“Are you better off this year than last?” This is a question that many in our country consider to be one of the most meaningful questions of this season.
The question is asked polemically or triumphantly, out of real concern or out of anger and disgust. It is asked in multi-million dollar attack ads and in intimate dialogues around the kitchen table. Everyone feels obliged to respond to that question. Everyone seems to feel moved to deal with this central question on a personal basis and on behalf of the entire country.
But it is the wrong question.
The central question of this season is not whether we are better off, but whether we are better. Are we better than we were last year? Have we grown at all in our dealings with our loved ones? With our co- workers? Our community and society? Are we better this year than last year in dealing with our own limitations and failings and demons? Are we better at fulfilling our commitments and dreams? Are we better human beings? Are we better Jews?
If this sounds to you like some kind of naïve rabbinic hot air then I must insist that you give me a little more credit than that. I am very, very aware of the importance of our economic situation. When I was interviewed by Shomrei’s Rabbinic Search Committee I was asked many questions. But one of the questions that I asked was what was being done in the community to address the effects of the economic downturn on our members and the greater community. One of the first initiatives I supported as your rabbi was the creation of a support network for Shomrei members who were unemployed and underemployed after years of success and prosperity. I have had so many private conversations with members of our community who struggle with their economic problems and with the emotional and personal challenges caused by economic troubles. I know what it means to worry about paying bills and about having anything left for retirement. I have a son who has just graduated college and who is in the same job-starved economy as almost everyone else his age. So when I tell you that the question, “Are we better off this year than last?” is not the right question, I am not being naïve and I am not being oblivious. On the contrary.
“Are we better this year than last?” is the really important question because it is only through confronting that question that we can find the strength and direction to properly struggle with the socio- economic challenges of today.
I have not arrived at this opinion because I am an assimilated, leftist Jew who has traded in my Judaic heritage for a bunch of liberal cliches. In case we have forgotten, I read to you, again, what the prophet Isaiah preached over 2700 years ago, the words of the haftarah for Yom Kippur, established long before leftist Jews hijacked the American Jewish agenda:
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen? Only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will gather you in. (Isaiah 58)
The prophet binds together the question of our economic well-being with the question of our ethical and spiritual well-being.
Do not ask the hungry – “are you better off this year than last?” They are hungry today.
Do not ask the homeless – “are you better off this year than last?” They are homeless now.
What is the really important question we should be asking ourselves today? If we want to deal with fiscal issues, let us ask – What is the economic situation today? We hear about the crisis in unemployment and slow job growth. We hear about welfare cheats.
Let’s start with housing.
According to a study put out this year, entitled Out of Reach (- by the National Low Income Housing Coalition), in the state of NJ it requires 138 hours a week of working at minimum wage in order to afford the monthly rent for a 2-bedroom apartment. That means it requires 3 1⁄2 people working a 40 hour week in order to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. NJ is one of the most unaffordable states as far as housing goes. So maybe all those minimum wage folks should just go elsewhere?
They can’t – In no state in the United States can a person afford such an apartment working full-time at minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The national average hourly wage is actually almost twice that – $14.15. Okay, so people will just have to work harder and pull themselves out of being coddled by the government safety net. Get a better job. But the overall national average hourly wage required to be able to afford the overall national rent for such an apartment is $18.25, working full-time, all year long. That is over $4 an hour more than the the average wage. That means a family needs two wage earners to afford basic rent on a 2-bedroom apartment. If there are kids, what happens to them while the parents are working?
Let’s move on to food. Today is a fast day. We know a little bit of what hunger feels like. With regard to hunger, what is the economic situation today?
Let’s talk about people who work, not those people who some of us are tempted to consider to be lazy losers who are an embarrassment to America.
The United Way has just released some findings in what it calls the ALICE Report. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. It has documented the number, location and experiences of New Jersey families who are working, yet “live each day one crisis away from falling into poverty.” (Some of this data was also recently published in the Montclair Times in its article about the struggles at Toni’s Kitchen.)
More than one-third of New Jersey households struggle to afford basic necessities – and many of them are living in Essex County.
