CCAR RESPONSA
5762.4
Boycotts in the Name of Social Justice
She’elah
For many years, our congregation has rung the bell for the Salvation Army on December 24. The money raised from this effort goes to support their outreach ministries. This past year, the Salvation Army agreed to offer benefits to domestic partners, and then, after much pressure, rescinded this position. A member of our community has asked whether we should continue to support the Salvation Army in this effort, given the position of Reform Judaism toward benefits for domestic partners. (Rabbi Bruce Kadden, Salinas, CA)
Teshuvah
The action that your member suggests is akin to an economic boycott, the decision by a community to refrain from doing business with a particular merchant or group of merchants in order to pressure them into meeting the community’s demands. Jewish tradition permits economic boycotts for just cause. One famous example is found in a responsum of R. Menachem Mendel Krochmal (17th-century Moravia).[1] In that case, the fishmongers of a certain town, who knew that the local Jews bought fish every week to serve at their Sabbath meals, had raised their prices to an unreasonable level. The Jewish residents adopted an ordinance (takanat hakahal)[2] to the effect that “no person shall buy fish for two months.” The issue before Rabbi Krochmal was this: given that by long-standing custom (minhag) the Jews served fish “for the honor of the Sabbath” (lekhevod shabbat), did their boycott transgress against the obligations to honor and to delight in the seventh day?[3] Rejecting these concerns, he permitted the boycott by way of an analogy to M. Keritot 1:7, which recounts that Rabban Shimeon b. Gamliel introduced a leniency into the halakhah in order to lower the unconscionable prices that merchants were charging for sacrificial animals. Rabbi Krochmal reasons as follows: if the quest for economic justice permitted Rabban Shimeon b. Gamliel to depart from the accepted understanding of a matter of Torah law (davar de’oraita),[4] the same end surely permits Jews to refrain from buying fish, especially since there are other ways for Jews to render honor to the Sabbath. If so, your congregation is just as surely permitted to engage in a boycott in this case. The Central Conference of American Rabbis has resolved that same-sex couples ought to “share fully and equally in the rights of civil marriage”[5]; this means that, for us, it is a matter of economic justice that businesses and organizations offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. So long as your congregation can find other ways to assist the poor and the hungry who would otherwise benefit from your participation in the December 24th project, it has every right to boycott the Salvation Army in the name of social justice.
We as the Responsa Committee, however, cannot say whether your congregation ought to take this step. The decision to undertake an economic boycott is a matter of social policy rather than principle. A principle is a concept to which we are devoted because it is the right and proper thing to do. Economic justice for same-sex couples is such a principle. A policy, on the other hand, is a tool that a community mightCor might notCuse to achieve its principles. A policy decision must be evaluated by its effectiveness as a means toward reaching a desired end. Such an evaluation may, in some cases, dissuade us from pursuing a policy that we might otherwise think is a good idea. For example, it is possible that an economic boycott will backfire. Boycotts are sometimes said to cause a degree of harm to the employees of the targeted businesses that outweighs the good they might accomplish. In this instance, you might decide that your refusal to participate in the Salvation Army drive will have negative results–a loss of funds for the poor and hungry of your city, the creation of an unacceptable degree of community strifeCthat would convince you to seek other, less harmful means by which to accomplish your goal. On the other hand, you might decide that since there are other ways to help feed the hungry and to house the homeless, there is no overriding need for you to join forces with the Salvation Army in particular. And it may be that the positive statement this decision would make on behalf of the rights of domestic partners would more than balance any negative effects it might have.
Your decision, therefore, is one of policy: which choice is the most effective and least counterproductive means of achieving the goal of economic and social justice in your community? The Responsa Committee, precisely because we are neither empowered nor specifically qualified to answer questions of policy, cannot advise you as to which choice to make. Our task is to issue decisions based upon principle, upon the interpretation and application of the Jewish legal tradition to the question at hand. As we understand it, Jewish tradition permits us to undertake boycotts in pursuit of social justice, but it does not require that we do so if we determine that a boycott would be ineffective or otherwise disadvantageous. The decision ultimately requires a careful judgment of all the facts that apply to this particular case. That judgment must be left to the discretion of your congregation.
Our answer would be different were the CCAR to adopt a formal resolution calling upon our congregations to boycott organizations that do not offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. In that case, we would be dealing with a question of “law,” a takanah adopted by our Conference. Yet while the Conference has endorsed such benefits, it has not to this point advocated boycotts of groups such as the Salvation Army that do not provide them.[6] Boycotts and similar actions remain matters of policy, undertaken at the discretion of our members when they believe that such tools are effective means for achieving our principles and larger goals.
Conclusion
. Your congregation is perfectly entitled to discontinue its support of the Salvation Army because of that organization’s refusal to award domestic partner benefits to its employees. It is not, however, required to do so. The decision rests squarely with the congregation. So long as our Conference has not formulated a stance on this particular issue, neither Jewish law nor Reform Jewish principle dictates your answer. It is therefore not the place or function of this Committee to tell you what it should be.
NOTES
- Resp. Tzemach Tzedek
, no. 28.
- On the subject of takanot hakahal as a source of Jewish law, see the discussion in section one of our our responsum no. 5758.1, “A Reform Rabbi’s Responsibility Toward the UAHC.”
- On the duties of “honoring the Sabbath” (kevod shabbat) and “delighting in the Sabbath” (oneg shabbat) see Yad, Shabbat 29:1 and 30:1ff, as well as Mark Washofsky, Jewish Living (New York: UAHC Press, 2001), 73-74 and 377.
- There is another interpretation of Rabban Shimeon’s action: namely, that insistence upon the pre-existing strict standard of the law, precisely because it led to higher prices, would cause individuals to violate the law at its most basic level. See Rashi, BT Keritot 8a, s.v. nikhnas leveit din. Thus, “economic justice” is not necessarily the root cause of Rabban Shimeon’s decision. Nonetheless, the plain sense of the Mishnah does seem to support the economic justice interpretation. R. Krochmal, too, sees the desire to lower unreasonable prices as the motivating factor in that decision.
- Resolution “On Gay and Lesbian Marriage,” adopted by the 107th Annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, March, 1996.
- See ibid. This element distinguishes the present she’elah from the question we consider in our responsum no. 5761.4, “The Synagogue and Organized Labor.” There, we rule that a synagogue ought to hire union workers rather than non-union workers for its construction job. Given the CCAR’s frequent endorsement of organized labor over the years, it seemed to us that this was a matter of “law” as well as “policy”: it would be hypocritical for a Reform synagogue not to strive to award the job to unionized workers. Even there, however, we wrote that the congregation needs to make these decisions in full awareness of its own local situation and its own economic condition. Thus, while we tried to offer some general guidance, based upon Jewish and Reform Jewish tradition, we did not feel entirely comfortable with requiring of the congregation a specific decision in a concrete case.
If needed, please consult Abbreviations used in CCAR Responsa.