Bring the Homeless Poor
Into Your House
Yom Kippur 5768
September 22, 2007 – 10 Tishrei 5768

by Rabbi Jared Saks

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Before I begin, I want to share a quick story with you. A day and a half ago, I had what could only be described as a rabbi’s nightmare. As I collected my notes for my sermon and prepared to sit down and begin typing, I heard from within my computer a sound that could only be described as ‘slicing potatoes on a metal cutting board’ … whoosh-crunch, whoosh-crunch, whoosh-crunch. I called tech support at Apple and after the technician listened through the phone to the sound my computer was making, she said, “You need to get to an Apple store immediately.” My hard drive had completely failed. When I spoke with my Dad later that night, he asked how I was handling the situation, given the stress of writing my sermon. I then reminded him of the topic of my sermon. Both Rabbi Glaser and I are speaking about homelessness this morning in advance of the shelter that will exist here at Temple Israel in partnership with Families Moving Forward. I reminded my father that I have a bed, enough food to eat, and a roof over my head. It was only a computer.

Every Monday night the conference level of Hebrew Union College in New York City, my seminary, transforms into a soup kitchen like no other. A dozen or so tables are arranged with tablecloths, centerpieces, menu cards and place settings. Volunteers begin preparing food for guests at three o’clock in the afternoon and at seven o’clock, the doors open and the guests enter. They are greeted by students and volunteers whose only role is to greet them and welcome them for dinner. They are seated at the well-decorated tables and their food is brought to them. There is no buffet line. When seconds are desired, the guests ask for seconds and there’s always enough food. Volunteers with coffee, trays of cookies and bananas walk the room, offering the guests a little extra food with their meals. A former guest sits at a grand piano and plays jazz or classical music throughout dinner. While the guests dine, volunteers sit with them and talk about their day, their week, or whatever might be on their minds. As the guests finish eating, they stop by the clothing closet where they can “shop” for pants, winter coats, gloves, or whatever they might need, at no cost. A seamstress is on hand to repair the clothing they have that might need mending, and law students from NYU offer legal advice at no cost. This is the scene every Monday night at HUC, during Passover, during final exams, or even when Kol Nidre has fallen on a Monday night.

However, immediately following September 11, 2001, things changed at the HUC Soup Kitchen. As was the case everywhere in America, there were concerns about security and safety. The administration at HUC informed the students, those studying to be the rabbis, cantors and educators of the Reform Movement, that those people posed a security risk. Those people might put us in danger. Those people were no longer welcome in our building, the seminary and professional school of the Reform Movement. It was my second year in rabbinical school, fresh back from Israel, and I was already deeply committed to the soup kitchen and the Jewish values with which it operated: kavod and tzedek, honor and justice.
The student body of HUC took action. First, we made serving the guests a priority, even when the school’s decision forced us to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hand them to our guests outside the building, even as the autumn rain began to fall and the weather drew colder. Then, we tried dialogue with the administration. What if we hired security guards, out of the soup kitchen’s operating budget? What if we required each guest to show a photo ID? What if we had a coat check and prevented guests from bringing their coats and bags into the dining area? No, no and no, we heard. Those people are not welcome in our building. We understood that we needed increased security, that we needed to ensure the safety and well-being of the students, faculty, administration and staff at HUC, but we also knew that the homeless are human beings who, just like us, are created in the image of God. And if anything, they needed more support and attention following the tragedies of 9/11 than ever before.
And so, we dressed in white, hung placards with the prophetic texts of our tradition, the voices that have influenced the Reform Movement since its inception:
“Devote yourself to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow,”

“Unlock the shackles of injustice … share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house.”

We held silent protests throughout the weekday services and hung across the back of the chapel a banner that read:

THIS SCHOOL IS BIASED AGAINST THE HOMELESS

Eventually, we reached a compromise with the administration. With added security measures, our guests were once again welcome in our building. And so, every Monday night, HUC operates a soup kitchen like no other, guided by the texts of our tradition that teach us how we ought to treat the poor, hopefully bringing us one step closer to God.