According to the report, there are 769,900 ALICE households in NJ, defined as having a household income above the Federal Poverty Level ($22,113 for a family; $11,344 for a single adult) but below a basic cost-of-living threshold. For a single adult, that budget is $25,368. (An additional 312,762 households are below the poverty line. The total is 1.1 million households – 34% of all NJ.)
The families studied make more than the official poverty level, but “way less than an individual or family needs to sustain a reasonably healthy standard of living.” The cost of basic necessities (housing, child care, food, health care and transportation) for a family of four in Essex County in 2010 was $58,500. (Bloomfield Patch, 9/2/2012)
Again, what about the children?
As many as 17 million children nationwide are struggling with what is known as food insecurity. To put it another way, one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life, according to the study, “Map the Meal – Child Food Insecurity 2011.”
We are commanded this day to “afflict our souls.” So permit me to afflict you with one last set of statistics. We have seen that the Federal definition of poverty is so low that millions of hard working Americans are still suffering on a daily basis. Incredibly, there are millions of Americans who are not even among the ranks of the ABLE – Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. They are just plain poor.
As of April, 2012, 46.2 million Americans were so impoverished that they received government assistance for food. It was once called Food Stamps; it is now called SNAP – Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program. This year many Jewish organizations, such as United Synagogue, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism and others, along with MAZON, the Jewish anti-hunger agency, have joined together for the “Food Stamp Challenge.” The idea is to try to live for a week on the same allocation that a Food Stamp recipient gets.
The average Food Stamp (SNAP) recipient gets $31.50 a week. If we assume three meals a day for each day, that makes 21 meals and that comes out to about $1.50 a meal. What does that buy? Well, it does not buy a cup of coffee at Starbuck’s. So I went to the supermarket instead.
[take out bag of groceries –
1 doz. Eggs 2.09
1 gal. Milk 3.59
breakfast – no coffee, eggs hard-boiled (– no butter)
eggs for 6 days; 3 oz. of milk @ meal (64oz./21 meals)
1 loaf white bread 1.39
1 jar peanut butter (40 oz.) 6.49
1 jar strawberry jam (32 oz.) 5.49
lunch – drink water
3 x 12 oz. Can of tuna @3.39 – 10.17
1 12 oz. Bag froz. mixed veg. 2.65
supper – split cans of tuna into portions/ veg. -1 1⁄2 oz. @ supper
Total -31.87
Unfortunately, I was 37 cents over budget. I had to steal empty soda bottles from the garbage to make up the difference.
This is a tiny glimpse at the grim situation in our society today. Is this the best we can do? I would like to believe that we are better than that. But we cannot move on unless we ask ourselves that very question: Are we better this year than last?
This past year at Shomrei we expanded our efforts in the realm of social action. We recruited more tutors for kids in the schools. We undertook to provide a hot meal once a week to homeless individuals through MESH. We support IHN for over 20 year. We give to the Human Needs Food Pantry, as the bags of food downstairs attest. We did good. But now, as the New Year commences, we find ourselves struggling to garner volunteers to maintain our commitments. There is a box outside to collect members’ names to volunteer for MESH. If everyone put in their name they would be called to volunteer maybe once a year, if that. Our IHN coordinators are ready to hand over the reins after 20 years. Do we really have no one to step up to continue their work?
I believe we need to ask ourselves – are we better this year than last?
For the great majority of those sitting here today we have been spared the grim realities I have briefly sketched. Let’s cultivate a sense of gratitude and generosity of spirit rather than a sense of apathy, anger or stinginess of spirit. Let us avail ourselves of the great potential that being part of a congregation such as Shomrei Emunah affords us – to see more than we have, to learn more than we have, to do more than we have.
The prophet Isaiah’s vision is a demanding one. We should not apologize for that. We should be exhilarated by it. We are a society – nationally and congregationally – blessed with great talent, energy and creativity. Creativity does not emerge out of self-satisfaction or self-protection. It emerges out of curiosity and spiritual hunger, stimulated by aspirations and constraints. We need to ask ourselves about our basic values and commitments. We are called to embrace those values that will create the kinds of aspirations and constraints that will lead us to imaginative, creative insights and actions.
This is the really important question today – are we better than last year? If we truly challenge ourselves with that question – we will be better off.
– May we be inscribed for a better year.
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