Culture, Justice, Politics, Religion

Want to pick a real fight with the Conservative movement?

Shame, shame, shame!
OK, now don’t get me wrong. I think it’s incredibly important to make sure that gays and lesbians are brought into traditionally observant life, and that people not be allowed to hide their prejudices behind the misapplication/misinterpretation of halacha. But, let’s face it, while the first is an important struggle, it pales in comparison to making sure that people have enough to eat, are able to pay their rent, and can afford to take care of themselves and their loved ones when ill.
So while I am a Keshet rabbi, I can’t help but be completely appalled at the fact that – well, where do I even start?

Man should know that it is a part of the divine worship that man should remember states of distress at a time when he prospers. This purpose is frequently affirmed in the Torah: And you shall remember that you were a servant, and so on (Devarim 5:15; 16:12). For there was a fear of the moral qualities that are generally acquired by all those who are brought up in prosperity – I mean conceit, vanity, and neglect of the correct opinions: When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God Who took you out of the land of Egypt… and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me” (Devarim 8:12-17). And it says: So Yeshurun grew fat and kicked – you grew fat and gross and coarse – he forsook the God who made him and spurned the Rock of his support (Devarim 32:15). It is because of this apprehension that the commandment has been given to carry out a reading every year before Him, may He be exalted, and in the presence of His Indwelling, on the occasion of the first fruits. (RaMBaM, Guide of the Perplexed III:59, following Pines translation)

1. I found out in the Forward – which is an ongoing problem for Rabbinical Assembly members, as this is far from the first time we hear nothing about a tshuvah until the Forward reports on the vote- that the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards had just considered Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ tshuvah calling on Jewish business owners to pay their workers a living wage and hire union employees when possible
2. That they had voted, and it didn’t even collect the six votes necessary for a minority opinion and that, in fact, it received only three votes.
Three votes. Three votes.
Is this a joke? What, wasn’t there ample precedent in the Torah and Talmud? Rabbis, I direct your attention to the upcoming Yamim Noraim, high holidays, to the prayers we recite during these days, not to mention a particular haftarah from Isaiah, to the Labor day weekend Torah reading which just passed. If the Tanach does not contain sufficient reminders of our duties to the poor, perhaps we can take a review of Tractate Bava Metzia in the talmud – there’s interesting stuff in both the Bavli and Yerushalmi versions. We also have modern support, from no less than the late gadol Rabbi Feinstein. I’m sure with a bit of effort we could dig out a few more references, since this is just off the top of my head.
I quote from the Forward article,

As American Jews have ascended the ranks to employers from employees, memories of earlier Jewish labor activism have faded into the background. Concerns by some members of the law committee that Jacobs’s pro-labor paper would create an undue hardship on Jewish business owners seem to reflect what some observers describe as the growing gap between American Jews and the union movement. Jacobs, a labor activist who is the education director of the left-wing group Jewish Funds for Justice, rebuffed the argument made by some on the law committee that paying workers a living wage could put Jewish-owned companies out of business. “We ask people to do all sorts of things that put them at an economic disadvantage,” Jacobs said. “That’s because we believe in Jewish law and we don’t believe that making money is the highest Jewish law,” she added.”

