Bondage, Freedom, and #TomatoRabbis

The Jewish narrative begins with the story of slavery and liberation. Every year, we sit at our seder tables and proclaim, “We were slaves. . . and now we are free.” We see ourselves as part of the story of the past—but it doesn’t end there. The communal trauma of slavery becomes a commitment to justice and action. As we tell our children our history, we quote Exodus and say: “It is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt.”  (Exodus 13:8) But what is “It”? This includes our actions in the present day. Our deep consciousness both of the pain of bondage and the blessing of freedom must inspire Jews to combat slavery in the modern world.

Part of this consciousness is understanding that modern-day slavery is not a remote problem perpetuated by someone else. Slavery is a symptom of bigger social problems like poverty, migration, and the low status of women and girls. If we do not address these root causes, big as they are, we may help individual people out of slavery, but we cannot actually prevent it. Slavery is the extreme end of a continuum of exploitation for the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Closer to home, one of the messages that many of us often hear is that there is slavery in the supply chains of the products that we buy every day: cotton, chocolate, produce. This can be paralyzing when we go to the mall or the grocery store. None of us want to purchase something that originates in an extreme human rights violation. But the solution cannot be simply to buy a different product. When we talk about labor trafficking, we must keep the focus on the worker who is enslaved rather than the product we consume.

As a rabbi, I know that it is not my tomato or banana that is created in the image of God—it is the person who picked that product. Fighting for food justice means ensuring the human rights and wages of workers, and doing so in a way that places the needs, dignity, and expertise of the workers at the head of the table. This last piece is crucial: no one can tell us how best to solve human rights abuses in supply chains, including modern slavery, more than the workers who have the most at stake.

This framing—worker-led human rights solutions—is at the heart of The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights’ (T’ruah) campaign to end modern-day slavery. We are honored to serve as the Jewish ally of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based worker-rights organization that has transformed the Florida tomato industry from “ground zero” for human trafficking in America to no cases of human trafficking in the past three years. Their work has been singled out by the White House as “one of the most successful and innovative programs” to actually prevent human trafficking. This is remarkable given the significant number of trafficking cases in agriculture in the U.S.

Many of us may be familiar with the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food, in which major corporations are persuaded to pay one penny more per pound for Florida tomatoes (which goes directly to farmworkers) and only buy from growers who have committed to a binding human rights code of conduct in the fields (which includes a zero-tolerance policy for forced labor). To date, 13 corporations—including Walmart, McDonald’s, and Whole Foods—have signed on.

But many of us are not aware of the dramatic changes that have been happening among Florida farmworkers since late 2010, when the CIW’s Fair Food Program began to be implemented in more than 90% of Florida’s tomato fields. Today, for Florida tomato workers, a new world of k’vod habriot (human dignity) is being built, as human rights are written into the very fabric of an industry once known for punishing conditions. It is an unparalleled, worker-led system of accountability, transparency, and enforcement.

T’ruah has made our work with the CIW the heart of our antitrafficking commitment, because we believe it is important to do more than raise awareness about human trafficking. We must raise up the leadership of those most affected by forced labor and support their efforts to create new futures for themselves. Since 2011, T’ruah has taken more than 50 rabbis to Immokalee to learn from the CIW. The stories they hear—and the transformation they see—inspire them to go home and turn their congregations into more than just educated consumers. They become activists: they write letters to corporations urging them to join the Fair Food Program, stage protests, take Hebrew school students to meet with managers, write op-eds, and deliver sermons. Our #TomatoRabbis have become part of the larger movement of Fair Food activists, urging corporations to live up to their professed values and join the new day dawning in the Florida tomato industry that is the only proven slavery-prevention program in the U.S.

In March 2013, a few weeks before Passover, I participated in CIW’s March for Fair Food with my older daughter Liora. Early one morning, as dawn broke and we sat on a bus bearing a banner “No more slavery in the fields,” she asked me to practice the Four Questions, which she would recite at the seder very soon. Listening to her chant in Hebrew mah nishtanah ha layla hazeh, why is this night different from all other nights, I understood the power of the commitment we make as Jews each year.

We cannot tell the story of slavery without committing to action in the present day. And we are blessed to know that today real solutions are possible.

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is Director of Programs for T’ruah and coordinates the #TomatoRabbis partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. T’ruah represents more than 1800 rabbis who use their moral voices to act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people.