Rabbi Jamie’s Corner
January 2025
We’re happy to share these thoughts on current events or holiday themes from Rabbi Jamie Hyams (our Development Director). Feel free to reach out to Jamie directly at jamie@hflasf.org if you would like to talk about any of the ideas discussed here.
“Justice, justice you shall pursue…”
“Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof…”
Deuteronomy 16:20
On Monday, January 20, we as a country commemorate the life of slain civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. Coincidentally, we will inaugurate the incoming president and make the transition to a new administration on the same day. It is a good time for self-reflection on the values we hold and the kind of country we want to be.
MLK Day is a national holiday. But unlike Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving, which have religious underpinnings, national holidays like Memorial Day or Independence Day ask us to consider the values of the society in which we live, work, and raise our children. Personally, I’ve always equated the MLK holiday with the creation of a just and fair society.
But what is justice? What does it mean to create a fair and just society? Dictionary.com has 11 different definitions of justice, so clearly, it is hard to pin down exactly what justice means.
In Hebrew, the word tzedek is used to express justice. But that is an inexact translation. Paraphrasing the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “Tzedak/tzedakah is almost impossible to translate because of its many shadings of meaning: justice, charity, righteousness, integrity, equity, fairness, and innocence. It certainly means more than strictly legal justice, for which the Bible uses words like mishpat and din… It is best rendered as ‘the right and decent thing to do’ or ‘justice tempered by compassion’.”
The rabbi of my childhood, Rabbi Sydney Akselrad, was a fierce advocate for social justice. He marched in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965 for the drive to register African American voters, and he spoke out against the Vietnam War. From his example, I learned to take a stand, as Proverbs 31:8-9 commands: to help others and speak out against injustice. I learned to act on the words of Frederick Douglass, when he said, “Praying for freedom never did me any good ‘til I started praying with my feet.”
Hebrew Free Loan is my way of taking a stand. Through our interest-free loan programs, we help make the world a softer, kinder place by practicing tzedek in its many shades of meaning (charity, righteousness, integrity, equity, etc.). Our Pollak Student Loan Program, in particular, helps address historical injustice by making college possible for non-Jewish students from low and moderate income homes. The program offers interest-free loans to help students from Northern California close funding gaps that are preventing them from obtaining higher education. These students represent a wide range of ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, and the majority are first-generation college students.
As we consider the kind of society we want to be going forward and how we at Hebrew Free Loan can be part of building a better, more just world, it’s worth considering Martin Luther King’s words from his famous I Have a Dream speech of August 28, 1963.
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness….
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children…
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
Here’s to building the just world in which we want to live,
~ Rabbi Jamie