Yes, that’s right, her tshuvah received three votes because we thought there was a chance it might cut into someone’s profits. Now, I started off by saying that this was a fight to pick with the Conservative movement, but the truth is, if this was just a movement thing, I could live with it. If it was really just the Conservative movement, there would be hope that we could be shamed into doing the right thing by the Reform, the Orthodox, the chilonim (seculars). But really, it’s not the case. This is not, unfortunately, a movement problem. It is, in fact, a Jewish problem. There have been no shortage of articles over the past few years dealing with this issue – the fact is that Jewish organizations are not living up to Jewish law. Jewish law requires us to treat our employees with fairness, and more than fairness. But Jewish organizations are not doing this. It’s not like it’s just bigotry, this is not a Jewish/ non-Jewish thing either. Jewish employees of Jewish institutions are also being underpaid, not receiving benefits, and so on.
A few years ago Jewish institutions in the Washington D.C. area got involved in the fight -against- the living wage in Montgomery County Maryland. The Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington helped to defeat a Montgomery County, Maryland living wage bill, citing concerns that paying workers the proposed living wage of $10.44 an hour or $9 with benefits would cost Jewish organizations up to $1 million and force the cancellation of some programs. Other Jewish groups and a coalition of local rabbis, supported the bill and sponsored a series of community forums to discuss the proposal. It took Abe Pollin, the majority owner of the Washington Wizards basketball team to move things along by promising to make up the diffierence in what the Jewish organizations had to pay, if necessary). In the end, two Jewish council members cast the deciding votes in defeating the proposed legislation.
During the same time, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington led opposition to a resolution in support of living wage laws adopted by the Jewish Council for
Public Affairs in February 2000 (How was the legislation finally passed? The bill finally passed exempts nonprofit organizations and businesses that receive certain tax credits or economic development aid – in other words , the Jewish institutions that had been fighting it).
When I wrote, with Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg, the Ethical Smachot letter now featured as part of Jews United for Justice‘s Ethical Smachot campaign to ask Washington D.C. community clergy to sign on to support their congregations’ and communities’ seeking more ethical ways to have their bnai mitzvah, weddings and other festive events, so as to support Jewish law’s requirements of our treatment towards others, it didn’t occur to me that this could be controversial in any way. Oh, granted, it was difficult to get Reform rabbis to sign on, because I talked about kashrut (as one’s community defines it), and it talked about living wage and mediation, but it didn’t call on anyone to do anything but ask some questions about what it means to have a Jewish event, a simchat mitzvah, rather than, as Maimonides terms it, a simchat creiso (a celebration of the belly).
And in truth, many, many rabbis have signed on, from all different movements. But a simchah cannot be the only time we consider these questions. If it is controversial for the CJLS to pass a tshuvah that merely reiterates and strengthens those laws which the Torah and the sages tell us, over and over, are the very basis for Judaism’s relationship with God, when we pass before the throne on Rosh Hashanah as a nation, we will be judged – and found wanting.
I encourage you all to sign on to the Ethical Smachot letter, but more so, I encourage you, strongly, to take it to the streets; not passing the tshuvah, fighting living wage ordinances: this is so not okay. Call your rabbis – more importantly, because rabbis often don’t have the power to change things like this within a shul, call everyone on the board of your shul and make sure they know you care if your janitors and secretaries and the waiters and cooks for your caterers aren’t receiving a living wage. Take it to your community businesses.
And for God’s sake, literally, if you’re Conservative, call your rabbi and tell them you’ve heard about Rabbi Jacobs’ tshuvah, that you care about this issue, that it’s a violation of Jewish law to underpay your workers, and that you think it is imperative that we speak forcefully for halachah: we must tell the members of our community that it matters what we do in our businesses, in our lives, and at every moment of the day : not just when we eat, not just when it’s shabbat, not just once a month after one’s menstrual cycle is over, not just once a year at the High Holidays; all of those things, but not only then, not only them.
Utefila, uteshuvah utzedakah – they are what annul the evil decree. What is tefila, prayer, without the intent to do justly? what is teshuvah, repentance, if we do not fix our businesses so that they will produce justice by their examples? tzedakah: it is justice, nothing less, that we are required to do.
Crossposted to Kol Ra’ash Gadol

50 thoughts on “Want to pick a real fight with the Conservative movement?

  1. when I was young, the major dismissal of progessive judaism that I had had was that it was for the wealthy, looking to feel justified in wealth and success, and even to the degree that the poor were cared for, it was clear to me that it was an after thought rather than a priority

  2. It’s interesting to compare this proposed teshuva, and the other movements your discussing with the Tav HaChevrati in Israel. The Tav HaChevrati is meant to be a kashrut-like certificate for being socially just. The fascinating part about it is that it does not call on the business owners to do anything special – only to follow the existing law. It does’t try to be as ambitious as living wage, it calls for minimum wage. It also guranteses such apparently basic things as law-required handicap access. The sad part, is even such a basic certificate – given for free, and well marketed – appears in only a small number of stores in Jerusalem.

  3. I’ll start by saying that I don’t see why they didn’t vote for something calling for Jewish businesses to pay workers a decent wage. Sure businesses have to worry about economics, but Rabbis should worry about halacha and should use the bully pulpit to improve the lot of the poor in this country. However, I don’t know if I’d have supported something that says to hire Union employees over non-union and to support a “living wage” since that is a political term. I am a union employee, but I support the rights of workers to decide if they want to be members of unions. (I wish I could opt-out..) Also, specific living wage proposals in cities are just generally bad economics.. On another note, what would be the point of Conservatives issuing another rule that Conservative Jews won’t keep anyway?

  4. For all of these teshuvot (Jill Jacobs’s not-approved; Susan Grossman’s on mikvah [+ the other 2 also] approved), I would like to see the text in order to be able to evaluate & comment properly. The Tav HaChevrati certainly sounds like a start, and something that would be easier to pass/offer–living wage is a somewhat separate & more demanding issue, which even people of good conscience might be able to differ on Jewish legislation about b/c of concerns as to how it is defined or enforced in the particular document in question; ditto for “calling on Jewish business owners to … hire union employees when possible” (what does ‘when possible’ mean? what if there are ethical problems with particular unions or their employees? what sanctions will be taken against those who don’t hire union employees when others think they could have done so?).
    I’m not saying that people declined to support the teshuvah only out of the purest or definitionally-concerned motives (the latter being ones that would give [i]me[/i] pause, and that I want to know more about before I say whether I would have voted yes or no on the teshuvah if I were in a position to do so)–just that it’s a possiblity. And I look forward to learning more about the details of all of these teshuvot!

