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Shalom Shir Tikvah Kehillah Kedoshah,
Our parashat hashavua this week is Naso, from the phrase “lift up the face.” This idiom for counting people demonstrates that the Jewish way of taking note of people is one by one, face by face - probably even including eye contact. Each of us counts as we are counted.
In January of every year, in order to receive Federal funding, our city government is mandated to do a “point in time count” of all the people in Portland who are without an address. In the spirit of Shabbat Naso I invite you to lift the face of one of them with me.
וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר ה' אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ נָשֹׂ֗א אֶת־רֹ֛אשׁ לְבֵ֥ית אֲבֹתָ֖ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָֽם׃
'ה spoke to Moses: Take a census…by ancestral house and by clans. (Numbers 4.21-22)
The social service agency Blanchet House recently posted a photo of a 50 year old woman sleeping in their doorway after her tent was taken from her in a sweep, which is what the city calls it when a group of poor people who live in tents are attacked by city employees and have their tents and belongings taken from them. We don’t know her ancestral house, her relatives, where she is from or who misses her in their lives.
We do know is that the woman who lost her belongings in that sweep was, by city law, supposed to have been offered a phone number in order to get into a shelter. Why didn’t she find shelter? That’s the easiest question to answer about the problem of homelessness: there are 2000 shelter beds in Multnomah County according to their website. 4000 people were identified as houseless and on the street in Portland Oregon at the most recent Federally mandated Point In Time count in January.
We don’t know if the woman was suffering from a mental illness. When my mother, who was suffering from schizophrenia, was houseless in the 1970s, social services existed to take her in and get her treatment right away in the area where we lived. In Portland today there is a 3-6 month waiting list for someone who will not succeed in a shelter, much less an apartment, without the appropriate support.
לֹא־תַעֲשֹׁ֥ק שָׂכִ֖יר עָנִ֣י וְאֶבְי֑וֹן מֵאַחֶ֕יךָ א֧וֹ מִגֵּרְךָ֛ אֲשֶׁ֥ר בְּאַרְצְךָ֖ בִּשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃
Do not steal from the wage earner who is poor or destitute; from your relatives or your strangers who are in your land in your cities. (Deut. 24.14)
Why has funding for social services been reduced, and social workers forced to work out of the goodness of their hearts for long hours for indecently low pay, for so long? Why is it that we have allowed our city council to choose policing the homeless over curing their ills?
Or perhaps she was just unable to cover the increase in her rent. According to a recent KGW article, shelter staff say that about a quarter of the people who stay at Portland’s emergency shelters have never been there before. Nearly half of the Portland metro area’s workforce is at risk of becoming homeless if they rent. We who rent are far closer to becoming homeless than we would like to think.
כִּ֛י לֹא־יֶחְדַּ֥ל אֶבְי֖וֹן מִקֶּ֣רֶב הָאָ֑רֶץ עַל־כֵּ֞ן אָנֹכִ֤י מְצַוְּךָ֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר פָּ֠תֹ֠חַ תִּפְתַּ֨ח אֶת־יָדְךָ֜ לְאָחִ֧יךָ לַעֲנִיֶּ֛ךָ וּלְאֶבְיֹנְךָ֖ בְּאַרְצֶֽךָ׃ {ס}
For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kin in your land. (Deut. 15.11)
Portland’s city government received over a billion dollars of Federal and state funds to address our city’s homelessness challenge in 2022. The number of houseless human beings on our streets has not been reduced. Where is the open hand they need?
וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה׃
You must give your neighbor the same treatment as yourself need; I am HaShem. (Lev.19.18)
To take away people’s tents when there is no real alternative for them panders to our yetzer hara’, our evil inclination: the desire simply to make the problem go away. Sweeps, mass camps, and making daytime camping illegal are not sustainable or compassionate policy, and satisfy only the person who says I don’t care what happens, I just don’t want to see it anymore.
But beyond the rational questions of where to house people, beyond how to cure their ills, and beyond the mind numbing bureaucracy that we contend with, there’s an essential issue, and that is common human decency. The responses Blanchet House received to their post were sadly inhuman: “stop enabling”. “You’re part of the problem.” “She should have made different choices.”
Our Jewish ethics don’t give us the option of such comments. We are commanded וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה v’ahavta l’re’akha kamokha, you must regard the other as just like you. As you need food and safety, so does the other; as you need healing for your pain, so does the other.
If we let ourselves think that “those houseless people” can survive being repeatedly told to go away, to have all their belongings taken from them, and to find all the promised doors of help closed to them because no agency has enough staff to help everyone, the callousness we are allowing ourselves - calling it healthy boundaries, what’s best for them, or worse - is going to destroy us, too, in the end. If we cannot care about others as we wish to be cared about, in the end no one will care about you or me, either.
Until the city, working in harmony with the county and the state, can provide a real alternative, it is simply cruel to take away a person’s only shelter. But until we, the individuals who are the City of Portland, decide that we care enough about someone we don’t know, tents will be the best, and the worst, shelter we can provide.
וְכִֽי־יָמ֣וּךְ אָחִ֔יךָ וּמָ֥טָה יָד֖וֹ עִמָּ֑ךְ וְהֶֽחֱזַ֣קְתָּ בּ֔וֹ גֵּ֧ר וְתוֹשָׁ֛ב וָחַ֖י עִמָּֽךְ׃
Now when your neighbor sinks down [in poverty] and their hand falters, you must strengthen them to live beside you. (Lev. 25.35)
The time is now, to act to strengthen our poor neighbors.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ariel
What you can do:
- Learn more: https://heretogetheroregon.org/ This too is Torah and you need to learn it!
- Join in helping: https://form.jotform.com/230494565892064 This tent drive was created by Rabbi Ariel Stone and Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Alliance of Portland as a response to City Commissioner Rene Gonzales asserting that no more tents would be given out by any city agency in order to force houseless people into housing (which does not exist). I’m proud and happy to report that the Jewish community has led the donations to this point.
- Volunteer your time: https://www.mealsonuspdx.org/ Shir Tikvah partnered with Meals on Us PDX at Pesakh; may the relationship continue!
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