I could cite countless texts for you about how we ought to treat the poor, according to Jewish values. In Pirkei Avot, the rabbis teach us, “Who is worthy of honor? One who treats other human beings with honor.” Psalm 41 includes the verse, “Happy is the one who is thoughtful of the poor,” and Proverbs tells us that “To do what is right and just is more desired by God than sacrifices.” In Exodus Rabbah we learn that if all the afflictions of the world were assembled on one side of a scale and poverty on the other, poverty would outweigh them all.

And, of course, there is this morning’s Haftarah reading. How closely were you listening? In the ancient world, public fasts were called as acts of repentance and prayer when some kind of calamity needed to be addressed. Today, perhaps, that calamity is homelessness. And as we know from our experience today, fasting is not so easy. It demands something of us. But Isaiah teaches us that there is more than one way to fast, and while not eating is required of us today, so too are the other fasts that God asks of us today. Isaiah teaches us that our fast today must also consist of turning our attention, our will, and our dedication toward liberating all who suffer from oppression and degradation.

Isaiah asks us, on God’s behalf, “Is this the fast I have chosen? A day of self-affliction? Bowing your head like a reed, and covering yourself with sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Eternal? Is not this the fast I have chosen: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to loosen the ropes of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to tear every yoke apart? Surely it is to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, never withdrawing yourself from your own kin.”

These actions are intended to make us notice one another and to notice those we don’t ordinarily see. The text does not say: give food to the hungry and provide housing for the homeless. No, it directs us, share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our house. And though our translation tells us never to withdraw from our kin, the Hebrew actually reads u-mib’sarcha lo titalam, do not hide yourself from your own flesh. We are all flesh and blood. If we hide from the suffering of any person, we are hiding from ourselves. This demands that our reaction be the exact opposite of our natural tendencies when confronting poverty and homelessness – how many times have you taken a few steps away from someone begging for change? We all have.

The rabbis of old were not afraid to tell it like it was. According to one midrash, Joshua ben Levi, a late-second century rabbi, went to Rome to watch the goings on in the big city. There he saw marble pillars, which had been carefully covered with wrappings to keep them from cracking during the freezing cold. And then he saw a poor man who had no more than a reed mat underneath him and a reed mat over him as his only protection from the cold. Even though this incident took place nearly two millennia ago, it is not so far off from our world today. How often do we give respect, honor and value to possessions, property and material goods while we ignore real human lives?

All too often, we ignore the real needs around us. And all too often, we are unaware of those needs. How many homeless youth are in school with you, your children, or a child you know each day? More than you would think. During the 2000 Democratic National Convention, former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley told a story of his friend and colleague, Senator Paul Wellstone. According to the story, Senator Wellstone knew a fourth-grade teacher here in Minnesota who one day walked into a classroom and asked the children, “How many of you had a big breakfast today?” Ten of the kids raised their hands. He then asked, “How many of you had any breakfast today?” Six more kids raised their hands. “What about you other four,” he inquired. Silence. Finally, one little girl reluctantly raised her hand and said, “It wasn’t my turn to eat today.”

There are those who say that Senator Wellstone never knew such a teacher and that this situation never really happened. So what if it is just an urban legend? The truth is that there are children who go to school hungry every day not because they didn’t want to eat breakfast, but because it wasn’t their turn. According to the Wilder Research Center, which conducts a survey on homelessness every three years, there are between 550 and 650 unaccompanied homeless youth, children seventeen years old and younger, on Minnesota’s streets every night, between 550 and 650 every night! There happen to be about that many people in this room right now. I’d like to ask the first four rows right in front of me to stand up.
[Wait for them to stand.]