  5. Such a long post, yet missing a crucial part of the argument. Yes, the Torah, Prophets, Talmud, Rambam and later Rabbis all tell us to treat workers fairly, honor contracts (including those with workers) and help the poor. But how do we get from there to the above authorities mandating such politically controversial items as living wage and favoring unions?
    And why are these propositions good ideas? Essentially, their effect is to direct charity (monet that would be kept by the employer if not for the edict) to workers, and especially union workers. Why is this necessarily the best use of charity money? Could it be that there are poor and sick people even more in need of this money than the workers? Shouldn’t this decision be at the discretion of the local Rabbinic authorities and the individual employers who can make this decision knowledgeably?
    You need much stronger arguments if you want to condemn so many people so harshly.

  6. J-
    “politically controversial”???
    Slavery was politically controversial in the 19th century. Should Jewish leaders have kept silent about it for this reason?

  7. Are you really comparing living wage and union support to slavery? Do you feel the same level of confidence in your support of each position? Are you as sure that living wage and union support are as necessary to helping workers avoid poverty as opposing slavery was to ending slavery?

  8. To further clarify, by “politically controversial” I didn’t mean that Rabbis or Jewish leaders should never take a politically controversial stance; rather I meant that the notion that living wage and union support actually further their intended goals is too arguable (and in fact argued with) for anyone to feel full confidence that our pre-twentieth century religious sources mandate such remedies. (That in itself doesn’t mean that the remedies aren’t good ideas, just that one shouldn’t argue that religious sources mandate them. I adressed the advisability of the remedies in the second part of my above post.)

  9. J,
    BZ’s comparison was between slavery in the 19th century and non-livable wages today. To ask whether he thinks slavery is as problematic as nonliving wages is silly. of course slavery is awful. The last hundred+ years have clarified that. That is the whole point. That conroversial issues, become less so overtime, clarifying the need for moral action.
    You should ask whether BZ thinks we will view sub-living wages as a moral blight in 100+ years. Compare apples to apples. What you did was a logical trick (intentional or not).

  10. I was in fact making the comparison in an absolute (all-times inclusive) sense. Even if, 100 years from now, living wage/union support seems as uncontroversial as slavery does now, I don’t see how the two issues are comparable in magnitude. Clearly workers are not starving even without living wage, and clearly living wage is not going to make workers rich. Therefore, the incremental benefit for workers can’t be nearly as big as the transition of slaves to free people.

  11. J –
    You wrote Clearly workers are not starving even without living wage, and clearly living wage is not going to make workers rich.
    “Clearly”? Really?? Have you ever tried to live on minimum wage without any other support or income? What about living on minimum wage while trying to support your spouse and/or kid(s)? Minimum wages are seldom sufficient amounts to live on, though it varies state to state and country to country. That the rates are set by politicians, influenced by the upper classes and business owners who will never have to live on these meager wages is ridiculous and hypocritical.
    The point of a living wage is not to make workers rich. It’s to ensure that workers can afford rent and food. That worker’s don’t need to skip buying groceries for a week when they need to buy new shoes because they can’t afford both.

  12. In the 19th century lots of folks made all sorts of arguments which minimized the importance of emancipation. Every generation has folks who minimize moral issues and look silly in retrospect. We should all be forward looking in our moral vision.
    We all agree slavery is wrong (i hope). We all agree that the Jewish community should have led a fight against it with the quakers back in the day (i hope). We are embarassed that we didn’t. Let’s avoid making the same mistake now.
    A few responses to address your issues with a living wage:
    at the current minimum wage, a worker working a 40 hour workweek, makes roughly $927 a month. The widely recomended amount of total income which should be devoted to housing is 33%. Do you pay more than $309 in rent? Can you think of anywhere where someone could pay that little? Add children. Perhaps a two-parent, two-child family. That would bring your total to $618 for a four person family.
    When I worked on hunger and homelessness in Rhode Island i met many people who worked in upwards of 40 hours a week and were still homeless. That isn’t okay. I worked with people who had to chose between eating three meals and their children eating three meals. I met folks who chose between healthcare and eating. So in short, J, your assertion that people aren’t starving is naive, the equivalent of “let them eat cake”.
    It seems reasonable to consider raising a living wage and supporting unions as strong pro-worked policies. Do you have better suggestions. It would seem to me that between this, gay rights, and a host of other issues, it may be time for the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards to declare moral bankruptcy, file for chapter 11 protection, and reorganzie.

