בִּלְבַ ד ﬠָמַ ד ﬠָלֵ ינוּ לְכַלתֵ ינוּ to practice these values in real life situations. Speci#cally, our middle school students engage אֶ לָּ א ֶ שׁבְּכָ ל דּור וָ דוֹר עוֹמְדִ ים ﬠָלֵ ינוּ in a three year Jewish social justice curriculum, in which they לְכַלתֵ ינוּ examine how they can contribute Vehi she-amda, vehi she-amda la’avoteinu to the world, responding to the velanu (x2) needs of their own community She-lo echad bil’vad amad aleinu lechaloteinu through direct service and making Elah she-bechol dor vador omdim aleinu a di"erence globally through philanthropy and advocacy. lechaloteinu
Vehakadosh baruch hu matzileinu miyadam. T’ruah’s Human Rights Shabbat has become an annual tradition !is is the One who stood up for our at our school, in which our ancestors and for us. middle school students teach the For not just once did an enemy arise to elementary school students. In the last few years, we have destroy us, closely examined the issue of But in every generation, they arise to human tra%cking in America destroy us. and the Jewish teachings And the Holy Blessed One rescues us that categorically make it an from their hands. imperative for Jews to be involved. Our students have made tomato “Rising Above Oppression,” by Margeaux Gray plates for their seder tables; 5”x 6”, Carved clay and paint, © 2015 engaged in inter-disciplinary In Hebrew, “$e One” in the song is learning researching the history Margeaux writes, “My story of rising above slavery and the unjust violence I experienced feminine. Who is this One? $e classical of agriculture in America, inspired this piece. Additionally, my ancestors and those who paved a path for my freedom to rabbis would probably say the Torah. $e calculating fair wages, and writing be possible were also an influence in its creation. The carved painting is of a woman connected Kabbalists invoked Binah, a feminine aspect letters to Congress; and created to her ancestors. She draws from their strength and wisdom. She is empowered by them and of God. In the spirit of 70 faces of Torah, presentations to raise awareness in rises above the oppressive nature that has for so long silenced her. She breaks through a wave here is a slightly subversive suggestion: the the community. and steps into the light of freedom.” one who stood up for our ancestors—literally, our fathers—is our mothers. We remember - Rabbi Laurie Hahn Tapper, the oft-erased contribution women have Director of Jewish Studies and School Rabbi, played throughout history and celebrate the Yavneh Day School, importance and power of women’s leadership Los Gatos, CA in #ghting slavery today.
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