Look around the room. And look at these fifty or so people standing in front of me. There are as many unaccompanied homeless youth in Minnesota as there are people in this room. And there are as many beds designated for homeless youth as the number of people standing before me: fifty beds for over six hundred youth. All of these beds are at the end of our block, at the Bridge for Runaway Youth. So, are there 550 or so unaccompanied homeless youth on Minnesota’s streets, then, every night? Not exactly. A lot of them make decisions that they swore they’d never make. They compromise their morals in order to get a shelter over their heads. They share beds with adults just to have a bed. They take or sell drugs just to avoid an empty stomach. These are our children. The first four rows can now sit down.
[Wait for them to sit.]
Now, I need a volunteer.
[Choose an adult volunteer from the congregation.] Please join me on the bimah.
The minimum wage in the state of Minnesota is $6.15 per hour. So, let’s say you’re a single adult working a full-time minimum wage job as well as a second, part-time minimum wage job in the Twin Cities Metro Area. That means, you work 60 hours a week, four weeks a month at $6.15 an hour. This month, you’ve earned $1,476.
[Hand the volunteer monopoly money totaling $1,476.]
In June, the Jobs Now Coalition, based in St. Paul, completed their study titled “The Cost of Living in Minnesota” and determined the budget for seven types of working poor families. The budgets they devised were no-frills budgets. No vacations, no saving for emergencies or fun, no eating out. We’re going to do a little experiment to see if you can make ends meet in the Twin Cities working two jobs at minimum wage.

So, right off the bat, I need $408 back from you. Taxes, sorry. Okay that leaves you with $1,068 to meet your monthly expenses. Where do you want to start?
[Offer the volunteer the five cards: Food ($217), Housing ($705), Health Care ($134), Transportation ($421), Clothing and Other Necessities ($176). One by one, take the money back as the volunteer deems each one the next most important expense. There isn’t enough money to make ends meet. Without paying for transportation, there’s no way to get to work and this will result in unemployment. But let the volunteer choose which things are the most important.]
You’ve run out of money. Now, if you didn’t have to pay rent, you would have had an extra $120 this month, so maybe a shelter might have been a good option for you. But what if you had children? What if you had one or two more mouths to feed, child care to pay, and additional health care expenses? It would be impossible to make ends meet. Thanks for your help.

[Have the volunteer return to his/her seat.]
And yet, so many people try to do this every day in Minnesota. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich catalogs her experiences as a low-wage income worker in three states – Florida, Maine and Minnesota. Hers is just an experiment, two weeks at a time in each location, but even two weeks of trying to work two jobs, seven days a week, wears on her. “I am wondering,” she writes, “what the two-job way of life would do to a person after a few months with zero days off … If you hump away at menial jobs 360-plus days a year, does some kind of repetitive stress injury of the spirit set in” (Nickel and Dimed, p. 106)? How many of us have been overworked for a bit and wished for another day-off, or consider the ever-desired vacation after a vacation, you know, just to unwind. Barbara Ehrenreich describes the sentiments of one of her co-workers in Maine who expresses, “What I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then … if I had to … and still be able to buy groceries the next day” (Nickel and Dimed, p. 119).

The fastest growing category of homeless people consists of families with children. Today, families make up about 36 percent of the people who become homeless. The typical homeless family consists of a young unmarried mother with two or three small children. Many of these women are victims of domestic abuse fleeing an abusive spouse. Current federal housing programs do little to accommodate such families, forcing them to rely more heavily on overwhelmed community social service programs, like the overflow shelter that we will be starting here at Temple Israel, in partnership with Families Moving Forward, this winter. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Before I tell you what we’re going to do about homelessness in our community, let me tell you why we need to do it.
If I were to ask what the word tzedakah means, many of you would say charity. But the word tzedakah comes from the root tzadi-dalet-koof, the same root as the word tzedek, which means justice. Tzedakah is not charity. We have never been commanded to give tzedakah. The laws of tzedakah originate in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where we are instructed regarding the harvesting of our fields. We are told that when we reap the harvest, we are forbidden from picking up every piece of produce. We are required to leave behind some of what we grow for ourselves for those who are less fortunate. We are told to leave the corners of our field for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

