Freeing Our Time

Every day, I receive at least one Email from a clergyperson or lay leader whose synagogue, church, or mosque is in serious financial trouble —- because the congregants are hurting. Some have lost jobs, others are frightened. Some are working harder and longer to “protect”” their jobs, and have no time left over for community or God.

It’s not “just” anecdotes, of course; the national numbers bear this out, and the anecdotes put flesh and blood upon the numbers. The official unemployment rate is now over 10% — the worst since before World War II.

If you include those would-be workers who have been turned down for jobs so often that they have given up looking, the unemployment rate in the USA is over 17%.

One family of every four has suffered a job loss in the last year. These losses damage everything — nutritious food, adequate health care, pursuing an education, even religious life — as thousands of synagogues, churches, and mosques are finding when their congregants’ contributions of money and time dry up. And the job losses continue.

I have been using the official word for this — unemployment. But that sounds like somemebody stubbing their toe on the way to the job and ending up, by accident, “un”employed. In actuality, someone’s decisions destroyed those jobs. DISemployment is a more honest word.

But official Washington (including President Obama) and official Big Business don’t care.

They are operating according to a bitterly sarcastic teaching by the poet Carl Sandburg:

Stocks are property, yes.
Bonds are property, yes.
Jobs are property?
No, nix, nah, nah.   Read more »

By Aura Ahuvia

[Auvia is a rabbinical student in the ALEPH smikha program. This project was part of a course on Eco-Judaism taught by Rabbi Arthur Waskow.]

My goal for this project is to teach that allowing the earth to rest on Shabbat is a crucial Jewish value. The reasons for this are twofold;

fFrst, we need down time to rest and rejuvenate. Shabbat observance within this context becomes a teaching in trust—trust that the earth will provide for our needs—air, food, shelter—even as we cease laboring to draw these needs from it.   Read more »

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In the biblical traditions of the people Israel, there seem to be two strands of thought regarding shabbat—rest from work—in the sense not only of the seventh, day, but also of social repose and renewal in the seventh month and the seventh year. One of these strands sees shabbat as a reflection and expression of cosmic rhythms of time embedded in creation. The other sees shabbat as an affirmation of human freedom, justice, and equality. The biblical tradition regards these strands not as contradictory but as intertwined; indeed, the second is probably a midrash on the first, which arose in a period of Israelite history when social conflict between the rich and poor was intense and the desire to see shabbat as an affirmation of social justice was strong.   Read more »

Dear readers and members of The Shalom Center,

Many many of us agree that the threat of climate disaster is the most important danger facing the human race and the web of life upon our planet. Many of us have noticed that in the great and archetypal story of the Exodus, Pharaoh’s arrogance does as much damage to the earth itself – “the Plagues” — as to his own society.

But many of us feel blown away by other crises that seem more urgent: —

The world-wide economic collapse and our own loss of jobs and savings; worsening bloodshed between Israel and its neighbors; the danger of a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan; the AIDS epidemic in Africa and elsewhere; failures in health care and education in the US; crises over immigration; rising rates of gun violence; denial of full human rights to gays and lesbians ….   Read more »

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Hard-headed Bankers or Masters of Disaster?
Sacred Economics — Is it Silly?
Hard-headed Economics — Is it Breaking our Heads?

If you listen to the hard-headed people who presumably keep us prosperous, Biblical and Quranic economics are, of course, quaint and unrealistic. They’re based on romantic ideas about benefiting the poor, the landless, the outcast. Good for motivating open-hearted charity; bad for making hard-headed decisions necessary to run a successful economy.

Right. Which is why the hard-headed folks have created a crazy economic yo-yo skidding on the edge of massive disaster, in which the worst-hit will of course not be the Wall Street / Washington power-houses but the rest of us.   Read more »

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

[This essay is a chapter in Rabbi Waskow’s book Godwrestling — Round 2 (Jewish Lights, 1996). The book is available as a free gift from The Shalom Center, personally inscribed by Rabbi Waskow as you choose, if you use the Donate Now button on the right to make a tax-deductible contribution of $180 or more.

[At the end of this essay you will find citations on teachings from the Hebrew Bible & related materials toward a Jubilee Economics and Ecologics.]::

One lesson that we have discerned from studying the story of the Flood [see a previous chapter from Godwrestling — Round 2] is that it is profoundly necessary for us to affirm and celebrate the cycles of life if we wish to preserve the cycles of life. Are those cycles now in danger? And if so, how can we affirm them?   Read more »

9/28/2004

Increasing workplace demands are threatening families, communities and health, and America's political leaders need to seriously address this critical issue. That's the message from a coalition that is launching the "Time is a Family Value" campaign, urging candidates in the 2004 Presidential election and all other candidates for public office to put their family values policies where their mouths are. Organizers say polling research shows that the issue of overwork and time-strapped families has rocketed to the top of the agenda for critical swing voters.   Read more »

BRING BACK THE EIGHT HOUR DAY
by Charlie King

Say you work at a white collar job
You're paid at a fixed monthly rate
But you come in for meetings a half hour early
You're working a full hour late
Then you sit for an hour in traffic
With the rest of the overtime drones
There's a latchkey kid you must chase off to bed
For you eat a cold supper alone   Read more »