  13. “Clearly workers are not starving even without living wage, and clearly living wage is not going to make workers rich”
    To the contrary. It’s actually quite clear that living wages and the ability to organize, both separately and together, make an enormous difference in the lives of workers. They don’t, of course, make a huge difference in the lives of most nice middle class Jews (of course, that’s a limited statement, beasue in fact, many nice middle class Jews do in fact have jobs in which their unions have protected them from all sorts of things – I happen to know personally of a number of people whose unions went to bat for them to prevent all kinds of nasty, punitive – and illegal- behavior on the part of their supervisors), but they make an enormous and documented difference for those individuals who are unable to get by without working two or even three jobs otherwise- the widespread problem of the working poor. Moreover, unions in particular have shown a demonstrable differnce in the ability of workers to get benefits, higher wages, and protections from illegal firings.
    Protecting businesses from the pressure of – not even legal, but merely moral- opprobrium becasue their profits might be affected is at best foolish. But more to the point, although it’s true that the Torah nowhere uses the words “living wage” or “union” n fact our sources clearly mandate a wide range of behaviors which would certainly qualify as requiring a living wage, and the texts certainly speak of guilds and their right to exist – and recent poskim (the aforementioned Rabbi Feinstein) clearly think that indeed unions are supported by classical text.

  14. I want rabbis to speak out on moral and ethical issues. Even political issues. but is it wise to recruit denominational movements to retail politics? I would rather see local Conservative rabbis do something locally to support a living wage campaign, then a ‘Jewish Fatwa’ declaring it to be necessary.
    Let the fundies of all stripes have thier poskim and fatwa committees. Seems a teensy out of place for liberal Judaism. Do you think the RAC would need a psikah to take up an issue like this?

  15. Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, extensively covers the limits of minimum wage and the subsequent need for a living wage.

  16. Out here in my Conservative Bar/Bat Mitzvah factory congregation, we never ever here about when the CJLS is going to meet. Furthermore, it follows that we never here about what is on the agenda or how people on the committee voted etc. The only time I know when something happened at the committee is when a newspaper of blog writes about it. Does anyone have any other information about what was discussed at this CJLS session? I would love to know. I know there is a book of CJLS repsonsa from 1991-2000 but has any teshuvot been published to the public since then? How is it that our leadership can claim to be so pluralistic yet so secretive at the same time?

  17. We should notice that the last volume of CJLS teshuvot *did* provide a way for Jews to employ non-Jews and keep their businesses open on shabbat. Also for Jews with money to drink expensive treif wine. And – since nobody listens to the CJLS anyway – now they won’t even *say* they’re for union labor and fair wages? How about we try cutting rabbis’ salaries, then see how they talk?

  18. Kol Ra-ash:
    Your comments miss the point. I wasn’t saying that unions are historically bad or useless; on the contrary, they have accomplished a great deal. I also didn’t question that unions are PERMISSIBLE under our sources. I questioned whether in 2006 it’s a mitzva to make a point of hiring only union. You may have noticed that most workers are doing far better now than in the early union era, and that many unions are as greedy (or worse) as any employer. Why does it make sense to try to compel people to hire union in all situations?
    You also didn’t bother to address my actual questions, copied from above:
    1) That the notion that living wage and union support actually further their intended goals is too arguable (and in fact argued with) for anyone to feel full confidence that our pre-twentieth century religious sources mandate such remedies, to the point that you can tell religious authorities to be ashamed of themselves.
    2) Why are your propositions good ideas? Essentially, their effect is to direct charity (money that would be kept by the employer if not for the edict) to workers, and especially union workers. Why is this necessarily the best use of charity money? Could it be that there are poor and sick people even more in need of this money than the workers? Shouldn’t this decision be at the discretion of the local Rabbinic authorities and the individual employers who can make this decision knowledgeably?
    Well?

  19. Thank you for posting this. Not all of us have forgotten Jewish involvement in labor and social justice causes.
    The Conservative movement never ceases to find ways to anger and diasppoint me. Unbelievable.

  20. – Kol Ra’ash
    I apologize for skipping out on the whole discussion today, been a bit busy at work. But, meanwhile tachlis. Tav HaChevrati is run by an organization called Maagelei Tzedek. They are good people, when it comes to social justice. They are still mainstream national religious though. So, I would avoid brining up feminism, queer issues, or israeli politics in a conversation. Also, in a few weeks I will be back in the ohly land, and have pretty good access to that world, so if you or anyone else wants to get something going on with them, I can probabaly help open up channels.

  21. Dear Alana- hey, it’s good to see a fellow ZSRS grad stirring up trouble, but I think you’re jumping the gun on denouncing the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. Reporting that a particular t’shuvah did not get accepted actually tells us nothing about the general ethical stance of the Law Committee or anybody else regarding the issues discussed therein- it just means that paper wasn’t accepted as sufficiently persuasive to become an “official position” of the Conservative Movement. For all we know, the rejection of the living wage t’shuvah will result in a rewrite, with stronger arguments or better sources, which WILL get accepted- that happens all the time, as we know from the, ahem, other big debate which we all read about in the Forward.
    Furthermore, there is a huge difference between staking out a moral position in favor of a general principle- like “Jews should pay employees a fair wage” – and adopting specific halachic criteria for its implementation. Is it really a halachic matter that Jewish business people should hire union employees? Please note- I’m NOT saying anything about whether unions are a good idea or not (I think they are) but rather saying that about some things, halacha as such has no particular opinion, and thus halachic discourse may not be the proper forum for figuring out how to change society for the better. (E.g., halacha tells me to study Torah, but it doesn’t tell me whether to buy Torah books with cash or credit card.) Judaism also has a prophetic tradition, a philosophical tradition, many organizations which devote themselves to the implementation of Jewish social ethics, and so on- so maybe the CJLS rejected this t’shuvah for reasons which have nothing to do with paying a living wage and everything to do with the proper purview of the CJLS. Your guess is as good as mine.

