Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Vayikra, the first parasha of the Book of Leviticus. This parasha and most of Leviticus discusses the rituals around sacrifices: the when, what, why, how, and by whom the sacrifices are offered at the Mishkan. 

Looking at my Radical Jewish Calendar, I saw that this Shabbat is the 112th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and that next week is the birth date of Clara Lemlich, a leader in the Uprising of the 20,000 (a strike of shirtwaist workers two years before the fire). I began ruminating on the ways that the rituals of Leviticus may seem archaic, but learning about and reinterpreting them can still offer meaning and guidance to our lives, much like how we sometimes forget what we owe to women like Lemlich and the garment workers that led the way in workers’ rights. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Thank Jewish women for weekends. We take for granted the laws in place that protect us from exploitative labor practices, and we tend to overlook the exploitation still happening in some workplaces. But workers - mostly immigrant women, particularly Jewish immigrant women - literally died for us to work 40 hour work weeks, have bathroom breaks and fire exits, and for children to go to school rather than factory work. 

The listing of types of sacrifices in Parashat Vayikra ends with the meal offering. Rabbi Lindsey Healey-Pollack in this week’s T’ruah d’var Torah calls bread “the staff of life” and calls attention to the fact that even the simple mincha offering requires salting, just as the meat offerings do. She brings in the Chasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bretzlav, who remarks that the salt corresponds to the covenant with God, which “sweetens the bitterness and sorrow of earning a living” (Likutei Mohoran, 23:2). “For Rabbi Nachman, salt adds more than flavor,” Rabbi Healey-Pollack says, “it makes the challenges of life easier to bear. Yes, we need the substance of the sacrifice itself — but even the simplest offering of bread we work so hard to earn merits the addition of flavor.” 

This parasha, and its corresponding commentary, reminds us that even the most humble among us who feast on a diet almost solely of water and flour, still deserve flavor, and are required to add salt in our meal offerings. Helen Todd, a contemporary of Clara Lemlich, coined the phrase “Bread for all, and Roses too!” The phrase was used as one of the main slogans and banners in the textile worker strike in Lawrence, MA the same year as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Similar to the salt in the meal offering, the idea of Bread and Roses is that humans deserve more than mere survival. Helen Todd, in her combined work of women’s suffrage and labor rights, focused particularly on children’s advocacy, and insisted that children deserve to be fed without having to labor for it, and they deserve an education that included arts and music, the beauty of the humanities. They deserve bread and roses, just as we all do. 

So much of what Clara Lemlich and the Jewish mothers of the labor movement fought for has been achieved. But so many are still fighting for their roses. The “Fight for 15” campaign has waged on for over ten years, yet the federal minimum wage remains stagnant at $7.25, our VA state minimum wage is $12, and still cost-of-living continues to climb every year, inflation continues to bloom, and the rich get richer while the poor stay poor. People working 40+ hours a week should be able to afford their bread and roses. Households with dual incomes should be able to support their families without child labor. Clara Lemlich lived until the age of 96 and never stopped advocating for these things. After a lifetime of work for equality in NYC, she moved to CA to be close to her children and grandchildren, and there she continued her advocacy. At the age of 81 she entered the Jewish Home for the Aged in LA, and from within she convinced management to join the grape boycotts and helped the orderlies form their own union. 

Jewish women are so cool, and we best honor the legacy of these sheroes by continuing to advocate for workers’ rights, for freedom from child labor, for fair wages and safe working conditions. May we find Bread for all and Roses too.