Immigration Justice, Labor Organizing, And Changing Our Perspectives

Hello and welcome to Contact Chai. Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on August 30th when Rabbi Lizzi drashed on the power of perspective to change our lives and the world. But first, we were joined by Mishkanite Aliza Becker who shared moving words about the fight for immigration justice, and Ethan Aronson of Arise Chicago who spoke about labor organizing for Labor In The Pulpit.

Registration is open for High Holidays at Mishkan! Whether you attend in-person or via our affordable, state-of-the-art livestream, you can count on Mishkan’s High Holiday services to strengthen and inspire you as we face a new year of challenges and opportunities. Tickets go fast, so save your seat today!

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mishkanchicago/1790206

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Hello and welcome to contact Kei. Today's episode is a Shabbat replay of our service on August 30 when Rabbi Lizzi draws on the power of perspective to change our lives and the world. But first, we were joined by mishkanite Aliza Becker, who shared moving words about the fight for immigration justice, and Ethan Aronson of arise Chicago, who spoke about labor organizing or labor in the pulpit. Registration is open for high holidays at Mishkan, whether you attend in person or via our affordable state of the art live stream, you can count on Mishkan high holiday services to strengthen and inspire you as we face a new year of challenges and opportunities. Tickets go fast, so save your seat today. There's a link in the show notes, and now take it away. Aliza,

today, my sermon is dedicated to Mexican immigrants, but the thoughts I'm asking people to reflect on are meant for everyone else. You might ask why I've chosen to focus on Mexicans and not on Latin American immigrants in general.

It's because Mexicans are the single largest immigrant group in US history.

They've been in the country more than most of our families,

and they've occupied a unique, often misunderstood and deeply undervalued role in our society.

They share similarities with some recent Latin American immigrants, but their story is distinct. At a recent no kings rally, I saw a sign that stopped me in my tracks. It read, while I'm caring for your loved ones, you want to deport mine.

It felt like a gut punch, a cry of agony.

I tried to imagine what it might be like to spend long days caring for someone else's children, where your children were left unprotected. I wondered, why did she believe her employer wanted to deport her family? Was something said that was anti immigrant, or was it the silence, the indifference, the absence of concern that led her to believe they simply didn't care?

Of course, some employers do care. Years ago, I received a call from a woman who employed a Mexican housekeeper. She described her as hard working, trustworthy, kind, and not your typical illegal she wanted to help this good woman get a green card and was willing to pay whatever it took.

But our legal department had to break the news there was no legal path, no line, no process. Her housekeeper may have been every bit as exceptional as 1000s of other Mexican immigrants who wash dishes, clean homes and care for children with extraordinary dedication, but the immigration system was not built to reward that.

And since 1996 The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, better known as IRA, Ira has created steep, generally insurmountable barriers for undocumented immigrants, especially for those who cross the border without a visa and have been in the US more than one year.

Yes, someone who is undocumented can apply for a green card, often through a US citizen, spouse or child. But here's the trap. To complete the process, they must leave the country and attend an interview at a US consulate abroad, and the moment they leave, they're barred from returning for 10 years if they've been in the US more than a year. Yes, it is 10 years. It's possible to apply for a waiver, but it requires proving that a US, citizen or legal resident, spouse or parent would suffer, quote, extreme hardship, unquote, without them, this incredibly high legal bar is very difficult to get approved. And here's the cruel twist, overstays who entered with a legal visa can often get their green cards without leaving if they're married to a US citizen. Well, those who cross the border illegally usually have to leave and then face the 10 year bar

what Ira Ira doesn't over.

We've targeted racial group, its impact is disproportionately and those who live geographically closer and more likely to have crossed the border without inspection, namely Mexicans. There's no real way for most Mexicans to become legal. They can't stay and get a green green card, and they can't leave without risking long time separation from their families.

It's not that they haven't tried to get in line. It's for them. There is no line that doesn't require exile. This legal catch 22 has kept millions in limbo, unable to move forward and reluctant to leave family and community.

Around 80% of the undocumented have lived here for more than 10 years. 20% have been here for 25 years or more.

The last broad legalization program in 1986

applied to people who have been here since 1982

more than 40 years ago,

the draconian immigration enforcement we see today didn't start with Trump, while his administration has clearly abused and weaponized the law. The laws themselves have been on the books for decades.

What has changed is how harshly they're enforced.

Immigration Law has always been enforced based on the political winds, winds that often blow in the direction of scapegoating immigrants while also protecting access to cheap, exploitable labor for key economic sectors.