  22. Josh,
    You must be kidding, right? The first thing I do when I open my WSJ is to promptly extract and dispose of the the editorial page. The crap that is published on that page is written by a bunch of clowns. They practically crawl over each other to kiss Bush’s ass and suck Cheney’s dick. I wouldn’t use the WSJ editorial page to line my bird’s cage, let alone actually cite it. I mean, what the fuck would they know about being poor or living on the minimum wage? Try again.

  23. First,
    “Out here in my Conservative Bar/Bat Mitzvah factory congregation, we never ever here about when the CJLS is going to meet. ”
    I believe they meet more or less quaqrterly. In any case, their meetings are supposedly announced inthe RAbbinical ASsembly Newsletter, so your rabbi, at least, knows when theymeet, although not what will be discussed (when I asked about why not, appearently the answer is “because it often changes at the last minute.” There are certainly many tshuvot which have been passed ove the the last 20 years. THey are available to non-members at the Rabbinical assembly website, although I admit it’s not 100% up to date. I know that the hope its to remedy this.
    Second, “Essentially, their effect is to direct charity (money that would be kept by the employer if not for the edict) to workers, and especially union workers”
    THe first question I and others have answered quite well thank you, your second question, though Ididn’t answer because its incomprehensible. Are you saying that rather than paying employees a wage on which they can lpay rent and eat, it’s better to leave to the discretion of the employer which charities he or she will donate to? If so, I don’t really feel the need to spend time answering it, as the answer is prety obvious. If it’s not, then I’ll answer as soon as you explain what you do mean, if I can and it makes sense to do so.

  24. Our Rabbis here at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah factory are only interested in kissing the tuchis’ of the family’s who have that Bar/Bat Mitzvah that week. There is no adult ed here except for Torah reading classes. The Rabbis don’t care to let us know about what is happening at the CJLS meetings. And if the CJLS is here to make laws for regular, ordinary, non-rabbinic people like me then they have to get their laws out to the masses in a much simpler way instead of the rest of us relying on Jewschool or the Forward.

  25. Kol Raash says:
    “your second question, though Ididn’t answer because its incomprehensible. Are you saying that rather than paying employees a wage on which they can lpay rent and eat, it’s better to leave to the discretion of the employer which charities he or she will donate to? If so, I don’t really feel the need to spend time answering it, as the answer is prety obvious.”
    Incomprehensible? Really? Or are you just trying to weasel out by mischaracterizing my argument? Here’s what I wrote:
    “And why are these propositions good ideas? Essentially, their effect is to direct charity (monet that would be kept by the employer if not for the edict) to workers, and especially union workers. Why is this necessarily the best use of charity money? Could it be that there are poor and sick people even more in need of this money than the workers? Shouldn’t this decision be at the discretion of the local Rabbinic authorities and the individual employers who can make this decision knowledgeably?”
    Let’s make it even simpler: Your neighbor on the right hand side will be working for you to build you a porch. He’ll be charging you somewhat less than your notion of what living wage should be. He struggles, but he gets by. Your neighbor on the left-hand side has an illness that keeps him from working and requires medical care that insurance won’t pay for. He also has five kids. NOW: does it make sense that a centralized religious committee, unaware of these circumstances, should hamstring you into helping the first guy, even though common sense, religious law and your local Rabbi all agree that the second guy is the one who needs the support?

  26. That site is not good enough. It’s a start but still not good enough. There are many other Conservative teshuvot on many other items out there. And I can’t find a good deal of them unless I pay big money for the teshuvot books. As far as I know there are three teshuvot volumes which include teshuvot from 1929-1970, 1981-1990 and 1991-2000. There are a sprinking of teshuvot on the RA website to fill in a few gaps but why cant all Conservative teshuvot be published for free and immediately! Also why on that website are there teshuvot for members and teshuvot for non members. I guess the only way to be a member is to be a rabbi? Is there any way a lay person can become a member of that website? I would certainly want to know… Is this website implying what many people all over already believe which is that there is no such thing as Conservative Jews. In reality there are only Conservative Rabbis?

  27. “teshuvot for members and teshuvot for non members” on the RA website.
    I can say for certain, there actually isn’t any difference between the member and non-member access to website. I have no idea why they make two different entrances, because it’s hysterically bad PR to do it that way.

