Sermons & Stories

Shabbat Shalom!

Leading up to Pesach, I’m focusing on different aspects of freedom. Tonight the focus is on work and workers – a group that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year. This week’s Torah portion focuses on work – where everyone gives and everyone contributes to build the Tabernacle and God’s presence blesses their work at the end of the Book of Exodus. It’s a beautiful ideal, but our reality is far different.

In thinking of work and freedom, I thought immediately of a story that Rabbi David Hartman (z”l) would tell. He tried to teach his children at every age how they could understand what it means to be a slave at Passover. He shared the following:

“Once I told my four-year-old a story about a boy who did not see his Daddy for a year: “The boy had a birthday and Daddy couldn’t come. The Daddy called and said, ‘I’m going to come home.’  The boy invited all his friends to come and see his Daddy, because he loved him.  Just after his friends had come, his Daddy called to say, ‘The boss won’t let me come.’  The little boy said, ’What do you mean, the boss won’t let you come?  Tell him your son wants you home.  Everybody wants you.  We miss you!’” 

“Suddenly I could not help it, I started crying and my son started crying about the kid in the story.  We felt the loneliness of the little boy who wanted so much to see his father but who knew that his love is not enough to bring him home.  That is what it means to be a slave.  You can’t control your life.”

The life of a slave is so much worse, but for Rabbi Hartman to share this story with his child to help them understand at least a little of the horror of slavery – I find this story to be very powerful. And I wish it was just a story. Tragically, the idea of working without options or control over one’s life has been the harsh reality for millions of workers throughout the past year.

Ernistina Mejía works at Primex Farms in California and sorts pistachios indoors on an assembly line where people are close together. Primex offered their workers no masks, no gloves and no protection against the coronavirus. She was one of ninety-nine workers who contracted COVID-19, which was one quarter of the entire workerforce at the farm. Like Ernistina, many essential workers were and are forced to choose between working in unsafe conditions or not working at all.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-07-29/sick-covid-19-farmworkers-face-retaliation-demanding-safe-conditions

A University of Massachusetts survey last summer found that in Massachusetts, 60% of essential workers did not feel safe at work and 71% were unable to practice social distancing. Over 90% of low wage workers who answered the survey experienced increased stress due to overwork, abuse from customers, and not knowing who had the virus.

https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/stressed-unsafe-and-insecure-essential-workers-need-new-new-deal

One group of essential workers that has really struggled in many communities has been doctors and nurses. Celia Nieto, an intensive care nurse in Las Vegas, said that when it comes to working through this pandemic, “It feels like we’re failing, when in actuality we’re working with what we’ve got and we don’t have enough…. We feel quite helpless, and it’s a real injury to our psyches.”

Medscape released a survey back in September that found that two thirds of the American doctors who responded had been grappling with intense burnout and about the same number indicated that their income had decreased due to the pandemic. Almost half were thinking about retiring early or changing their careers because of the situation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/health/health-care-workers-burned-out-quitting.html

Most of us have been able to manage ok, but that hasn’t been the case for millions of Americans. Because of how challenging the job market has been, many who have struggled have felt grateful that they even have a job.

These realities have been hard to learn about and even harder to live through over the past year. Jewish teachings understand that the lowest wage workers often have to perform the most dangerous and undesirable jobs and are the most likely to starve or otherwise suffer if denied pay. That might explain why our rabbis place obligations on employers to care for their employees (see Bava Metzia 112a or 86b as examples). There is a general sense throughout our sacred texts that work and dignity are supposed to go hand in hand. https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/jacobs-living-wage.pdf

Rabbi Hartman’s story doesn’t offer dignity to the Daddy or the child who are being kept apart. Many essential workers and health care workers have not seen their sense of dignity prioritized or even considered far too often. It’s hard to feel free when that sense of dignity isn’t all there.

I’ve prayed a lot over the past year for a greater sense of freedom in our nation and in our world. As we sit down for a nice meal during Seder, please join me in thinking about and praying for those who are working or trying to work and still seeking an elusive sense of dignity and freedom on the job and in their lives. They need far more than our prayers. We’ll offer what we can.

Shabbat Shalom!