No bread

When I was a kid, one of the regular activities we did with my synagogue was to go gleaning. We would arrive at a farm for the explicit purpose of harvesting the corners of the field and delivering the food to soup kitchens, shelters and food pantries. At the time I knew it was a mitzvah, which I understood to mean a good deed. But I didn’t realize it was literally d’oraita, a written commandment in the Torah. 

We read in this week’s parsha, Emor (Lev 23:22), 

“Now when you harvest the harvest of your land,
you are not to finish-off the edge of your field when you harvest it,
the full-gleaning of your harvest you are not to glean;
for the afflicted and for the sojourner you are to leave them,
I am YHWH your God!” 

The Torah goes on to describe three different categories of gleanings to ensure that everyone who needs it has access to food, known in Hebrew as peah, leket, and shichecha. Peah refers to leaving the corners of the field unharvested.  Leket refers to the food that falls to the ground during the harvest, which you shouldn’t go back to regather. And shichecha refers to fruit and vegetables that were left behind during the initial harvest, which you shouldn't return to pick. Between the corners, the dropped food and the forgotten harvest, there should be plenty in the fields for those who are landless, poor and hungry to sustain themselves. This is the entire thrust of Torah’s agricultural laws. That in a just society, everyone should have access to food. 

Some years ago, before I was a rabbi at Kol Tzedek, I was running an independent Hebrew school. For Sukkot, I brought the entire school to a farm and had them stand around a field of raspberries. Raspberries are both a spring and a fall crop in New England, so they were plump and ready for picking. I had everyone link arms to surround the circumference of the field. And then they released their grip and I asked them to identify the corner of the field which would be left for the community to glean. How many rows of raspberries would they leave for those who needed them? In other words, how big was the peah? 

The rabbis realized that the instruction to leave the corner of the field is actually not enough information. How do we know where the corner ends? How much of the field is reserved as the corner? Which is why the concept of peah appears at the top of the list of things in the mishnah (Peah 1:1) that have no measure, which is rabbinic idiom for “we can’t do enough of them.” It was the rabbis' way of saying, be as generous as you can with what you have. Do everything you can to feed everyone in your community. Harvest only what you need, and redistribute the rest. 

And this sentiment persists through rabbinic and medieval teachings. We learn in the Shulchan Arukh, “If there is a hungry person, one must feed them” (Yoreh Deah 250:1)

Yes, we work for systematic change, but first we must ensure that every person has access to food. And all the more so, if we are meant to proactively feed people, then we certainly should not be preventing people from getting access to food. In times of war, we are not even supposed to cut down a fruit tree. Nevermind blocking aid and food altogether. 

Which is why it is unbearable to imagine the famine in Gaza, to know that the only Jewish state is starving the people of Gaza. For the past 18 months I have been donating to soup kitchens in Gaza, reading stories of desperate children now dying of hunger. This is an abomination. This goes against everything Torah teaches. This goes against everything I know about Jewish and Palestinian hospitality, a disgrace to the legacies of Abraham and Sarah. To imagine that there will be shabbes tables in Israel with two loaves of bread tonight, but not even a truckload of flour can enter Gaza, I can’t stomach it. 

None of us should be able to stomach it. 

I know from our recent community survey, that as a community we have some consensus. We oppose the forced starvation, displacement and expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza. Given this clarity, I encourage you to join the urgent and growing movement to demand the food be allowed into gaza.

Please take a moment to sign here. https://www.foodaidforgaza.org/
And then take a moment to text or email 5 people in your life. 
Thank you for joining me in working to get food to the people of Gaza. 

I leave you with the words of two poets. 

First the Pulitzer Prize winning words of the Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha excerpted from his poem, Under the Rubble:

He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
No bread.
Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids.
No need for a table, no need for bread.
…
And the prayer of Martin Espada, 

So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.

May it be so.