What your Hebrew brethren did Wednesday

Wednesday was Yom Kippur.  Some of your Jewish friends were fasting.  Some were praying in synagogue.  Others were concocting a scheme to fleece Nevada taxpayers out of at least $750 million to build a stadium they would make a killing out of.  Perhaps some did all three.  Here's one of the passages those in shul might have read:

Find the poor folks hidden in this picture

“We are commanded to open our hands to those who are in need.  Isaiah's words continue to resonate in our own day, as a warning to the prosperous: If you hide the poor and the working class from your sight, you are apt to forget about them.  You become self-obsessed and callous in your personal lives.  You make political decisions that suit your own interests and ignore their impact on the majority of your fellow citizens.  You live in separate enclaves of privilege, rarely interacting with those who live with far less than you have.  And that way of life impoverishes us all.

‘Do not hide yourself from your own flesh and blood,’ says the prophet Isaiah.  Do not turn your back on the poor; recognize your kinship with them.  For the prophet, we are all one family, united in our humanity; and without one another, our community is not whole.”

– Mishkan Hanefesh at 276.