  28. In response to Ruby-K:
    While I share your disappointment with these recent decisions (and non-decisions) by the CJLS, I am nevertheless proud that Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a brilliant writer and tire-less activist, is working to make change as a Conservative Rabbi and JTS grad. It shows that while the people on the committee may not be able to strut their stuff when it comes to these important issues, there are nevertheless Conservative rabbis who care about human rights. Kol hakavod to Rabbi Jacobs for taking a stand, not just as a human being, but as someone who is not afraid to stick up for what she has learned and what she hopes others will take on. This is a woman who does not feel the need to water down her politics in order to stay in the movement she otherwise believes in and was ordained by.
    Personally, I still consider myself a Reform Jew as per ideology (similar to bz), but not necessarily as connected to thousands of other dues paying members of Reform synagogues. (I currently do not belong to a synagogue)

  29. “Let’s make it even simpler: Your neighbor on the right hand side will be working for you to build you a porch. He’ll be charging you somewhat less than your notion of what living wage should be. He struggles, but he gets by. Your neighbor on the left-hand side has an illness that keeps him from working and requires medical care that insurance won’t pay for. He also has five kids. NOW: does it make sense that a centralized religious committee, unaware of these circumstances, should hamstring you into helping the first guy, even though common sense, religious law and your local Rabbi all agree that the second guy is the one who needs the support?”
    In other words, I didn’t mischaracterize your argument at all. Yes, of course it makes sense. You as an employer have an obligation to pay your workers a wage by which they can live. Living wage is a carefully calculated amount, usually done by a coalition of either government or charitable, in a few cases, organizations, not some randomly generated number. Your invented scenario is just that. An excellent example of how this works is to look at the partners in creating the DC living wage (which passed last April). I just don’t buy into someone saying, “I just don’t like that number, I’d rather give more to charity than pay my workers a fair wage.”
    If someone wants to be charitable, they don’t get to do it on the backs of their workers – they should do it out of their own income, not someone else’s. Otherwise it’s not tzedakah, it’s theft.
    Besides, it’s not like we’re even talking about any kind of sanctions other than peer pressure. I mean, seriously, what happens if someone inthe Conservative movement eats treif? God knows that never happens, but what kind of sanctions are we talking about here, what’s the hamstring? What we’re talking about is making a statement about what people’s ethical and religious obligations are.

  30. “Your invented scenario is just that.”
    No, it’s just a simplified example of the situation as it exists each and every day.
    “You as an employer have an obligation to pay your workers a wage by which they can live.”
    More sleight-of-hand? “By which they can live”? As in, they’ll die if they’re not paid x wage? No, you mean “live” as in “a higher standard of living”. Which I would wish for any person who is decent and works. But the question becomes, “is the incremental improvement worth taking the money from a different form of charity?”
    “If someone wants to be charitable, they don’t get to do it on the backs of their workers – they should do it out of their own income, not someone else’s. Otherwise it’s not tzedakah, it’s theft. ”
    Now failure to pay living wage is theft? Besides being way overdone (there are a lot of gradations between being faultless and being a thief), did you stop to consider that when in fact people are unable to earn enough, and there is a moral obligation to help, that obligation would fall on the community as a whole (ie the taxpayer or the Jewish community, depending on the context), not on the employer? (Just as housing the poor should not be imposed solely on landlords, or feeding the poor on grocers).
    “Besides, it’s not like we’re even talking about any kind of sanctions other than peer pressure. ”
    And why are you minimizing that? It’s a very powerful motivator. Try explaining how the world works without including it in your analysis. Why would you want religious leadership to be making “statements” that everyone knows and expects are nothing but hot air? As I’ve often said in the Orthodox context, keep the decrees and the stringencies to a minimum, keep the demands on the community modest and restricted to the core beliefs and activities, but fight like hell for that core.

  31. J,
    You make the naive assumption that people who pay sub-livable wages then give the money to charitable causes. It is just a rationalization. Practically most folks who pay a substandard wage use the extra money to buy an extra guiness or pay a bit more in monthly payments for a nicer car.
    Even if people didn’t use the money selfishly you have started from the point-of-view that is acceptable to a pverty wage. You are obligated to pay people fairly for work whether or not you can bargain them down. It is not only an economic issues, but an issue of kavod for your partners in creation. This is exactly the reason why helping create sustainable earning is the highest form of tzedakah. You pay people for work they did honestly and they feed their families. I didn’t see this issue with such clarity in the past. I thought along the lines you are arguing “if people work hard they’ll be fine”. It just isn’t the case in this country. With rent and medical care soaring astronomically and minimum wage not keeping pace with inflation people are forgoing medical care for themselves and occasionally missing meals even when they work 50-60 hours a week. Next time you work a 60 hour week and have to skip a meal or not take your sick child to the doctor, post over here and i’ll take your rationalizations more seriously.