Let's be honest. This country was built on immigrant and enslaved labor. After emancipation, entire industries, especially industrial agriculture, relied on immigrants of color to fill the most physically demanding, lowest paid jobs

after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

US employers increasingly recruited Mexican workers to replace them on railroads and in agriculture, but when it became politically expedient, they were expelled. When labor was needed again, they were brought back, but not treated as equals, even when they held US citizenship

during the Great Depression, as many as 2 million people of Mexican ancestry were expelled or pressured to leave.

Many perhaps 60% were US citizens.

In Chicago, the Mexican population fell sharply by about 40%

then in 1954 the Eisenhower administration launched Operation Wetback, a mass deportation campaign rooted in the fear that uncontrolled borders might allow communists to ill infiltrate. Hundreds of 1000s of Mexicans were swept up in raids,

but many of those same workers returned days later with temporary labor permanence. Agribusiness still needed them. It was a revolving door. We deport them to make a political point, then let them back in to pick the crops.

The message has been consistent. You are useful, but you do not belong. Your presence is conditional. You are perpetually a foreigner. These ideas, these stereotypes about Mexicans, have not only persisted, but have been projected onto other Latin American immigrants. So today, as we celebrate workers from the Bema, I ask, how do we as Jews command it 36 times in the Torah to love the stranger because we were once strangers in the land of Egypt? How do we honor Mexican immigrant workers? How do we acknowledge their enormous contributions to this country, contributions that have nourished and sustained us for over a century. They have planted and harvested our food, built our roads, cleaned our homes, cared for our children, cooked our meals, washed our dishes and that done so with persistence, strength and pride, and yet the system that places them in these roles is designed to keep them in low paid, physically demanding jobs. It does not treat them as fully human.

Mexicans have been part of this country since 1848

when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the US Mexico war and transferred over half of Mexicans territory to the United States after the Treaty shifted the border, most Mexican residents of the ceded land remained and became US citizens.

They've been here longer than most Jews, and yet we are taught to perceive them as outsiders, whose role is to serve us, whose family ties are.

Ignored who can be deported when politically convenient,

these ideas seep into our own consciousness, quietly, subtly, and reside there until something forces us to confront, front them.

For me, that moment came in the 1990s

I was hired to manage an immigration education program with 70 teachers and five site coordinators, most of them Mexican, I earned significantly more than all of them, and it justified it by thinking, Well, I have more responsibility and well, Mexicans don't need as much to live on as I do. It

was painful to admit that I had these thoughts.

I also believe that if I hired a Mexican to clean my house or fix something, I'd get a good deal. I never stopped to ask, is it fair to pay someone less just because I can?

I still wrestle with these assumptions.

When I asked a Mexican friend what I should say in this sermon, he said, tell them that the American people have made millions off of our hard work.

At that same no kings rally, I saw another sign, you love our culture, but you don't like us.

It brought me back to the late 1960s when my parents went on a vacation to Mexico and brought back beautiful bark paintings embroidered dressers

and stunning black pottery from Oaxaca. I proudly wore my white Mayan dress to school, never once thinking about who made it.

Inspired by their trip, my parents would drive our family from Glencoe to Pilsen to enjoy authentic Mexican food before it was so ubiquitous,

we admired the murals and storefronts from our car, but the only people we actually interacted with were our servers. We knew nothing of the lives of the people we saw through our car windows. As

an adult, that changed. I built friendships with Mexican and other Latin American immigrants, and I noticed that at their gatherings, people didn't ask, what do you do for work, as is often typical in Jewish spaces. Instead, we connected through stories, music, food, sports, family and humor. What was most valued was your ability to be present. Those friendships were transformative.

So today, in this Labor Day weekend, I celebrate Mexican immigrants, not just as workers, but as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors and community members, and invite us to all to reflect on these questions. What

would it mean to pay Mexican workers a truly fair wage? Should there be a premium for hard labor that does long term damage to the body?

What would a truly Family Centered immigration system look like?

What would it take to build friendships with Mexican people, not only across race but class and most importantly,

how have you personally absorbed anti Mexican racism, and what can you do to unlearn it?

May we have the courage to face these questions honestly and face this journey of life together with our Mexican compatriots? Thank you

Shabbos, everyone.

