Seniors, people with disabilities, home care workers and activists singing and risking arrest this week in Albany.

Dear friends,

Something beautiful took place this week in Albany. Seniors and disabled people joined their home care workers to occupy the capital demanding a living wage for home care workers. Most of us have had a chance to see home care workers in action. It’s a hard job, demanding constant compassion to go along with the expertise and physical strength required. It’s a job that you choose out of some movement in your heart. In New York especially, it’s a job that you don’t often choose out of rational reasons, since many of the workers get paid just over $13 an hour, less than working at a fast-food restaurant.

Yesterday, Sadie, whose Bat Mitzvah is coming up told me she sees her Torah portion as a story of renewal after a disaster. She likened it to coming out of the pandemic and shared with me what she thought we were supposed to have learned from these last two years, lessons about time and what to do with it. When I asked her whether she thought we actually learned lessons as a society she smiled sadly. “Not really.”

Half an hour later I turned on the radio to hear that despite bi-partisan votes in big majorities in both houses of congress in favor, Governor Hochul refused to add the Fair Pay for Homecare Act to the annual budget. Instead of the 150% pay raise needed, she gave them $2 extra per hour. I immediately thought of the nursing homes ravaged with Covid, the seniors and disabled folks who spent months alone in their homes, the shame I felt at the surfacing of our society’s utter failure to follow the biblical dictate: והדרת פני זקן, Ve-Hadarta Peney Zaken, or “Bring honor to the face of the elderly.” Instead of “hadar”, this Hebrew word that implies a shining beauty, the glory that we are instructed to recognize in our beautiful, wise and loving elders, we too often tuck them away to suffer in the dark.

Locally, we are in a crisis with regards to home care. Currently at least 17% of people in NY state who can’t function on their own simply can’t find someone to hire to help them. Lots of those that do, have help only part of the time they need it. The current situation forces people who don’t need to be in a nursing home to make that move, or others to live without basic hygiene practices. This is just one of hundreds of posts that express the absurd situation people are living in.

With all of this, I still find great inspiration and hope in what happened this week. These people in tremendous need, as well as underpaid essential workers broke through the mold of despair and complacency and worked for their own and others’ liberation. With the support of activists from JFREJ (Jews for Racial and Economic Justice) and other organizations they made a major change in public understanding of this issue. Two years ago, this was not on any politician’s radar. Now there are the buds of real results, which – thanks to the work of God they did this week - I have no doubt will mature into a tenable situation soon.

Redemption, this sweet state of mind of peace, lack of worry, and happiness, is a process. It appears in glimpses. The whale appears on the surface. We see it and know it’s there, and know it will come again. If we concentrate, wait, and go to the right place we will see it again. In that moment when she breaches and our hearts leap, we know all is right in the world, all is right with our soul, all is right with God. That is the moment we witnessed this week in Albany. Those who are in dire need came out to teach us how to ask for help. They sang, they spoke to people, they made beautiful noise; They let God’s words speak through them: “I have heard the cry of my people.”

This is Passover. That our friends, families and neighbors are cared for. That those who work hard do not slave away but get compensated fairly and feel our gratitude. That every one of us retains their dignity from birth to death. What else could redemption possibly mean?

At Hebrew School this week, six-year-old Anna asked an amazing question. “What happened to the Egyptian families whose sons were killed in the tenth plague? What was it like for them after the Hebrews left?” “Why didn’t God just transport the Jews to Israel instead of making the Egyptians suffer,” 9-year-old Elias chimed in. They were answered decisively by 10-year-old Pearl: “God can’t do everything for us. God needs us to learn how to liberate ourselves.”

That answer, perhaps, is what redemption might mean.

My sister-in-law, Audrey Sasson, the ED of JFREJ was up in Albany all week. She had this to say a couple days ago:

“I couldn't be prouder to be a Jew for Racial & Economic Justice. Like Sylvia, Jenny, & Sara, (three of the senior and disabled protestors) I'm in this to build the world of our most liberated dreams. We won't stop organizing til everyone has the freedom to thrive.”

We have redemptive work to do. We have redemptive patience to find as we go. And we have moments of redemption along the way. Hallelujah.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Patience, Dignity and Redemption