Social Justice Service – April 15, 2005
By Michael Tabor

Paul Shnitzer Social Justice and Ethics Award.
Temple Emanuel, Kensington, MD

Too often people are honored either when they are no longer here or are not able to comprehend the honor. So I am very grateful to Rabbi Stone who had the foresight to present me with this award while I’m 62 years old and in good shape.

My first impression with Warren’s reference to a gadfly seemed to be not entirely accurate. I like to think I’ve followed more of a divine plan – a life that has been more focused and sustainable when it comes to a sense of honor, tikkun olam and social justice.

But maybe he’s more on target than I thought. The issues that attracted me during my life – segregation, racism, peace in the Middle East, conservation, ending war, all have, in the context of the time, been so unachievable that perhaps the role of “gadfly” is very appropriate.

Even now, the 2 issues I’ve focused on in the last 5 years – “corporate rule” and “commercial branding of children” – resistance is basically futile and virtually insurmountable. By “corporate rule” and the concept that in our political and economic systems, corporations, that were originally designed to have their corporate charters reviewed and perhaps revoked if they were not serving the public health and well-being, have taken on the rights and powers of individuals under an 1886 Supreme Court decision. It is now very difficult to have their charters revoked or even reviewed. So here in Montgomery County, companies like Comcast, Discovery, Marriot, IBM, Sedexo and Lockheed all have far more power than you and I or us collectively. Through their political contributions and PACs they basically control the voting of many of the elected representative who are theoretically supposed to represent we, the people. And, most of us accept it, or are ignorant of that reality. In the face of such widespread public acceptance, perhaps being a gadfly is an appropriate role.

Then there’s the concept of “corporate branding” of children while they’re a captive audience in public schools. Another example of a public acquiescence of an untenable situation – particularly when it relates to diet and the fast food industry. If I tried to explain to an alien Vulcan (from another planet) that a vast industry preying on children spends $10 billion a year addicting them through marketing to the most unhealthy diet on the planet, they would reject the notion as illogical. If it were shown that this diet will main, harm and kill at a premature age those eating it, they’d want to know why the perpetrators weren’t in jail.

Intelligent analysis of these concerns should have lead me to give up before taking them on. So, perhaps practicing gadflyism is the best defense against such nonsense and the best way is to raise consciousness.

According to studies, the attention span of adults is about 8 minutes, but my wife assures me that what people remember best are the stories, so I’ll offer a few sacred stories that helped define me.

The first sacred story takes place in a Buddhist monastery in the mid ‘60’s. My meditations went well until it came time to prostrate myself before a Buddha; the hoped for lesson was the realization that there’s a higher ego force in the universe than our own. But, all I could recall was Charlton Heston as Moses taking his marching orders from God – “you shall have no other Gods before you”. I couldn’t prostrate myself before the Buddha, so I had to give up Buddhism!

The second story takes place in 1964 when I was working on a voter registration project taking Black men who had never voted to register. While I was driving them, I felt a bit like an invisible cab driver because they were speculating
about who I was. One thought that maybe I was Jewish, but the others said, no that, it wasn’t possible because most of the Jews they knew were liquor store owners, landlords or those they identified with exploitation. So when one asked me, I denied being Jewish - which soon troubled me a great deal -- realizing I was ashamed of my identity.

The third story takes place around Mayday, 1972 in which a group of us (mostly Jews for Urban Justice) were part of a national mobilization to shut down Washington, DC and symbolically stop the war in Vietnam. So we were gathered the evening before, staying up all night, trying to figure out how to do this Jewishly. At around midnight, a man with his entourage came in and asked to speak to the group. It soon became clear that this was the world renowned Talmudist, Adin Steinsaltz. But, in fact, with the exception of the now Rabbi David Shneyer and Rob Agus, very few in the room knew who he was. but for the next hour or so, Reb Steinsaltz spoke to us about Jewish mysticism and the mysteries of the universe. Finally, somewhat impatiently (we needed to planour acts of civil disobedience!), I raised my hand asking if there was one brief message he could give us that would be helpful in our struggles. Not hesitating a second, he looked at all of us and said, “You are more like your parents than you think you are”. Looking back now, it was a very appropriate message!
The final story happened after I was fired from my first three jobs for political reasons and I wondered what direction I should take next. I had an interview with Saul Alinsky, the most well known community organizer of the last 60 years who had set up the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago and trained the likes of Caesar Chavez and others. As part of our interview he asked the question “who in the Bible did I think was the best organizer/” My best response was Jesus, thinking that this man was responsible for changing the minds and hearts of a civilization. Alinsky looked at me and laughed and said, no, all he did was organize 12 followers! On the other hand Moses had to organize hundreds of thousands of people (with the help of his brother). I was offered the job anyway, but later decided not to take it. And, went to work in the Federal government where, my effectiveness was measured when I was later put on Nixon’s “Enemy’s List” (partially due to the anti-war work I did as a government employee.)

