When One Suffers Poverty, We All Suffer
Submitted by Sarah H. Reines on March 10, 2008 – 8:36 amNo Comment
We must not remain immobilized in the face of the crushing poverty crisis.
Poverty — an issue looming before us. Its vast proportions and obfuscated complexities leave us feeling helpless, unable to make any meaningful difference. But we must not remain immobilized in the face of this crushing crisis. We have the tendency to give up in the face of enormous challenge, both in our personal lives and as a society; we find ourselves seduced into a treacherous inertia, turning away from the challenges which demand change most. But God impels us from paralysis, pressing us to action, urging, “The task I set before you this day is not too overwhelming for you. It is not beyond reach. It is not in the heavens or beyond the sea. No, it is very close to you. You can do it.” (Deut 30:11–14)
When we think of poverty our minds often turn to images of struggling, faraway countries that many Americans have never visited. But when Hurricane Katrina ravaged our own shores it washed away any pretense we had about the truth of our extraordinarily privileged nation. We watched familiar landmarks sink under rising waters as fellow citizens, impoverished long before the waters hit, climbed to rooftops, crying out for help. For too many, that help never came. Did we see this poverty before? Did we understand its enormity? The tremendous winds and crushing waves did not distinguish between economic classes, but the poor — lacking transportation and resources — proved to be the most vulnerable to their force. These were our people, and yet many of us knew little about their plight before a disaster impossible to ignore struck.
Poverty is not beyond the sea. It is not beyond reach. Poverty lives close to us. We encounter poor people every day. We walk with them in the streets, ride with them in the subways. They are our own neighbors, living a few miles from us, some a few blocks. Too many make their home on the sidewalks outside our apartment buildings and even on the steps of our houses of faith. We see them every day, but we know little about their daily struggle. In an interview on public radio, one woman gives us a window into her life and the lives of others like her: “I know the desperation of looking for a job with an eviction notice in my bag. I stole toilet paper from public restrooms, not because I’m a thief by nature, but because food stamps don’t buy toilet paper.”
But when we see these people, do we truly recognize them, or have they faded into the landscape of our lives? And what is the extent of their anonymity? Citizens of this nation were appalled to see corpses left stranded for days, even weeks, on the streets of New Orleans. But we have our own anonymous dead in our cities, hundreds of thousands of bodies interred in potter’s fields, cemeteries for the poor. In New York City, prison inmates bury on average 1,500 bodies each year in mass unmarked graves. Who are these children, these women and men? They all carry the same three names: John Doe, Jane Doe, Baby Doe. Who mourns for them?
Yes, the poor are right here, close to us in physical proximity, but far across an enormous economic chasm that divides financially stable citizens from those who struggle to survive. And the chasm is widening. The United States now has the largest income disparity between rich and poor of any nation in the industrialized world. Salaries in higher-paying positions continually increase with the cost of living and beyond. Meanwhile, the minimum wage of five dollars and fifteen cents an hour remained stagnant for nine years until the Fair Minimum Wage Act raised it to $5.85 in July, 2007. Even this amount is a lot more than the one or two dollars that impoverished Africans and Asians live on each day. But it’s less than most of us spend on a taxi ride or a couple of cups of Starbucks’ coffee.
Alarmingly, the numbers of working poor continue to grow. These are the majority of guests who visit the feeding programs in our cities’ synagogues and churches; they eat their meals and then go to their jobs. How can it be that in America a person can work full time and still live in poverty? I bought a bottle of spring water from a cashier at the grocery store in my neighborhood. As she rang up my two-dollar bottle of water, I looked at her and wondered to myself, could she be one of the statistics? Could she be one of the thousands of single mothers in our country working full-time and earning less than $11,000 a year?
This reality may seem far away from our own, but the Talmud reminds us that poverty is a wheel revolving in the world. (Talmud: Sabbath, 151b ) Today, perhaps, we study it from a distance, but it may visit us sometime in the future. Some of us of have known poverty ourselves; others have heard the stories of our parents or our grandparents who lived it. Certainly, the more money one has, the easier it is to create safety nets for times of crisis. But we never know when a sudden illness, a lost job, a poor decision will change our fortune. And so our sages warn, “Always pray to be spared poverty, for if you are not reduced to it, your child or grandchild may be.” (Talmud: Sabbath, 151b )
We perform our most sacred work when we reach out to one another. The Torah contains only four verses concerning the observance of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and no fewer than 100 concerning our responsibilities to the poor and disenfranchised. Every Yom Kippur we read Isaiah’s exhortations reminding us what God wants of us: “Unlock the shackles of injustice, share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked cover them! Do not separate yourselves from your flesh!” (Isa 58:6–7)
We are one body. When one suffers from poverty, we all suffer. We share a collective present and we will share a collective future. Poverty is a matter of concern for us all, for reasons of compassion but also for our own welfare and the welfare of our children. We need to restore this country to health. We need to transform this country into a nation where everyone has the opportunity to learn and achieve, where everyone has the opportunity to work, to receive medical care, to live in safe housing — a nation where everyone has the opportunity to follow God’s insistence in Deuteronomy that we choose life.
Our ancestors believed in the possibility of transformation — transformation of the individual and, through the individual, the transformation of society. We must not retreat from the task that lies before us. We cannot allow ourselves to become inured to the horrors of poverty. We cannot shrug it off as a problem for politicians to handle or for the poor themselves to manage. It is not someone else’s tragedy: it is everyone’s tragedy. It is ours.
We must find the courage and fortitude to take small steps toward real change. Sometimes our actions seem insignificant, even foolish, in the face of a massive crisis. But what feels like a small act can make a large difference in the life of another person. Judaism teaches that every good act tips the balance toward healing our world. Of course we must consistently contribute to charity, but we must also force ourselves to do what is harder and confront poverty head on. Not just with our checkbook and in the voting booth, but on the streets and in our congregations, one person at a time. We must not only feed the bodies of those who are hungry; we must also nourish their souls. By engaging with one another we build bridges of understanding and restore dignity and hope. In order to overcome the economic chasm that separates us we must first narrow the chasm dividing us from each other’s lives.
Hurricanes and tidal waves are forces of nature, acting beyond our control; the best we can do is to be prepared when they hit. But poverty is not beyond our control. We may never completely obliterate it from our world, but we can diminish it. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us in his classic God in Search of Man, “Religion’s task is to cultivate sensitivity to other people’s suffering. God has a stake in the life of every human being. God never exposes humanity to a challenge without giving humanity the power to face the challenge.”
God has a stake in the life of every human being and so do we. God gives us the power to face this challenge. Yes, poverty lies closer than we think, but so does the path to a solution. And God is urging us: “This task which I set before you this day is not too overwhelming for you. Do it!”
God has a stake in the life of every human being and so do we. God gives us the power to face this challenge. Yes, poverty lies closer than we think, but so does the path to a solution. And God is urging us: “This task which I set before you this day is not too overwhelming for you. Do it!”