My name is Ethan. I'm a

be mitzvah tutor at Mishkan and also the faith community organizer at arise Chicago, which organizes immigrant workers in partnership with faith communities to uplift all workers and speaking today as part of labor in the Bema, we're in 50 or 60 congregations across Chicago this weekend talking about labor issues. I just want to share workers are under attack right now. The current presidential administration is attacking institutions like OSHA and the National Labor Relations Board, which protect workers, they're laying off federal workers and curtailing their ability to organize, and they're, of course, relentlessly persecuting immigrant workers, as Eliza was talking about.

But something I think that unites religious communities and the labor movement is that in both communities, we believe in the power of a better world. We believe in the possibility of a better world. And it's sometimes those moments when we're most under attack, when that ability for a different world emerges and we can cultivate it. And I think that's something that I see in the labor movement every day. I just want to share a few stories and also about how folks can get involved. So six years ago, Uber and Lyft drivers, it seemed like they were impossible to organize. How could you organize as a driver if you never even interacted with any of your other workers? You only interacted with an app. Six years later, 10.

10s of 1000s of rideshare drivers across Chicago have organized with SEIU Local One, and they've just won an agreement with Uber that will raise the working conditions of 10s and 1000s of rideshare drivers across Illinois. Want to tell you about workers at Mauser packaging solutions in Little Village. This is a, yeah, a factory in Little Village where folks were experiencing

extreme heat in the work, workplace that was so intense that their aprons were melting into their uniforms. It's a place where they didn't have, they could, basically couldn't take a lunch break. There were two microwaves for 150 workers, and they've been organizing. And the kind of scariest thing about this contract is the company has a history of calling ice on workers who are organizing to better their conditions. So they said, you know, we've had enough. We're going on strike. They've been on strike for two and a half months now. In Little Village, they're at the picket line every day, barbecuing, singing, praying. So if anyone in this community wants to come down to the picket line, pretty much any of the day, I'll leave my contact information. Bring some food, bring some music. Come sing with the workers at Mauser packaging, you'd all be very much welcome.

And, yeah, I just want to share as part of my my role. I've been organizing workers in their religious community

and around their their who are organizing their own churches, and we were having a meeting before the May Day March this past year, and and workers were saying, You know what, we're scared. We're scared to go out on May Day. We're scared to fight for our rights.

And one of our workers said, Yeah, we're scared. You know, there's a possibility that ice will come at this big gathering. And one of our workers says, Yes, we're scared. Apologize, I'm about to use the J word Jesus,

but they were said, you know, yes, we're scared. And Jesus was scared when he was on his way to the crucifixion, and we have to get up and fight anyway. And that was a moment where I kind of was inspired and moved by the bravery and the possibility and the resilience that can come, especially for folks who are grounded in their faith to keep on fighting. And indeed, 10s of 1000s of Mexican workers and other immigrant workers and all workers showed up on May Day, and 10s of 1000s will be showing up this Monday on a Labor Day March at 11am leaving from the Haymarket Memorial downtown, I have some flyers that I can maybe give out after services, so would would hope to see you there. And my blessing for us is that this Shabbat we take in this moment of rest and we also remember that it's been generations of workers who have fought for our ability to have an eight hour work day and a 40 hour work week that lets us take this kind of rest and Shabbat and we rededicate ourselves to fighting alongside workers for a world where everyone can live in dignity, good Shabbos and a Freilich arbiter Happy Labor Day.

Thank you.

Thank you Ethan, and thank you Eliza. This is it's, it's such a it's such a pleasure to, you know, bring the stuff that's like everybody has their their life outside of shul, and it's so rich. And to connect it, connect the dots to Judaism, to the moment on the calendar, and to the world that we're in that is so in need of this kind of connecting, you know. So thank you and thank you

all right. So before we before we close, I just wanted to give us a little bit of a little of pre high holiday spiritual prep that, you know, sort of from our Torah reading from our from the reading that we did earlier.

So I would say, I don't know. We'll spend just a little bit of time studying Torah, and then we'll wrap our service

so and now we're going to turn from, I would say, matters political, to matters that are personal, which is also political, but like, let's, let's go into, let's go into ourselves for a minute. I have a friend about whom we say, like she sees through rose colored glasses. You know anybody like that who's just she's always finding the silver lining. You know people who right? I

have another friend who is often quite negative, and so about her, we say like she tends to see through crap colored glasses, yeah.

But we, you know, this is something I feel like we all know, like we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. You've heard that before, right?

