Counting the Omer Day 32: Models of Development

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Part of what I am enjoying about the American Jewish World Service Global Jewish fellowship, is the opportunity to engage in chevruta study in preparation. Chevruta, from the same root as friend, is about studying intensely with a friend. You see the model in the movie Yentl. I have a new friend, Rabbi Beau Shapiro from Los Angeles. He is a rabbi at the historic Wilshire Boulevard Temple founded in 1862. That makes it 30 years older than my congregation which is also historic! I am the only rabbi of Congregation Kneseth Israel. As he put it, they have enough rabbis to field a baseball team. Really.

But we share a commitment to social justice, to tikkun o’lam, fixing or repairing the world. This week we met (virtually!) to study the texts that American Jewish World Service provided for us. We read an article about a historical overview of development and a more in-depth analysis of A Rights-Based Approach to Development by Peter Uvin. Then we contrasted it with a text we know well. Leviticus 19:9-10 and Leviticus 19:15, both part of what we call the Holiness Code.

It was an interesting discussion. Rabbi Shapiro and I agreed on much of our approach and response. Some of the material we found troubling. If you used a right-based approach, who is setting the agenda? Whose rights? What if there are rights that appear to supersede each other or cancel each other out?

We were both surprised to read that Maslow’s Pyramid as a model maybe dead. Although I quipped that I had seen on Facebook that the new bottom rung is Wifi. No one can exist without Wifi (and it actually concerns me about the Kenya trip). But seriously, I have always taught this to my fifth graders during their class on prophets where they take on an issue as a class project and try to make the world a better place. How can you talk about reducing hate crimes for instance if people are worried about food, shelter, clothing?

 As you know, I am doing some extensive reading outside of what is assigned for our chevruta. Nicholas Kristoff’s book, Half the Sky, features AJWS in the 4 things you can do in 10 minutes. I swelled with pride. And I begin to see the connection that Ruth Messinger had mentioned on the conference call to kick off AJWS’s new campaign, We Believe to reduce violence against women, girls and the LGBT communities in the Global South. There is a need to prevent violence against women, girls and the LGBT community, in order to do delivery of poverty services. We can turn oppression against women into opportunity and economic security increases for all. It is a slow process as Kristoff makes all too clear. At the House of Hope in Lowell MA the executive director talks about a both/and. We need advocacy to end homelessness but we also need to shelter the homeless and feed the hungry now. They are cold (it snowed in Chicagoland yesterday) now. They can’t wait for the advocacy to work and the oppression to end.
When we looked at the texts from Kedoshim, we saw the article on development approaches reflected. Leaving the corners of your field (we have planted a community garden to raise awareness and feed some, only some of the 19,000 food insecure people in Elgin to live out this very verse), is the technical approach. We will make sure there is food. It is poverty based, a poverty reduction approach. Not favoring the rich or showing deference to the poor is an even-keeled approach. It can’t be done at all costs. It has to be even. So that seems more like a goal, more rights based.
One of our participants works on trafficking issues and pointed out that there is sex in the sweatshops. When I was organizing for Merrimack Valley Project in Lowell, we were helping women in a packaging plant at the old Fort Devens achieve the health care coverage they were promised. Sometimes in order to get managers to sign off, they were expected to sleep with the managers, or actually as we documented  some were raped. Violence against women does not just happen over there, but right here in our own back door. That is why I have worked with the Community Crisis Center and the 16th Circuit Court Faith Watch Committee. Check out this article: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/26974548-417/new-and-unlikely-local-army-is-forming-to-battle-human-trafficking.html#.U3f6LcbxUy4
which features one of my congregants, Kim Spagui, a single mother, attorney who champions the rights of those being trafficked right here in Chicagoland.
Today I did a big, formal sermon on Israel at 66. In preparing I revisited Scarlett Johanssen’s “controversy” over the Sodastream ad. That too is about rights-based organizing and classic economic development. These models apply to Israel and the West Bank and as I was preparing leapt off the page. Again, I think it has to be a both/and to create a win/win situation. My hope for our trip to Kenya is that we safely learn how organizations on the ground are doing things correctly (or not) and then how we can apply it to our local communities. After the kiddush 10 of us sat around discussing Israel. I tried to create a safe, non-judgmental space for that conversation to happen so that everyone felt heard.
We may not be able to solve violence against women and children, hunger, homelessness, etc. But we are not free to ignore it. With freedom–and the right of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, comes responsibility, not as McDonald’s advertising might suggest, chocolate drizzle.