In the Mishnah, the rabbis tell us that the poor are permitted to exercise eminent domain to gain access to what is theirs. They may walk through our fields to get to the harvest that the Biblical text says is theirs to begin with. We see that tzedakah, as an act of justice, doing what is right, is never given. It’s the poor’s right to take. None of us really own what we have. In the Biblical context, God owns the land and so what the land produces, we owe to God. What does that mean for us today, when the majority of us don’t produce our own food? Over which of our possessions should the poor have the right to exercise eminent domain today? Everything we own belongs to God. We have a mortgage and God designates the poor as the recipient of our mortgage payment. Tzedakah is the rent we pay for living in God’s creation. It should also be noted that the poor are required to contribute to the communal tzedakah funds, even if one’s entire income is supported by the community. Tzedakah is not an act of charity by the affluent toward the needy; it is the fulfillment of a moral obligation. Our tradition teaches us that we owe thanks to those who need help from us because we can acquire merit with God by helping them.

So now that you know that tzedakah is not optional, and some of our texts even say that providing housing is a means of fulfilling the commandment of tzedakah, let me tell you about the opportunity that you will have here at Temple Israel. I imagine you’ve already heard, as I mentioned earlier, that Temple Israel is partnering with Families Moving Forward, a consortium of forty churches – we will be the first synagogue – to house a shelter within our walls in January for two weeks. We will have four or five families staying with us for two weeks. They will use our religious school classrooms as their bedrooms and we hope that our children will ask questions. “What’s that?” they’ll ask, and we’ll explain the inflatable mattresses, the personal belongings of people who need a little help while putting their lives back together. And when they ask why they are staying here, at Temple Israel, we will know that it is because we are Jewish. Because our tradition demands that we welcome the homeless poor in our home, into our Temple. Our guests will come for dinner, participate in evening programming that we will create, stay the night, have breakfast, and return to Families Moving Forward’s Day Center where they will be able to clean up, look for jobs and permanent housing, and get their kids off to school.

We are not going to solve the problem of homelessness by running a shelter for two weeks, but sometimes a Band-Aid is necessary. Sometimes, you have to find a temporary solution while you work on creating a permanent, lasting one. And we will be doing that, too, working towards finding a permanent, lasting solution for homelessness. Both the Minneapolis City Council and the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution titled “Heading Home Hennepin.” It is a ten-year plan to end homelessness in Hennepin County. As Jews, our tradition demands that we be part of that process. Under the leadership of our Social Action Committee, we will be part of the solution. As Rabbi Tarfon teaches us, we are not required to complete the task, but we are not permitted to abstain from participation in it, either.

On each of your seats you found a white card. Please volunteer to help at the Temple Israel Shelter January 20th through February 2nd. Get on board to do the work of advocacy. Take the card with you and send it back to Temple on Monday or complete it before you leave today and drop it in the box in the lobby. Social Action Committee members and TIPTYites will be distributing sheets with additional information as you leave the building so that you can see the numerous ways you can become involved. Give your time, give your money, give of yourself.
Coming into direct relation with others in our broader community, not hiding ourselves from our own flesh and blood, is what Isaiah teaches God wants of us, today especially. God asks us today, as part of our fast, to open our hearts and our wallets, to give in a way that meets the needs of others. We don’t do it because it puts our conscience at ease or because it makes us feel good. We don’t do it so that tomorrow we can go back to our lives as unchanged individuals.

All too often, we decide that something else is more important, that whatever it is that keeps tugging at us can wait until later. This is not the time to put off until tomorrow the work of ending homelessness. Join me this year in fulfilling God’s request. Let us unlock the shackles of injustice, let the oppressed go free. Let us share our bread with the hungry and welcome the homeless poor into our house.
Gemar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed in the Book of Life and may you have a meaningful fast. Shanah tovah.