Beginning Monday, March 5, farmworkers and allies began a six-day Fast for Fair Food at Publix headquarters in Lakeland, Florida. The farmworkers, members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a coalition of agricultural workers and allies based in Immokalee, Florida, the heartland of Florida tomato plantations, have called for the six-day fast in effort to get Publix to sign onto an ethical business agreement that would recognize the demands of farmworkers to guarantee basic protections on the fields.

The CIW has been engaged in the Campaign for Fair Food since 2001, in an effort to get major purchasers of the products of the industrial tomato industry to pay an extra penny per pound for each bucket of tomatoes picked. The CIW began the campaign by focusing on fast food corporations, successfully adding Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway as campaign partners, before turning its attention to large grocery chains. Whole Foods and, recently, after a prolonged campaign, Trader Joe’s, have signed on to the CIW’s Fair Food agreement.  Publix is currently resisting the CIW’s efforts.

I had the chance to meet with members of the CIW in September 2011 as part of a rabbinical delegation organized by Rabbis for Human Rights North America. When there, I heard testimonies from farmworkers on their experiences in the fields. Riding back from a visit at a tomato plantation with Silvia, I heard about how she had worked for two years for an employer who did not pay the agreed upon amount nor give her breaks to drink water during marathon 12-hour, scorching days in the fields, and how, when she attempted to leave her job, she was threatened at gun-point and told to get back to work.

In the face of this level of exploitation and oppression, the CIW has over the last twenty years continued to demand that workers be treated justly and that all those who benefit from the fruits of the farmworkers’ labor stand with workers to transform the way that tomatoes are grown and harvested.  It is in this context that the Fast for Fair Food is organized, as an opportunity for workers and allies to stand together and demand transformation through an embodied act of commitment.

I decided to take part in the Fast for Fair Food, despite not being able to be present at Lakeland.  When I told my teacher, Rabbi Ebn Leader, that I would be joining the CIW in their six-day fast from Boston, he encouraged me to take up a practice of study for the days of fasting. Accordingly, I am currently studying Masechet Taanit, the section of Mishna that describes Jewish law surrounding fasting.

In the first chapter of Masechet Taanit, fasting is explored through the paradigm of fasts to ask for rain.  The Mishna presents a whole structure of fasts — when to fast, for how long, who must fast — laid out in relationship to the number of days that rainfall has been delayed.  This focus on fasting in relation to rain struck me as strange and discordant with the associations I now carry with fasting (fasting for atonement, for example).  Further digging, however, helped reveal some hidden, and helpful, resonances.

There is a long history in Jewish texts of using rainfall as an analogy for justice. According to the Zohar, a mystical text from 13th century Spain, humans bring rain upon the earth through acts of righteousness and justice.

“[If you walk in My statutes, and keep My commandments, and do them,] then I will give your rains in their season…” (Leviticus 26:3-4)…It is written similarly, “That they may keep the way of the Lord to do (la’asot) righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). Since it says “that they may keep the way of the Lord,” why does it need to say “to do righteousness and justice?” It means that one who keeps the ways of the Torah makes, as it were, Zedakah (righteousness) and Mishpat (justice).*

The Zohar creates a correlation between human action and rainfall — through living bound up with one another (my interpretation of what it means to “keep the ways of the Torah”), humans don’t simply bring the rain needed to sustain life, but actually bring down the rains of righteousness, bring justice in the world.

Rashi, a 10th century French commentator, writes in a commentary on Genesis 2:5 that in the beginning of the world, no rains fell, because there was no one to work the soil and no one to realize the benefit of the rains. Rain, as rendered by Rashi, only exists in relationship, through labor and struggle, through the vision of purpose that allows the rain to have meaning.

Fasting when rain does not come is a time for humans to reorient around our treatment of each other, our treatment of the earth. We slow our bodies, we gather together, we become aware again of our rhythms, of our yearnings, of our truths.

Fasting when justice is absent, as with the CIW’s Fast for Fair Food, provides individual bodies a time to change our rhythms, learn new cycles, to find sustenance in each other when we are unable or unwilling to take sustenance from food. If the fast is successful, Publix will accede to the demands of the CIW to bring justice to the tomato fields.

When rain doesn’t fall, the earth grows cracked and dusty, plants do not grow or wither in mid-season. When the rains of justice don’t fall, workers are exploited, treated like units of production rather than partners in cultivation and harvest.

Jews around the world will be fasting on March 7th for Taanit Esther, embodying the three-day fast of the Jews of Shushan, who heeded Esther’s call for a community-wide fast before undertaking a campaign to change the fate of the community.  Let us take this opportunity to join those fasting in Florida, by dedicating our Taanit Esther fast to the Fast for Fair Food, by choosing to fast for part of the week of March 5-10th, or by sending a message of support to the workers and allies fasting in Lakeland.

We have the chance this year to bind up our fast with the Fast for Fair Food, with a community of farmworkers and allies, fasting for six-days in recognition that the rains of justice have yet to fall on the fields of Immokalee.

If you are interested in fasting, or if you want to send a message of support to the fasters in Lakeland, please get in touch with fast@ciw-online.org.