Rabbis for Human Rights calls for reflection on modern-day slavery in this year’s Passover celebrations …
With a full court press in Jewish community media from New York to LA, the ever-inspiring Rabbis for Human Rights-North America(RHR-NA) have put the issue of slavery in our food system front and center on holiday tables across the country this Passover.
Writing, “This Pesach, as we commemorate our liberation from slavery, we draw our attention
to those still in bondage,” RHR has provided an excellent guide for reflection around the Seder table on the continuing scourge of forced labor in our food supply chain, which you can find here. Here’s an excerpt:
| “… At Your Seder:
The seder plate contains a variety of foods that symbolize the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom. To raise awareness about the Campaign for Fair Food, we have been invited to add a tomato to our seder plates, a symbol of the farmworker who picked it. The foods on the seder plate are meant to elicit questions that lead to the telling of the story of the Exodus. We hope the tomato will lead to questions about the legacy of slavery today and to discussion about the progress being made by the CIW—supported by Jewish communities— to bring about a just, slavery-free workplace….” read more |
Their call has been echoed in LA, where Rabbi Paula Marcus “will put the tomato in the center of her seder plate — alongside the traditional bitter herbs, charoset, parsley, shank bone and eggs, and an orange, a recent addition in many homes — as a symbol of contemporary slavery,” (“The Tomato Finds Its Place On The Seder Plate,” The Jewish Week, 4/3/12). Here’s more from Rabbi Marcus:
| “Moved by the two visits to tomato-growing country in Florida that delegations of RHR rabbis conducted in the last year, meeting with often-underpaid and overworked tomato pickers, and conducting ‘pray-ins’ at supermarkets that had not signed a Fair Food Act that guarantees higher pay and better working conditions [Ed Note: the picture at the top of this post is from a RHR pray-in at a Naples area Publix store earlier this season], the rabbi decided to put a tomato on her seder table as a reminder of the workers’ plight.
‘It’s just obvious to me.’ she says. ‘We imagine what it was like to be slaves and celebrate our freedom,’ she wrote recently in San Francisco’s weekly newspaper. ‘But the truth is, there are people in our own country who don’t have to imagine what it is like to be a slave.’” read more |
The discussion continues in the pages of the Jewish daily Forward, where Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, the director of North American programs for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, writes (“Slavery Flourishes in Modern Times: 3,000 Years After Exodus, Passover Spurs Us To Ban Practice,” Forward, 4/6/12):
| “During the Seder, some Jews have the custom of going around the table and imagining themselves as Hebrew slaves in Egypt during the Exodus. They describe their respective slave jobs — bricklayer, house slave, mortar mixer — and how they feel about their impending freedom. The game illuminates the Seder’s insistence that had God not redeemed us from Egypt, the Jewish people might still be enslaved.
But when I think of what it would mean to be a slave today, I don’t need to look to the past for examples. Going around the Seder table, I think: I could be a farm hand, a nanny or a home health care worker, a child picking cocoa or a man laboring on a fishing boat, someone forced into prostitution or doing menial work at a hotel. More than 3,000 years after the Exodus, and 150 years after the Civil War, slavery and human trafficking continue to flourish around the world..” read more |
Rabbi Kahn-Troster concludes her powerful article on a note of hope:
| “… In Florida, change is already happening through the efforts of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an organization of farm workers that is striving to end slavery and other abusive conditions in the tomato fields. Its Campaign for Fair Food has convinced 10 major food corporations — including, most recently, Trader Joe’s — to sign a Fair Food Agreement, which raises the wage of tomato workers and requires companies to source tomatoes from growers that agree to a code of conduct in the fields that includes a zero tolerance policy for forced labor. Since 2010, more than 90% of Florida’s tomato growers have begun to implement these agreements.
As the Seder begins, we say: “This year, we are slaves. Next, may we be free people.” It will take a tremendous effort to end modern slavery, but there are steps we all can take. There is no “slave-free” hekhsher, but buying certified Fair Trade is often a proxy for ethically produced goods. And the Jewish community can support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in its efforts to ensure that the hands that pick the food we all eat are free.” read more |
Combined with the Florida Council of Churches’ call for faith leaders and lay people to fast and pray this Holy Week “that Publix will affirm its better self to ‘do the right thing,'” the RHR-NA call for reflection this Passover marks a new phase in the burgeoning support of the faith community for the Campaign for Fair Food. This flourishing alliance can only hasten the day when those who harvest our food do so in dignity and respect for their fundamental human rights.