So, the alumni newsletter from SUNY at Oneonta where I went to undergraduate school from 1960-63, reports that my fellow graduates are moving toward or already enjoying retirement. Why am I still upset and angry at life’s inequities and societal contradictions? At my age, a life of relative contentment and well-deserved relaxation should be just around the corner. Why am I still raging against the machine?

While some of these stories I told surely helped shape me, I believe much of my drive goes back almost 100 years when my Bubbe Mary was born. My maternal grandmother, whose father, by edict, was forced out of his Beserabian farm (then a Rumanian or Polish province) when Jews in his region were no longer allowed to own land and who came from a family of Hassidic mystics (many of whom, she told me, were killed by the Bolsheviks in Odessa). She ended up marrying an erstwhile bomb throwing poet and anarchist and then they came to Manhattan to live on Hester Street. He wrote for the “Frie Arbitter Shtimmel” a Yiddish Anarchist weekly, and worked in a cap manufacturing sweat shop. When he died from TB, she was left to raise 2 small children, and ran a newsstand (where I would come to work during summers and holidays). There’s no question that her drive, humanism and hope for a better life were all passed on to me. I have an early memory of the only time she slapped me was when I used a word I had picked up in the street, in my Brooklyn public housing project. I said out loud the word children were calling each other – “nigger”. Her response was that her olive, dark skin complexion made her a “nigger” too and also that I was never again to use the word because it was a derogatory reference. (Now, understand, she said all that in Yiddish!).

The bottom line was her Yiddishkeit – her appreciation and love of everything Jewish which was like mother’s milk for my second generation Jewish appetite. Her apartment on 22nd and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan right above the 3rd Ave. L, was filled with pushkes (donation boxes) – all for various causes. Kashe (buckwheat groats) was the staple of her diet along with dark black pumpernickel bread with a schmear of chicken schmaltz. Her aversion to doctors and insistence that she, who was rarely sick, would only visit a “Feldsher” – a Jewish herbologist and purveyor of folk medicines. The Yiddish radio station, its songs, talk shows and humorists, was always on. And my cousin, Stephen Solat, recalls her resilient toughness in the face of adversity and her rejection of materialism in favor of a simple and plain lifestyle – and above all, her earthy sense of humor and judicious use of salacious and racy Yiddish slang words and sayings that I sometimes grasped but mostly went over my head. Stephen felt that her core philosophy of simplicity, humanism and hope inspired him to a lifetime of work spent in developing countries.

Now, was all of this true about her? Who knows, since it was seen through the eyes of a child. Undoubtedly, though, one of the courses I taught at the Jewish Study Center on Shamanism, Witchcraft, paganism and Judaism, were inspired by her practices including a sort of folk religion used by women of her era who, unfortunately were denied access to most sacred elements of our rituals.

And my own aversion as a new leftist to doctrinaire Marxism and later Maoism was probably inspired by the anarchist beliefs of my grandfather who wrote extensively about nature and the environment for his Jewish Anarchist newspaper.

So, how can all this be related to the current parsha – Mitzora?

I’ll leave the details about skin diseases, bodily infections, bad breathe, or what 50’s marketers once referred to as the heartbreak of psoriasis and halitosis to Rabbi Stone!

But, what I find compelling in the parsha is the strategy devised by our priests (based on their then understanding of medical science) of how to contain the spreading of diseases through personal and community sacrifice, cleansing and purification rituals. But, unlike our contemporary health care system (or lack of one), where a for-profit pharmaceutical industry charges high and unaffordable prices or denies decent treatment or access for all, our leadership, some 2,500 years ago, devised a sliding scale. Although wealthier members of the community might be able to present lambs, flour or oil, others might only be able to contribute hyssop or small birds. Paying within their means or, affordable healthcare, was the written understanding – the Torah’s underlying principle was equal treatment for the poor and wealthy. Our offerings were all of equal value in the eyes of God.

