Bringing Bounty to the Table

This week, our Torah portion focuses on Jacob as he departs on a long journey to gather wealth, find a wife, and build a new life for himself, his family, and his descendants. He migrates to his uncle's household, where he spends years working for Laban, even as his uncle employs trickery, leveraging Jacob's love for Laban's daughter Rachel, to secure additional years of labor from a prized employee.

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Well, apparently there’s a vaccine in the works, one that’s most effective and safe, and that means that for the first time there’s a potential end on the horizon to this particular global nightmare, and the start of a new journey, dealing with the fallout of how COVID has affected our world.

This week’s Torah portion finds Jacob on the brink of his own journey, leaving his family behind as he journeys to Padan-aram in search of a wife so they can create the countless descendants G-d has promised Abraham and Isaac, and promises Jacob anew in this week’s portion.

Even with the news of a vaccine on the horizon, it’ll be months before doses are readily available for the 7 billion people living on our planet today. Not everyone will have access to early doses of the vaccine. It will, and should, be given to those who need it most, first, and then to everyone else. Like most healthcare, wealth and privilege will play a role in how quickly someone can get their hands on a dose of any future COVID vaccine.

So imagine if Jacob were living today, in what will hopefully be the time of COVID last hurrah. What if Jacob was forced to choose between leaving the relative safety of his family’s embrace and journeying to a land he’s never visited before, to live and work with unfamiliar family members, in hopes of building a better life for himself and his descendants?

Jacob and Rachel’s meet cute at the well dominates the first half of this portion, as broken as our world feels right now, maybe a good love story is exactly the right place to start before considering these weighty questions.

Genesis 27

“Jacob resumed his journey and came to the land of the Easterners.

There before his eyes was a well in the open. Three flocks of sheep were lying there beside it, for the flocks were watered from that well. The stone on the mouth of the well was large.

When all the flocks were gathered there, the stone would be rolled from the mouth of the well and the sheep watered; then the stone would be put back in its place on the mouth of the well.

Jacob said to them, “My friends, where are you from?” And they said, “We are from Haran.”

He said to them, “Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?” And they said, “Yes, we do.”

He continued, “Is he well?” They answered, “Yes, he is; and there is his daughter Rachel, coming with the flock.”

He said, “It is still broad daylight, too early to round up the animals; water the flock and take them to pasture.”

But they said, “We cannot, until all the flocks are rounded up; then the stone is rolled off the mouth of the well and we water the sheep.”

While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s flock; for she was a shepherdess.

And when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban, and the flock of his uncle Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of his uncle Laban.

Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and broke into tears.”

In the context of leveraging Jacob’s love for Rachel to secure more labor from a prized employee, the scene almost reads, at least to me, like a classic rom-com, one where Jacob trips over life’s stumbling blocks in laugh out loud style, on his way to marry his one true love.

But as heartwarming as rom-coms are, we have to remember they aren’t real. Jacob and Rachel’s love does face obstacles, like how Jacob’s uncle, Laban, switches Rachel for Leah underneath the marriage canopy, forcing Jacob into another seven years labor before he can marry Rachel.

Jacob, and his labor, are critical to Laban’s success. Laban recognizes this, and, at least to me, the underhanded way Laban leverages Jacob’s love for Rachel to secure additional years of labor mirrors the way modern corporate farms often leverage the migrant worker’s desperate need and commitment to building a new life for themselves and their families.

Migrant workers, often called guest workers, have limited rights in the United States. Many have immigrated illegally, and move regularly as they chase the harvest season across the country. During the COVID pandemic migrant workers, already flying beneath the radar, faced increased hardships from their employers, the US government, and the virus itself.

In September 2020, Tom Jawetz, Vice President for Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about the impact COVID has had, particularly on undocumented immigrants and migrant workers.

He quoted a Center for American Progress survey that suggested over 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today, many of whom work in under the radar, yet extremely essential jobs—including the nearly 400,000 Jawetz estimates are supporting the nation’s fragile food supply, working on farms and at food processing plants across the heartland.

Tom Jawetz testified before Congress, which makes his remarks part of the public record, and his words provide a far clearer, and more intelligent summary of the challenges migrant workers face in the United States due to COVID.

“Undocumented immigrants are performing essential jobs in many different sectors of the workforce. An estimated 389,000 are working as farmworkers and food processors securing the nation’s food supply, even as food processing plants became epicenters of the virus and agricultural areas are right now experiencing some of the nation’s highest concentrations of coronavirus outbreaks.

I hope every member of the subcommittee has seen the photographs of farmworkers—as many as half of whom are undocumented—harvesting crops under a dark, orange-red sky, in evacuation zones with dangerous air quality, using only their cell phones to light the way.

There are also an estimated 225,000 undocumented health care workers serving us and our loved ones as doctors, nurses, and home health aides, as well as an additional 190,000 undocumented individuals working not as health care providers but in necessary custodial and administrative roles to ensure health care settings remain safe and open.

Millions of other undocumented immigrants are keeping grocery shelves stocked, packing warehouses, and cleaning and sanitizing businesses that have stayed open so we can remain home and the country can keep running.”

This week, in the United States, is Thanksgiving, and while the holiday is certainly different this year for many people, one thing still remains—the emphasis on hearty food, and lots of it. What we don’t often consider is where that food comes from, and on whose backs it has been carried to our dinner tables. In a year where COVID has upended supply lines around the globe, and threatening our ability to eat fresh California blueberries in December, we have a greater responsibility to examine and question this system, and our roles in supporting it.

Food doesn’t magically appear on our tables, and if there’s one thing we should all take away from the COVID pandemic, it’s how reliant we all still are on each other. Humans aren’t meant to exist in isolation, we’ve never lived that way and we still don’t today, even if we sometimes pretend to.

This Shabbat, whether you’ve just finished celebrating American Thanksgiving or not, I hope you’ll take a moment to inventory the food on your table, where it comes from, and whose hands have helped shepherd it to your plate.

Shabbat shalom

¹Please note, this is not a true transcript. I usually make editorial changes during the recording process to my written d’var. Sometimes I remember to update the file later, but there are often small discrepancies between the two.