Around 15 years ago or so, a JCC decided to buy a slave for Passover.
When I say they decided to buy a slave, I mean that they tried to buy a slave's freedom from slave traders. As unimaginable as it sounds, human beings are still owned, bought, and sold today throughout the world, including right here in the United States. In a recent book published by Princeton University Press entitled Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption, the authors estimated that over 25 million human beings are living in some form of slavery today, ranging from children who are stolen and forced into armed conflicts, to trafficking of girls and women, to just pure sales of children by their parents into bonded servitude in some of the world's poorest and least governed areas. If you expand the definition of what constitutes a "slave" more broadly, the number rises to nearly 200 million.
The question at the JCC came about when their teen social action group decided - in honor of Passover - to redeem a slave. Through overt, yet semi- public channels, freedom for some people can actually be obtained for a price. For many of the enslavers, human freedom boils down to a simple business transaction; for enough money, you can buy anything. And so these teens, with the words of the Haggadah searing in their minds, decided that it was not enough to simply sit at their Seder table and retell the story of our enslavement; they wanted to make the story of the exodus real for someone today. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, the Haggadah implored them. They heard those words clearly.
There are many schools of thought - echoed by our own State Department at the time - that says that such actions are counter-productive... that purchasing enslaved people from their captors only encourages them to enslave more. And yet the intrinsic value of each individual human life is so precious that the Talmud teaches us that by saving but a single life, you save a world entire. How do we reconcile the two? But what if - by helping one person - you inadvertently cause more harm to another?
Clearly this is a complex issue, and in truth, I don't remember if the redemption ever really took place. But I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during these discussions. If a JCC environment can bring about a level of engagement among our youth on a subject this serious - with a real plan for social justice attached to it - then we're doing our jobs well. Judaism - as practiced in our JCCs, synagogues, schools and particularly in our homes - must not be a passive activity. And as we retell the story of enslavement and exodus at our Seder tables tonight, we must also rededicate ourselves to the basic Jewish concept of Tikun Olum - of repairing the world - so that the stories of old bring real meaning into a still-troubled world. That's what this group of young people tried to do at their JCC.
Wishing you a wonderful Passover filled with discourse, sweetness, tradition and love.
Arnie Preminger
President & CEO of the Friedberg JCC and Sunrise Day Camp
