|
This evening the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will host its first-ever Food and Justice Passover Seder with Elissa Barrett of Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and Simon Greer of Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ). Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy at the Rabbinical Assembly, and Rabbi Dara Frimmer of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles will officiate at the seder, to be held at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. As participants drink the traditional four cups of grape juice, the seder will bring a Jewish perspective to today’s pressing issues of hunger in America, the exploitation of food workers, and the unsustainable food production methods that are destroying our environment. Participants will discuss our individual and communal responsibilities for ensuring that healthy food, ethically produced, is available to all. This seder was also conceived as a springboard for building relationships between members of the progressive Jewish community and a critical federal agency. The USDA wields enormous influence over how food is produced in the United States and is also responsible for ensuring that Americans in need – including the nearly 40 percent of U.S. children living in low income families – receive help putting food on their tables. With the first cup dedicated to considering ways to end hunger and food insecurity, seder guests will receive poster illustrations of the “Food Desert Seder Plate” created last year in conjunction with a tour PJA conducted of Los Angeles neighborhoods to highlight communities where supermarkets are scarce and where healthy, nutritious food is hard to come by. The question of food workers, and the conditions under which they toil so we may eat, will be the focus of the second seder cup, and has special resonance for Jews coming together at Passover to celebrate our freedom. Just last Wednesday, the EEOC filed two federal lawsuits accusing eight some of the world’s largest and most powerful agricultural producers of what amounts to modern day slavery. The allegations include human trafficking of hundreds of men, confiscating their passports, holding them hostage, saddling them with insurmountable debt and forcing them to harvest fruit, right here, on American soil, while also enduring verbal and physical abuse. While these lawsuits are welcome, we know that our responsibility cannot end here. There are far too many abuses in the food chain – whether that means migrant workers and their families who don’t enjoy basic wage and working condition protections, whether it means contract farmers who can’t afford to stay on land their families have owned for generations, or food processing workers who can’t take a day off to care for a sick child. In one significant effort to address unfair labor practices in the food industry, PJA is currently supporting organizing efforts of Mercado food workers in the San Francisco Bay area who are seeking an end to poverty wages, a dearth of benefits, and substandard working conditions. With a number of USDA staff members, Judith Belasco of Hazon, Josh Viertal of Slow Food, and dozens of other knowledgeable people at the table, there is sure to be a lively discussion of how unsustainable food production and consumption are damaging our water, soil and air – and what to do about it – as those attending the Food and Justice seder drain the third cup of the evening. As guests work their way through the Food and Justice Haggadah created by JFSJ and PJA they will wrestle with the fundamental question: What is our responsibility and role – individually and communally – for repairing our broken food system, ensuring that everyone has access to healthy food, produced without exploiting workers, and without destroying the environment that sustains all life on Earth. |
