Jews and Economic Justice

I was at the greasy spoon around the corner from the college. The coffee was nearly as old as I am, though in better shape; it was so strong, my spoon stood erect in it. A drunk sat next to me. “Wass your motto?” he slurred. “My motto? I don't have a motto.” “You gots to have motto. Evrb'dy has a motto.” I fobbed him off with: “Don't accost people in greasy spoons.” He smiled, and as he rolled off his stool onto the grimy floor, he muttered, “Thas' a good one. Don' accos...”

This set me to thinking. If it's true what the drunk had said, that everyone needs a motto, is there a motto for the Jewish people? How to decide? Hold a contest? What's the universal quality that has characterized the Jewish people and how can it be phrased succinctly? Then I remembered a conversation I'd had at a wedding table and it came to me. “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” It's from Deuteronomy, a quintessential Jewish book; but do we abide by it?

At that wedding I was seated next to an executive of a company that manufactures hobby items. He informed that while corporate was in South Carolina the actual product was made in China. I frowned. “I see you don’t like that.” “I don’t” I replied and discussed economics and social justice for the rest of the evening. “Unions forced us to do it,” he explained. I smelled a rat. “Let me guess,” I rejoindered, as you are in South Carolina there never were any union affiliated workers from whom you took away manufacturing jobs.” He admitted the truth of that but then came back with “labor in America is too expensive.” I came back with “Labor in China is being ruthlessly exploited by the most capitalistic communists never envisioned by Karl Marx!” He said that profits were shared with employees. I asked if the Chinese workers who actually made his products were receiving their shares, and he said, “No, they are not our employees, we contract that work out.” “What do the workers who used to manufacture your products do now?” I asked, “The ones whose jobs you sent overseas.” “They work in the service industry,” he said. “America is becoming a service economy, not a manufacturing one.” “Were they stock brokers, physicians, dentists, teachers?” He glowered and said “No, the service they perform is as security guards, telemarketers, that sort of thing.” “And do you think they get as much satisfaction doing that as they would if they were actually making something, participating in the manufacturing process?” He reminded me that I was a pie-in-the-sky academic while he worked in the real world where the bottom line was all that mattered. I reminded him that his former employees also lived in the real world, hand to mouth, where the bottom line matters even more, and so do the workers in China. I only wish I knew then what I know now, about tainted dog food, lead paint in Barbie dolls, bite-sized magnets attached to toys, all products of cheap unregulated labor in China.

If labor is being exploited it used to be the Jewish response that this is an abomination and Jews rallied in defense of the oppressed. And now? A few months ago I wrote about the Conservative movement's Jewish Law and Standards committee on which only three rabbis out of twenty-five had voted that workers employed by Jews should get a living wage. Rabbis against a living wage? Is this what Moses meant when he wrote “Justice, justice, thou shall pursue”? I’m thinking maybe not. So maybe this isn't such a good motto. But then I remembered that in another column I quoted a Reconstructionist rabbi, who in a Passover reflection had written: “If we only pour ten drops of wine from our cups and do nothing more, we do not understand the significance of our act. Our joy cannot be complete when there is harshness, cruelty, or suffering in the world. We cannot wait for others to tackle the injustices of our time.”
The aphorism is that if you save one person’s life it’s as though you’ve saved the whole world. Is the converse true? If you ignore one man’s economic injustice is it as though you’ve cheated the whole world? “Justice, justice, you shall pursue”—a motto or a pious irrelevance? Are Jews more concerned with holding the moral high ground or with maintaining the bottom line?