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Dear Members and Friends,
There is no clearer way for me to describe to you the mission of our synagogue-community than to share with you some of my thoughts and feelings about our recent celebration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
It was a wonderful weekend of joy, incredible music, fellowship, inter-community exchange, purpose and commitment. I am so happy for those of us who experienced this amazing occasion and, make no mistake about it, I’m not going to skip a beat to encourage those of you who missed it to mark your calendars now so that you will be with us next year! I’m especially speaking to those of you with children and grandchildren. Dr. King was assassinated over 40 years ago. Even with a national day of recognition in his honor and a monument on the National Mall in his memory (the only monument there dedicated to a person who was not a President of the United States!), for our children and grandchildren Dr. King is becoming so much dry history and slogans. Our celebration of Dr. King brought us together with people of all ages from Macedonia Baptist Church. Both the synagogue on Friday night and the church on Sunday morning were filled to overflowing and were alive with the spirit and values (and definitely the music!) of the Civil Rights Movement. This is not something that can be learned, it must be experienced. Again, please mark your calendars now and reserve Friday, January 18th and Sunday January 20th, 2013 as a weekend ON and not a weekend OFF. I can assure you that your will have a wonderful weekend of inspiration and hope that will motivate you and our future generations to get involved with the work that Dr. King would be doing were he alive today.
Speaking of which, between now and the next MLK weekend, our two communities are intending to begin programming that will involve all of us in addressing issues of injustice and inequality. High on my agenda are the lack of access to quality food in and around the area of Macedonia Baptist, gang violence and gun violence. Please let me know if you have other suggestions. Together we’ll keep marching toward justice.
Rabbi Neil
© Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels
Febuary 2012
MITZVAH OF THE MONTH
FOOD JUSTICE
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger” (Lev.23:22)
We don’t have fields and gleanings, so how do we respond to this commandment? The rabbis determined for farmers, that their obligation was to leave one-sixtieth of their field to the poor. Here’s how that minimum was determined:
Translated to contemporary terms when most of us are not farmers, this means the 1/60 of every dollar (.0167 cents) we earn is not ours and belongs to those in need. Ultimately, it’s not much and many of take care of most or all of it with some charitable donations every year.
Still, we should keep in mind the beginnings of this mitzvah that had to do with the justice of food. Let’s be sure that a meaningful portion of our sixtieth is directed at providing food for the hungry, whether it is giving away the leftovers we take away from a dinner out, donations to Mazon, the Westside Food Bank, SOVA or other food distribution agencies or directly giving away food. Let’s remember that hunger is an oppression that traps a man, woman or child in the servitude of malnutrition, fatigue, depression and an endless cycle of spending an inordinate amount of time and energy on securing another meal.
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