That's right, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, so yes, objective reality is out there, and also so much of the way that we move through the world has to do not with what is out there, but what's in here, right, how we're experiencing what's out there

and right, that has to do with our traumas, our triumphs, what we've seen work, what we haven't seen work. So I mentioned the example of, like, the, you know, the salt thing falling on the ground and spreading salt everywhere, and glass everywhere, right? And I was thinking right in that moment, there are a lot of different internal stories that one could tell, right? One is,

I always spill things.

I'm so clumsy. I probably broke my hand. I should go to the hospital. I always do this. Okay, anybody you know, no, right, that sort of familiar reaction. Okay. Another might be, who left this here? Who left this salt thing on this table where they knew I was gonna cook food? Who did this? It's their fault, right? Know, anybody like that just quick to blame

anybody in this room. Maybe function that way. Another version might be like,

who manufactured this glass salt thing? I should sue them. This could cut someone. This Could Hurt people. Let's form a class action lawsuit and get those

Okay, right? Another story might just be like, Oh, I should be more careful next time. Right, right? And all of this is just like the weather inside.

I was thinking, right? Like moving from that's personal, but like on the political level, you know, I think what Ethan was saying a moment ago so important. If the story that workers told themselves was just like it just has to be like this, we will suffer. That's what working is, right? Imagine the Israelites in Egypt, right?

It just or workers in America for a very long time. This is just what working is. This is what the conditions are. They're terrible. We're exploited, we're oppressed, we suffer. They don't pay us enough. We can't feed our families. But what are we supposed to there's nothing to do about it.

You know, this week, sadly, right? Again, I think there are some people whose response to, God forbid, a school shooting,

we offer our thoughts and prayers. You know, what could be done as if there is not a policy solution to most of what ails you know, people in our country, climate change, any of the main issue, you know, major issues that we think like we are facing that,

you know, what are we supposed to there's nothing to be done. Well, if there's nothing to be done, let's just go home. Don't come to high holidays. Don't come to high holidays. Walk right out of here. Now, the whole point of what we're doing here in this room and every every spiritual tradition is to help us harness that which we can change about ourselves and about the world to make it better, but we have to start with ourselves. So that's that is the high holiday season we're in, and I wanted to just allow us to learn from

this is my you're laughing because I'm constantly referencing this book, but So Rabbi Alan Liu here wrote this book. This is real and you are completely unprepared, right? He's talking about the high holiday season. This, this high holiday season and the holidays themselves. Rosh Hashanah, you won't be poor. This is real, but you're not ready. You're completely unprepared. So what he does is, he helps, you know, prepare the reader. Then he takes us through parsha by parsha this month, leading into the High Holidays,

reading the Torah, readings that you know what we just read, reading it through the spiritual lens of the holiday season and seeing like, what can we learn from this that will help us do the inner transformation, the inner transformation we need for ourselves, that will help us be part of the larger transformation that will help change the world around us? So I wanted to just give you a little, a little nugget of what he says about what we read earlier. You know the priest who says to the people about to go into battle, right? Does that? Did anybody dedicate a house but hasn't yet lived in it? Go home lest you die and somebody else move into your house? Has anybody else you know maybe gotten gotten engaged but hasn't been married yet? Go Home lest you die and somebody else have to marry your partner, right? One, and then finally, is anybody just scared? You should go home too, because that fear is contagious, you know? And and so there's, I mean, we spent a little bit of time in the minion the other day talking about, like, what's going on here? So we anybody who wants to talk to our.

Rabbi, you know, any any minion you know Monday through Friday is a great time to do it, but I'm just going to give you a little bit of what Rabbi Lew says here. Understanding this passage,

he says,

the idea of all of this seems to be that if we leave something incomplete, we fall into a state that the rabbi's call a torn mind, trafe or trafida, a mind pulled in various directions. And a person in such a state of mind would be of little use to an army. He'd be unable to focus on the task at hand, and even might present a danger to his fellow soldiers.

And he says,

when we're focused, we are at our best, and we see this very clearly around death, this phrase, lest he die, lest he die, it's repeated a few times.

He says, In my work as a hospice chaplain, I've often witnessed the irresistible urge people have to tie up loose ends as death approaches, to leave their checkbook balanced, to make funeral arrangements, to finally confess something that's been on their conscience, to make reconciliation with a loved one or friend,

and God help anyone who stands in their way of trying to settle this unfinished business, in my experience, this is The single most common source of family conflict around death, the person who is dying asks his family to help him balance his checkbook or purchase a plot in the seminary cemetery, but the members of his family still alive, still healthy, very much caught up in the full time occupation of denying death. Don't want to listen. What are you talking about? They tell him you're not going to die, a response that provokes unbearable frustration and alienation in the dying who desperately need

to do these things. When this need is ignored, they feel even more that they are facing death alone.

