Edited by Rabbi Or N. Rose, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, and
Margie Klein
(Jewish Lights Publishing, 2008)
An interview with Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for
Justice
SocialAction.com:
In the introduction to Righteous
Indignation, along with your two co-editors you state that “the creation of
a just and sustainable world requires the cooperative efforts of people from all
walks of life.” What do you mean by that?
Jo Ellen Green
Kaiser: Change cannot be left to experts or even to activists. The most effective
change comes when everyone in a community gets involved. For example, here in San
Francisco, the San Francisco Organizing Project invited members of churches and
synagogues and community groups to meet at each others houses and just talk about
what bothered them in their personal lives. Health care came up over and over again,
so the organizers asked the people who had gone to the parties to volunteer to keep
meeting to devise a health care plan for the city. They did, and they convinced
the mayor of San Francisco to back it. That’s how real, structural change happens.
SA: How many essays
do you include in your collection and how did you select the contributors?
JGK: Righteous Indignation features forty essays
on a wide range of social justice topics. We asked for contributions by those who
are widely known as leading thinkers about Jewish social justice—people like Rabbi
David Saperstein, the leader of the Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement—and
also young activists who will become the next generation of leaders, such as Rabbi
Melissa Weintraub, whose organization Encounter is bringing Palestinians, Israelis,
and Americans together. We sought contributions from representatives of every denominational
movement in Judaism, and from a range of political positions. We also tried to get
a mix of writing by scholars and by activists. We wanted to create a really big
tent, and I think we succeeded.
SA: You want your
readers to think about their roles and responsibilities in healing and changing
the modern world. Is this a particularly Jewish mandate?
JGK: Every major religion—and
indeed, every significant secular ethical movement—recognizes the call to justice.
Jesus was a particularly powerful speaker for change. One of the strongest, and
newest, elements of Righteous Indignation
is our message that change must be an interfaith endeavor. Having said that, there
is a unique emphasis on tikkun olam, the
obligation to heal the world, in Judaism. Judaism is at root a covenantal relationship
between a people and God, and a covenant imposes obligations on both parties. One
of our obligations as Jews is to be stewards of the earth, to act morally and ethically
toward the planet and our fellow creatures. If we don’t act to heal the world, we
are not fulfilling our obligations as Jews.
SA: Which contemporary
justice issues to your writers address? For example, do they talk about the environment,
politics, and health/education reform? Do they include war and genocide as well?
JGK: When Margie Klein,
Or Rose, and I developed the idea for this anthology, we wanted to make the point
that the call to justice cannot be limited to a handful of issues or to the particular
challenges within the Jewish community. In designing the book, we started out with
the issues that affect everyone everywhere—the imperative to care for our planet,
including combating global warming; the imperative to care for our bodies, including
health care reform and preserving reproductive rights; the imperative to economic
justice, ensuring that everyone has food, clothing and shelter, and to social justice,
covering labor rights, immigration rights, and legal rights.
After sections on these universal issues, the anthology addresses
issues particularly relevant to the Jewish community—how far we have to go yet to
being truly inclusive; the challenge of Israel/Palestine; and, finally, the need
for Jews to go beyond the Jewish community to address larger political issues such
as globalization, the war in Iraq, and the genocide in Darfur. The message of Righteous Indignation is that we have the
power, and the obligation, to address every aspect of our lives.
SA: One of the sections
is called “The Yoke of Oppression: Social and Economic Justice.” What is the yoke
of oppression?
JGK: On the most holy
day of the Jewish year, a fast-day, we gather in prayer and read these words of
Isaiah (58:6-7)
This is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home.
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.
[JPS version]
Isaiah teaches us that poverty, hunger, and homelessness are
unacceptable. We must not let our fellow human beings live like oxen, like animals
valued only for their labor. That’s the essence of social and economic justice.
SA: Rabbi David Ellenson,
in the Foreword to the book, brings up Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s observation
that individual spiritual devotion and social justice are partners. Having worked
on Righteous Indignation, do you agree
with that assertion?
JGK: Yes. In my own
life, it was prayer that drew me to social justice work. In Judaism, prayer takes
place in community. The central piece of every Jewish religious service is the Amidah. While it can be said by individuals,
it can not be repeated aloud without a minyan,
a group of at least ten Jews, being present. It’s one of the few prayers that falls
under this requirement for communal prayer. Yet, before the prayer is recited aloud,
it is always recited silently, and during this silent prayer worshippers are enjoined
to add a personal mediation. It’s communal and individual at the same time. For
me, this is the essence of Judaism. Without recognizing our responsibility to our
community, we can’t achieve spiritual well-being; yet, without individual spiritual
devotion, we can’t sustain our roles within community. We need both.
SA: Ruth Messinger
and Aaron Dorfman called their article “Am I My Brother’s Keeper If My Brother Lives
Half Way around the World?” Is there a global aspect to a Jewish call for justice?
JGK: Definitely, as
we say in our introduction, there are good reasons for the Jewish community to focus
inward—we have a lot of work to do, especially when it comes to our treatment of
community members often marginalized in Jewish life, including gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgender Jews, and Jews of color. However, staying focused on our own community
is not enough. As Messinger and Dorfman argue, if we know that people anywhere are
suffering, Jewish law requires us to care for them. For that reason, we include
essays on the Iraq war, the genocide in Darfur, and efforts to aid victims of natural
disasters like the 2006 tsunami, even though these are not particularly “Jewish”
issues.
SA: What does tikkun olam mean to you, as a Jewish social
activist and personally?
JGK: For me, tikkun olam means that I have an obligation
to my fellow human beings and to the planet. That obligation is both abstract and
particular. I live in San Francisco, where homeless people crowd our sidewalks.
I have an obligation to try to help end homelessness, which I do personally by donating
money to short-term fixes like shelters and by advocating for structural changes,
like measures to create supportive housing. I also have an obligation to the individuals
I meet on the street to treat them as fellow human beings and not just human logs.
One without the other is not enough.
My co-editors, Rabbi Or Rose and Margie Klein, are amazing activists
who spend every day actually mobilizing people for change. I’m a writer and editor.
I spend every day at my computer. For a long time, I felt guilty about that. But
guilt doesn’t solve problems. I contribute to justice work, on the broadest level,
by giving activists a platform to speak, through efforts like this anthology and
through the work I do at Zeek (www.zeek.net), a Jewish magazine I edit. My message
to readers is that you don’t have to become a professional activist to make a difference.
You make a difference by connecting your personal inspiration to these larger issues.
SA: Finally, why is
Righteous Indignation an important book
or statement in terms of a vision of the world as it should be?
JGK: What excites
me most about Righteous Indignation is
that it resonates with a spirit of change that is already moving through this country.
This is a moment in our history when our politicians are talking about change. We
know we have hurt our planet; we know that for many people here in the United States
and around the world, life is getting harder rather than easier. People have heard
the call to justice and want to know how they can get involved.
Righteous Indignation
gives people inspiration, as Ghandi said, to be the change we wish to see in
the world. The anthology is, in fact, part of a larger project (see www.righteousindignation.info)
to educate, inspire, and organize Jewish communities to voice social justice and
environmental issues as religious and political priorities in the ’08 election and
beyond. We can be, as Isaiah urges, the “repairer of fallen walls, the restorer
of lanes for habitation.” Working together, we really can repair our world.