  32. “You make the naive assumption that people who pay sub-livable wages then give the money to charitable causes. It is just a rationalization. ”
    Nowhere did I make that assumption. Most people are going to pay minimal wages and not give to charity. A few will pay high wages and give a great deal. But we are talking about those people who may be influenced by the Conservative Rabbinate to do more than they do already. The question then is what form this limited amount of charitable giving should take. But at least you got a chance to call me naive again.
    “This is exactly the reason why helping create sustainable earning is the highest form of tzedakah. ”
    Actually, the highest form would be getting the person into a position wherein their earnings don’t need to be supplemented by their employer’s notion of a fair wage.
    “I thought along the lines you are arguing “if people work hard they’ll be fine”. ”
    Again, you are creating a straw man. Read my comments above carefully (or maybe just read them at all). I said and implied nothing of the sort.
    “Next time you work a 60 hour week and have to skip a meal or not take your sick child to the doctor, post over here and i’ll take your rationalizations more seriously. ”
    That’s a pretty foolish position to take. Is the rule now that people can’t comment on something unless they’ve been directly involved in it? Are you ready to apply that rule consistently? To yourself? Will you forgo any criticism of anyone not exactly like you? Do you know anything about my background or credentials? If it should turn out that I have more firsthand knowledge of certain situations, will you concede any arguments to me, no matter what?
    It’s not me who has to worry about being taken seriously.

  33. Halakha obliges an employer both to pay fair wages and to give tzedakah. It is not acceptable to do the one and not the other. Certainly, the employer should not be driven to poverty by these practices, but that is why the business must be kept to an appropriate size so that payroll and receipts are kept in a good balance.
    Because this is the halakhically correct thing to do, and because halakhah obliges us to follow the “practice of the district” in regard to labor regulations (Bava Metzia 7), I think it’s safe to say that the halakhically correct thing is to lobby for a living wage.
    I also think it’s safe to say that a halakhic body, like the CJLS, is sorta obliged to follow halakhic precedent, regardless of what its members would rather do.
    So, yeah.

  34. Thank you so much for this post – It makes me really angry. I go to a Conservative synagogue and am dismayed by how few votes this got. I have to admit, as a queer person, it is a lot more important to me that I (and everyone else) get paid a living wage than to have the right to be a rabbi. It’s sad to see “liberal” Jews moving farther and farther away from our history of progressive labor movement involvement.

  35. Also for Jews with money to drink expensive treif wine.
    Non-hekshered wines are usually much less expensive than certified kosher wnes for any given evel of quality.

  36. Shamir,
    don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we’ve got rabbis like Jill Jacobs trying to bring the Conservative movement into the later 20th Century. And until a few years ago, I self identified with the Conservative moment. But I’ve been so thoroughly disappointed and disgusted with some of the positions/opinions that have come out of it (did you know they ENDORSED John Roberts for the Supreme Court?) that it’s a serious gut punch to watch them flounder on a LIVABLE WAGE. I wholeheartedly support folks like Rabbi Jacobs in their efforts to push the Conservative movement forward, but that doesn’t mean I approve of their massive failings.

  37. To: [email protected]
    Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 12:09 PM
    Subject: Question from an Am Haaretz about the CJLS.
    Dear Rabbi Epstein,
    1. Out here in my Conservative congregation, we never ever here about when the CJLS is going to meet. Furthermore, it follows that we never here about what is on the agenda or how people on the committee voted etc. The only time I know when something happened at the committee is when a newspaper or blog writes about it. Do you have any other information about what is discussed CJLS sessions and can that information be shared with a dues paying member of a Conservative synagogue like myself? I would love to know this information. I know there are books of CJLS repsonsa from 1929-1970, 1981-1990 and 1991-2000. But where are most teshuvot published to the public since then or in between these times? How is it that our leadership can claim to be so pluralistic yet so secretive at the same time?
    2. Our (local) Rabbis don’t care to let us know about what is happening at the CJLS meetings. And if the CJLS is here to make laws for regular, ordinary, non-rabbinic people like me then they have to get their laws out to the masses in a much simpler way instead of the rest of us relying on a blog or the Forward.
    3. The RA website that posts some teshuvot is a start but still not good enough. There are many other Conservative teshuvot on many other items out there. And I can’t find a good deal of them unless I pay big money for the teshuvot books. There are a sprinking of teshuvot on the RA website to fill in a few gaps but why can’t all Conservative teshuvot be published for free and immediately?! Also why on that website are there teshuvot for members and teshuvot for non members. I guess the only way to be a member is to be a rabbi? Is there any way a lay person can become a member of that website? I would certainly want to know… Is this website implying what many people all over already believe which is that there is no such thing as Conservative Jews. In reality there are only Conservative Rabbis?
    4. I would appreciate a timely response. Happy New Year.