And that is a basically anti-capitalistic concept as well as one which flies in the face of Bush era religious and economic doctrine. The unfortunate connection that some Christians make with wealth as reward for strong faith or poverty as punishment for those who forsake God, are not part of our doctrines and core beliefs. Our tradition mandates a heightened sensitivity to the poor and consciously avoid robbing them of their dignity. The priests were never allowed to discriminate between the wealthy and poor – both were always treated equally.

So, if I were a lawyer – I’d rest my case at this point. But, since I’m not, I’ll go on just a bit longer.

The next parsha – Mot-Kedoshin only reinforces these principles – defining through its “holiness code” the practices necessary to carry out a holy Jewish life – which includes leaving corners of the field and parts of the vineyard for the poor, treating laborers fairly, not insulting the deaf or placing a stumbling block before the blind, honoring the aging, not using false weights or insulting your parents and above all “love your neighbor as yourself” (“for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt”).

My grandmother was certainly aware of these core beliefs and tried to practice them. My own healthy skepticism of hierarchical corporations and institutions, neo-cons and “lords of poverty” – type charities institutions are all ingrained in my upbringing. And the values I hope to pass on to my children, family and community are echoed in our beliefs and they are the ways I have struggled to live my life and fulfill my legacy. All are inscribed in our Torah and wisdom literature.

- Living a life of good works
- Practicing ethical deeds, charitable acts and Tzedakah -
Or, refusing to make materialism a replacement for spirituality.

And, before closing it just wouldn’t be appropriate for a gadfly, when given the opportunity, with you, a captive audience, would fail to add a few personal “zingers”.

The first is the importance for us, especially during these the dark days of this Bush administration, to be involved and knowledgeable about local politics and good government. Who we elect to our Board of Education, State Assembly, County Council – their positions, their backers, their votes, are important for us to follow before they run for office. “Think globally, act locally” is a motto rarely followed. To me, a great litmus test locally, for instance, is the ICC. This wasteful and environmentally damaging, prohibitively high costing toll-way, that its supporters now admit, won’t cut traffic and commuting time one iota! It will, however benefit developers, road pavers and construction interests. We ought to take a careful look at any candidate running for office who backed this project and see who backed them financially and think twice before casting our votes.

Regarding fast food – just as the environmental movement has accomplished the purpose of at least making us think twice before using styrofoam because of its symbolic contribution toward waste – we need to think twice before serving Coke and Pepsi products at home and at our simchas. Both are linked, through their aggressive marketing, to the obesity and diabetes epidemic among children – throughout the world. Coke is linked to the deaths of union organizers in their bottling plants in South America. And both aggressively do their best to eliminate traditional healthy herbal native drinks wherever they market their products. And, in some cases, they acquire use of the only good drinking water in many third world countries often making water more expensive than Coke.

We also need to resist corporate marketing. Northface and other logo clothing, SUVs and their wasteful, consumption of petroleum, MacDonald’s and their supersized meals are all examples of unhealthy marketeering aimed at hoodwinkling and addicting a population that would be better off without them. Boycott these products – keep them out of our houses and institutions.

We need to be more conscious of a sustainable lifestyle. Buying affordably-priced locally grown foods, supporting local retailers and craftspeople and living a bit more simply will allow us to consume less of the world’s resources and be better consumers.

In closing, it is heartening to be in this beautiful shul, whose members, through their social action, practice tikkun olam.

Thank you Rabbi Stone, Mrs. Schnitzer and Temple Emanuel for this honor.

Thanks to all my friends who are here tonight and who inspired me to pursue social justice through activism in environmental and political arenas. Thank you Esther, my wife, for supporting and being constructively critical of me whenever necessary (I’ll regret those words!). And to our daughter Adina, for being the kind of person we are so proud of, and to my sons, Chad and Benjamin who, I’m proud to say, were both arrested in the IMF/World Bank demonstrations a few years ago. May they continue to lead lives inspired by the Torah and the search for intelligent life and meaning in this universe.

Thank you also, members of Fabrangen who came tonight, as well as members of Shomrei Adamah and members of the Jewish men’s group I belong to. And to George Taylor, a minister and friend from Takoma Park who I’ve worked with on peace issues. And, Linda Shade, a Green Party candidate whose campaign for State Representative I supported.

Zei Gezuent. Be well and thank you.