30-Dec-2011 - Rabbi Lawrence Troster: Justice Not Triage: The Year of the Protester

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This year Time magazine made The Protester its Person(s) of the Year. Beginning with the Arab Spring, mass protests (sometimes turning into civil war as in Libya and Syria) have spread to Greece, Israel, Spain, the United States, Canada, China and Britain. In each case there were local causes and reasons for the ignition of the protests. But despite the initial causes, there is a common foundation to every one of these protests, a theme that was often overlooked in much of the mainstream media. For example, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has often been characterized as lacking a platform or a list of demands. And while some of this description is true; the instigators of OWS are looking to start a conversation about the state of the country and are not seeking to create a political movement. But OWS has certainly changed the language of the political discourse: job creation and income disparity are now being seriously discussed by some politicians. I believe that the heart of the appeal, the reason that protests have spread across the world, is the desire for justice. Justice is a value that often lies behind law which attempt to express and concretize that value across society. There are two kinds of justice: distributive justice and participatory justice. Distributive justice means kids nfl jerseys the fair distribution of resources in a society. It does not mean that everyone has to have the same amount of wealth; it only says that the distribution should be fair. Participatory justice is about the fair distribution of power that allows all citizens a measure control in governance and societal decision making. In the environment movement, both of these ideas of justice are found in environmental justice defined as: The equitable distribution of environmental risks and benefits; fair and meaningful participation in environmental decision-making; recognition of community ways of life, local knowledge, and cultural difference; and the capability of communities and individuals to function and flourish in society. (David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. ) Participatory justice is a distinctly modern idea as in many traditional ethical systems the assumption is that a just ruler will enact equity for the good of the people and in accordance with the will of God. This can be seen in the Bible in the famous prophecy of Isaiah 11 where a descendant of David will be someone who will: Thus he [the king] shall judge the poor with equity and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down the ruthless with the rod of his mouth and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Justice shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness of his waist (Isaiah 11:4-5). In the modern world, participatory justice demands that the political system enfranchise the entire population and that there be a system of checks and balances to prevent corruption and the concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy and the few. Distributive justice, however, is well established in most religious traditions. In Judaism, it is based on the ideas that all human being are created in the image of God. As such, we must see all people as having equal value and dignity. This ideal will only be fully realized in the Messianic Age and it is also inevitable that power and wealth imbalances will occur in human societies as we have the free will to do evil, not only good. The solution to these balances is found in Judaism in the concept of tzedek, usually translated as righteousness. This concept, which is so important in the Hebrew Bible and later in Rabbinic Judaism, may be seen as the practical attempt to return things to a better balance in which power is somewhat restored to those who have been denied it by the imbalances that human activity inevitably produces. In the Hebrew Bible, tzedek has a core meaning of "equity." There are many laws in the Torah which attempt on a day-to-day basis to bring about some measure of tzedek into every area of life. In Leviticus 19, for example there are laws directed to protecting the poor, workers and the powerless. There are also regulations meant to insure an honest justice system and a fair economy. There are also other examples of laws in the Torah which attempt to redress the power and economic imbalances in human society such as the laws of the Sabbatical year (Exodus 23:11, Leviticus 25:2-5, Deuteronomy 15:1-4) and the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-24). In fact, as Bible scholar Jeffery Tigay has pointed out, there is a whole program in the Torah for "preserving a balanced redistribution of resources across society" [Jeffrey H. Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, Jewish Publication Society, 1996, p. 145.] (See for example: Exodus 22:24-26, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:20-1, 24:6, 10-13, 17). According to the late biblical scholar Moshe Greenberg, the laws of the Torah try to preclude custom nhl jerseys the concentration of any kind of power in human society since this is a challenge to God's power. It is possible, he asserted, that in the books of the prophets, one can see how these laws were actually lived out. The prophets were the advocates of this ancient value which often came into conflict with those in power. Rabbinic Judaism encoded this idea of tzedek in its concept of tzedakah which is usually improperly translated as "charity." Moses Maimonides, the great medieval philosopher and rabbinic legal authority, encoded the obligation to give tzedakah into eight levels of helping out the poor. The lowest levels are those where the poor person receives help but he/she is still in a subordinate power position to the giver. Emotionally, the giver, by his/her attitude, often does not see the poor as being equal and has no real desire to correct the economic and power imbalances -- they only have a sense of obligation to tradition. The higher levels of tzedakah increase the dignity and equality of the poor. The highest level is where the donor gives the poor a gift or loan, or enters into a partnership or finds them work so that they will no longer need to beg from other people or from the public poor fund. Thus the greatest form of tzedakah/tzedek has the greatest redress of the societal imbalance of justice. There is an almost complete equalization of power between the donor and the poor. The poor, in fact, cease to be poor. In every case, the street protests have at their base the anger over injustice in the economy and in the political system. When the wealthy and the powerful control all the resources, and do not share power with the majority of a country's citizens, they are in effect jettisoning them from society. This is what theologian Richard L. Rubenstein has called the triaging of excess populations. In his book "The Age of Triage," (Boston: Beacon Press: 1983) Rubenstein has written that the modern age should be characterized as "a revolution of rationality" which has produced prosperity but at the price of creating large numbers of superfluous population. Governments and states have utilized three main strategies for eliminating excess population: incarceration, expulsion and extermination. Triage, however, is not only to be found in direct conflict. It can also come from the exploitation and neglect of the weak by the powerful. Globalization of the world economy has rendered many workers superfluous through technological change and through the increasingly transnational character of large corporations. This corporate triage is what lies behind the arrogance of the 1 percent in their treatment of the 99 percent. The result of this triage is societal unrest, instability and an inevitable increase in violence, poverty, disease cheap nba jerseys and war. The protestors demand justice and not triage. Tzedek means working towards the equitable distribution of resources and sustainable development. Continuing with triage means the continual "cutting" out of populations by war, famine or disease, so that those remaining can still survive at a level of existence that is not sustainable. Triage is a return to social Darwinism where the strongest survive and the weak perish. As a Jew, my tradition says that a world of triage is a world where the earth is cursed and peace is impossible. It is not surprising that many religious communities have supported the street protests as they often have had a special role like the ancient prophets in challenging the accepted economic and social orders. We should heed the call of the Torah: tzedek, tzedek tirdof: Justice/Equity, Justice/Equity you are to pursue in order that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you! (Deuteronomy 16:20).

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