There
is great irony in the fact that during a week when American Jews across the
country were feasting on Turkey, latkes, and sufganiyot, we were also reading of famine. Last week, we were reminded by our weekly
Torah reading of this famine, a famine that struck our ancestors who at least
for the moment had made it to Canaan, the land of promise. This week, Shabbat Vayigash reminds us of the choices that Jacob must make to
ensure the survival of his family and the continuation of God’s promised covenant.
We
forget that Jacob and his sons (well, all but Joe) are in Canaan when famine
strikes, that piece of geography that God has promised Abraham and Isaac before
him. In order to save his family
from starvation, he must leave. He must
take his family down into Egypt, a place of servitude, in order for them to
survive. Jacob must have known that the
protection Joseph could offer would be fleeting, this was Egypt. But what
choice did he have?
How many in our
community must face similar difficult choices?
I read recently that 30% of senior citizens in our county must choose
between paying for food or health care. Thirty-five percent are faced with the dilemma of choosing between buying groceries and
paying for utilities. In 2012, 46.5 million people, 15% of our
country, lived in poverty. Forty-nine
million people live in conditions labeled as “food insecure.”
In a country that prides itself on being a
global leader, too many American citizens suffer from hunger due to substandard
wages, high prices, and in some cases, a sheer lack of accessibility to
nutritious food. The difference between
today and Jacob’s time? We are not
living in a time of famine here in America.
We have no shortage of food. We
just haven’t figured out how to distribute the abundance of resources in an
equitable fashion so that no one goes hungry.
It is our human fallibility, and arguably greed, not lack of resources,
that has left us with a troubling reality of haves and have nots.
We
can learn a great deal from Joseph. On the
one hand, his treatment of his own family reveals a system of favoritism. There is an implication in the procedure his
brothers must go through in order to get food that others in need must have
been turned away. Joe’s graciousness and
generosity appear to be driven by familial bonds. At the same time, in making rations available
to his brothers, this band of men who were strangers in this land and were more than estranged
from him, Joseph models the value of helping others, even those who appear
foreign to our own environment. He could
have turned a blind eye, but he chose not to.
He chose to help.
How
do we respond to those in need in our communities? We too often argue that resources are so
limited that we couldn’t possibly demand employers to offer a livable wage to
workers. And then we are shocked when
black Friday deep-discount shopping causes a mania that leads to bodily harm. We
blame our President and his Affordable Health Care Act for the lack of
accessibility to quality health care when we should be pointing our fingers
directly at the Health Insurance industry who refuses to put access to affordable
healthcare ahead of large capital gain. Should our health care really be determined by the CEOs of for-profit corporations? We have allowed standing on argumentative
opinion to shut down our government leaving the most vulnerable of our society
gravely underserved. We don’t want to
elevate the lowest wages of our society, but then we cut the programs that
help those left treading on the lowest economic rungs to make ends meet.
As
Jews, we have experienced famine.
Jacob’s decision to leave Canaan and enter Egypt reminds us that there
were times in our history when our survival depended on tough choices AND the
graciousness and generosity of others.
With such a history, how dare we turn away from those in need? We cannot relish in our own surplus without
considering those who live in conditions that mimick famine. Everyone matters. The Mishnah
reminds us that “whoever sustains and saves a single soul, it is as if that
person sustained a whole world.” Joseph
sustained his family during famine and in doing so saved the Israelite
nation. Who will each of us save?
In the words of
the life-long activist and former, and first democratically elected, president of
South Africa, Nelson Mandela,
“Overcoming
poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and
Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and
eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation
to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”
Ken
y’hi ratzon –
Indeed, may Mandela's vision come to be!