But like everything else about death, this urge is only an intensification of what happens throughout life. Death is merely a time when what is usually unconscious and invisible becomes conscious and visible. So while we are conducting the spiritual inventory during Elul, we might ask ourselves, what are the loose ends in my life? How is my mind torn. Where are the places my mind keeps wanting to go? What's the unfinished business of my life? What have I left undone? When we look out at the world through a torn mind, the experience of our world is also torn.

See the connection sort of from Yeah, OK.

So in some cases, we might just decide it's time to let go, to recognize that we are distracted by something that will never be completed. And in some cases, we might decide that the only cure is, in fact, completion, and that there's nothing for it but to tie up that loose end, no way to keep our energy and focus from constantly draining away from the present tense reality of our actual experience, except to finish that which remains unfinished.

So that's sort of the overall frame here. And so he says, What's the pain that's pressing on your heart right at this moment?

Perhaps that is where you need to make teshuva, that turning and focusing of this season,

you need to make Teshuva about your fractured mind and fearful heart. What is occluding the deep connection between you and your fellow human beings that's also right there on your heart and needs to be looked at one of the things that, one of the things that most impedes this connection is our fear of one another's pain,

right? That, that line that says your fellow, if he's afraid, he might sort of infect the rest of the army with that fear, the idea that, like, our feelings are contagious, you know? And so he says, deep down, we know that we all share one heart.

We all share one heart, but what we are usually not aware of is how much we feel other people's pain and how much energy we waste trying to defend ourselves against feeling the pain of others.

And so he says,

I wonder how many people am I angry at? You know, I just sort of push it down. Don't think about it. But if I really let myself think about how many people am I actually angry at? How many people do I harbor ungenerous feelings toward, simply because I'm privy to their suffering and I'm scared of it,

and so I need to keep it at bay with anger and blame and criticism. He

says,

Fear, suffering, all of this. If we can simply be with these feelings, rather than trying to fix them or hide them,

then we will.

Actually feel them. And he says it is almost always a beautiful experience, rich for whatever it may for whatever effect it may have. And it's quite clear that there's nothing to fear from someone else's suffering when it flows directly to my heart, suffering is suffering, and it is a feeling that only wants release from the imprisonment of the self, from the loneliness of feeling that suffering alone and so feeling the suffering of another is a spiritual impulse that often ennobles even if it is painful, like any feeling that carries with it its own considerable burden in its beauty. And he says that's true of fear, that's true of anger, that's true of any feeling that spreads heart to heart until it has filled the world. And so it's also true of love, and it's also true of compassion.

So he says, even if we're not going off to war, quite literally, these ancient laws are still incredibly useful during this month, as we stand and watch the gate of our soul, how information is coming out, coming in, and relieving our body and we turn our attention from what is outside to what is inside,

what's our finished, unfinished business, what unnecessary complexity is making us, tearing our focus away, making us trai daat, right,

and what shadow of fear or anger, what imagined impotence is keeping us from a deep emotional and spiritual connection to the people around us? Is the world really torn and dark, or does it just appear that way because we are taking it in through a torn mind, mind and hardened heart.

So Shoftim, the SHO dream judges you shall put it all your gates, the gates of your eyes, ears, senses, touch. He says, This is how Teshuva begins in simply perceiving for the first time, how we take in the world, what is the story we're telling on the inside, and keeping a mindful gaze,

and being unafraid to feel whatever may come up,

and sit with it and then know that that connection that actually connects us, that connects us deeply, as scary as it might Be to feel the depth of that suffering, pain, fear, anger, rage, but if we are going to transform the world, we actually have to begin with the story we're telling ourselves. So

my blessing to all of us is we don't squander this opportunity to do exactly that as unknown as the territory might be

that we're stepping into as we step into this world that really feels like the suffering is out there, and we know that it is, but rather than holding it away, actually allowing it to come in and transform us so that we might be part of healing, not just the out there, but also the suffering that we feel. Shabbat replay is a production of Mishkan Chicago. Our theme music was composed and performed by Kalman Strauss. You can always see where and when our next service will be on our calendar. There's a link in the show notes, and if you appreciated the program, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. I know you've heard it before, but it really does help on behalf of Team Mishkan, thank you for listening. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai