Hanukkah at the Roots: Night 4 - Poverty - Rev. Liz Theoharis
The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is the Executive Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She is theologian, pastor, author, and anti-poverty activist and she is a member of The Shalom Center’s Advisory Council.
Poverty in a land of plenty. Abandonment amid abundance. Today, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are making record profits while parents are burying their children because they don’t have healthcare. As winter approaches, unhoused people are scrambling for shelter while millions of unused homes sit vacant across the country. The U.S. economy is valued at nearly $25 trillion and the wealth of the three richest Americans exceeds $300 billion. Meanwhile, nearly half the country is poor or one $400 emergency away from poverty. The moral and cognitive dissonance of this reality boggles the mind. It’s difficult to fathom numbers that are so big and disjointed.
But why does poverty exist? We hear a lot of myths about poverty. Some say it’s unfortunate, but unavoidable (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that we don’t have enough to go around). Others blame the poor for their own suffering. Still others claim that poverty is ordained by God. This twisted theological narrative, so common in Christian tradition, suggests that if God wanted to abolish poverty, God would. During the holiday season, many churches run food and clothing drives. They do this out of the genuine goodness of their hearts. Beneath their goodwill, though, there is often an unspoken, even unconscious, belief that charity is simply the best we can do.
But poverty isn’t inevitable nor is it natural. It’s human-made!
While wage growth has stagnated, CEOs have taken an increasing chunk out of their workers’ paychecks. In 2022, the average CEO made 670 times more than their employees (up 20 times from 1995)! Growing parts of the workforce are automated, non-unionized, low-wage, part-time and/or contracted out, often without benefits like health care, paid sick leave, or retirement plans. Therefore, no one should be surprised to learn that such an increasingly stark division of labor and money is accompanied by an unprecedented $17 trillion in personal debt.
Indeed our society is overcome with debt and death, with poverty a leading cause of death – higher than Alzheimer’s, diabetes, gun violence and more. Over the past few years U.S. life expectancy has begun to drop in a way unseen in modern history. Life is not valued. The debate about those deserving and those undeserving has emerged. We live in a soul-sick society where profit is valued over life.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, even paralyzed, by such a reality. But here’s the strange thing: deep in the depths of such a monumental mess, it’s possible to discover genuine hope. For if all this is human-made, as it absolutely is, then we also have the power to change it. We don’t have a scarcity of resources. We have a scarcity of political will and moral consciousness from our nation’s leaders to lift the heavy load of poverty.
Right up to his last breath, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was deeply concerned about a nation that was approaching the irreversible fate of “spiritual death.” Years of experience, and the guidance of others, had convinced him that the next chapter of the struggle required a mass movement of a breadth and depth not yet awakened. As he came to see it, strategically speaking, the unity of the poor would be the Achilles heel of a society desperately in need of restructuring. If poor people could unite to form a new political alliance across the lines that historically divided them, they would be uniquely positioned to lead a broad and powerful human-rights movement that could promote life over death.
This is one of the messages I’ve always appreciated about Hannukah. In the face of an indifferent and oppressive ruling authority, the Maccabees win the day by transforming their society’s understanding of scarcity and abundance. Indeed, one of the central lessons of this ancient story is that God has gifted us with enough light to not just survive, but to banish the darkness.
The same is true today. If you pay attention, you’ll find that in many of the abandoned corners of this nation, there are poor people hard at work forging this stubborn belief into a powerful movement to end poverty. These are the prophets of our time, blowing the shofar of jubilee and declaring that “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live”. In the future they're building, all work has dignity, all cultures are respected, all families have what they need to thrive. In this world, life will be transformed so that love, truth, and justice will reign the day and all will have the power to let their light shine.
We must heed their call. All justice-loving people are needed to reawaken and enliven the soul of our society!
— Rev. Liz Theoharis
Read/Watch/Listen:
Check out this beautiful video to learn more about the movement to end poverty and the “Spirit of Struggle”
Action Items:
Join the movement by getting involved with your local Poor People’s Campaign chapter or a community organization led by poor and low-income people near you.
Kavannah
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Torah’s early clumsy efforts
To subvert the first-born’s privilege
(More land, more sheep, more money)
Was its first effort
To reduce the wealth of some
While lightening
The poverty of many.
It soon became a cluster
Of more targeted teachings:
Pay the worker
Before the sun goes down;
In the great sabbatical rhythm
Every family gets to return
To its roughly equal ancestral holding.
The small and intimate;
The large, transforming a whole society.
Amos pokes the bitter fun of rage
At luxury;
Isaiah demands that
The Great Fast, Yom Kippur,
Means we must feed the hungry,
House the homeless.
The modern rabbis rule
That in a world of wealth-born power,
Labor unions are a necessary tool for justice.
Mental creativity of planning taxes,
Emotional relations with the poor themselves;
Physical acts to heal the pangs of hunger;
And deep Spirit, sharing Breath
That comes from all to all;
Four Worlds that altogether
Make the One
Must be our answer;
And as a token of commitment,
We light the Candle Four.
Blessings
midrashic translations by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Baruch atah / Brucha aht Yahhh, Blessed are You, Breath of life, Ruach HaOlam, Interbreathing of the world, asher kidshanu b’mitzvot, vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah, Who makes us holy by connecting with the Breath and with each other, at this moment to kindle the light of Hanukkah to see our cousins.
Baruch atah, <Brucha aht> YHWH {Yahh} Eloheinu, Ruach haolam, she-asah nisim — lo v’chayil v’lo v’choach ki im b’ruchech — l’horeinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.
Blessed are You, YHWH [Yahhh] our God, Breath of all life, Who has brought about amazing deeds — not by might and not by power, but by Your Spirit — through our forebears in those days and in ourselves, this very season.
Light shamash / helper candle and Candle 1, 2, 3, & 4 of Hanukkiah.