  38. Yo, folks, nobody can bash the Conservative movement like I can (given that I’m a Conservative rabbi that puts me up close and personal with all of our institutional and organizational and spiritual failings) but some of the things that are getting said here don’t necessarily reflect what actually happened. For example, a previous poster was unhappy that the United Synagogue “endorsed” John Roberts- but actually, the only thing the “public policy” committee of the United Synagogue (which is not the whole movement) said was that Roberts was “qualified” to serve. Well, yeah, he was, in the sense of having the experience and education for such a position- that doesn’t mean it was a good idea to appoint him, it just means that the appropriate committee couldn’t find a way to object to his nomination based on his qualifications. It may sound like a silly distinction, but it’s not- no official body of the Conservative movement, that I’m aware of, came out swinging for Roberts, but one committee simply said he had a sufficient resume.
    More to the point, let me remind you- no official body of the Conservative movement has come out against a living wage. ONE committee of the Conservative movement has said that ONE paper written by ONE rabbi isn’t strong enough yet to be endorsed as a halachic opinion- and in fact, there is a chance that this paper can be accepted later with some revision. If you want the United Synagogue to come out in favor of a living wage, then submit a resolution at a USCJ convention, either locally or nationally. It wouldn’t be that hard, and it would probably pass, IMHO.
    As I said- nobody is more aware of the various failings of the Conservative Movement than me, but in order to fix them, we need to discuss what actually happened, not broad generalizations based on general perceptions.

  39. no official body of the Conservative movement, that I’m aware of, came out swinging for Roberts, but one committee simply said he had a sufficient resume.
    Why did they feel compelled to make any statement at all about Roberts’s resume? Are they the American Bar Association?

  40. BZ- I have no idea why the public policy committee of the USCJ made any statement about Roberts, and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have had them do so. Having said that, lots of Jewish organizations, including all the major denominational organizations, make statements about public policy all the time, and given that this was a huge issue in American politics, it’s not that unusual for organizations to have opinions about it. The Reform Movement, the OU, the Agudath Israel, the AJC’s, the ADL, the whole alphabet soup of Jewish life- they all do this all the time.
    Again- in no way do I endorse Mr. Roberts, that’s not the point. The point is, one committee making one decision about one specific person or position paper is hardly the same thing as an entire denomination being for or against something.

  41. Hi Ruby- read the article again. The decision to endorse Roberts as “qualified” was made by one committee- not by the USCJ board, not by the RA, not by the Law Committee, not by Women’s League, not by a plenum at any convention of any of those organizations. Again- I’m so not defending the decision, I personally wish they had taken no stand at all. (Then again, Roberts was probably more qualified than Earl Warren to sit on the Court, and liberals hated Warren at the time, but look what he turned out to be.)
    All I’m saying is that one committee’s decision to send a letter regarding Roberts is not the same as the “Conservative Movement” endorsing him, and neither that decision nor the Law Committee decision rejecting R. Jacob’s paper can be taken as conclusive evidence that the “movement” is more or less progressive than it used to be.

  42. “Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue, said that it would have been impractical to bring the issue before the organization’s board. “We felt that if you want to do a serious deliberation, then you need an active working group to do that,” Epstein said, adding that members of the public policy committee reviewed a great deal of material on Roberts before making their decision.”
    The policy group spoke for the conservative movement. While I didn’t see it, I highly doubt the letter to Specter said “this is only from the policy committee, not from the whole movement.” Similarly, the legislative body that sets law for the Conservative rejected R. Jacobs’ paper.
    Of course I’m not saying every single rabbi is for Roberts, and against a living wage. But these are the people that have been chosen/elected/selected to be the standard bearers of the Conservative movement. Whether they like it or not, they are the public face and voice of the Conservative movement. If they can’t be bothered to act like that, that is not my problem.
    There are some wonderful people in the Conservative movement. It’s true. But the folks out front seem like they need to be dragged into the 1990s. Thankfully, folks like R. Jacobs are trying to make things right from the inside.

  43. I am a fervent supporter of workers rights, and nothing would make me happier than to see the CJLS pass a living wage protection decision. But having read Rabbi Jacob’s paper, I could only conclude that it was overly broad and would be hard to actually discern how to use it. She makes a number of leaps from Nach and from Aggadic sources without making any solid links to accepted halacha. In speaking to Rabbi Dorff, a member of the CJLS, about the paper, I sensed that it wouldn’t have the votes to get through either.
    Jill should have answered a more simple and narrow question than ‘Should workers all make a living wage?’ It would be better to take aim at the most egregious violators of workers rights: a Tav Chevrati that simply issues warnings about seriously unethical companies who are unfair to their workers, such as the infamous Walmart, but also bebe, Gap, Hilton and Marriot.
    I bet $5 the Kol Rash Gadol could bag 6 votes on a good teshuvah in her sleep… although I’m sure the ethicality of betting on teshuvot on erev yom kippur is suspect.

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