The Fire that Changed Our World
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
Suzanne Bass adorns her living room with old family photos. Creased and sepia toned they speak loudly of history and other worlds and promise. Among the photos is one of a young woman standing by a chair in a wide hat. It is a photograph of her great aunt Rosie Wiener. Rosie was 20 years old at the time and engaged to be married. She had saved $4000 from the $8 she earned a week to buy a farm with her fiancée. Rosie would never marry or buy that farm because she died 100 years ago last Friday in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Rosie is a human face and story, one among 146. Last week our nation marked the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest human catastrophes of the previous century. It was unarguably a Jewish tragedy in that the majority of the 146 were penniless Eastern European immigrants who came to the United States fleeing religious persecution and seeking a better life for their Jewish or Italian families. But it is not an exclusively Jewish story, it is an American story and Italian story and a story that literally changed the way the world did business.
On March 25, 1911 a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory located on the high floors of an office building in Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. 62 of the victims, mostly women, jumped to their deaths rather than share the fate of their fellow garment workers who were engulfed in the flames.
Two weeks ago we read the story of Esther. For the first nine chapters of the book the trajectory heads a certain way and then just when you least expect it the megillah says, “ve nahafokh hu,” and it was turned around and the entire story changes and a different outcome results. There are certain moments in the life of an individual, in the life of a people, or of a country when our story changes, our fortune changes. Sometimes we know immediately that an event will forever alter the future. Other times, it is only in retrospect that we see how our story is entirely turned around and a new reality emerged, this was the case with March 25, 1911.
Perhaps not until September 11, 2001 would another human tragedy have such a powerful and wide ranging impact on the laws and values throughout our country. The owners of the factory in their greed and callous disregard for human life had resisted calls for even minimum safety precautions that would impede the efficiency of their operation and took advantage of their absolute power to even lock the doors to the fire escapes to prevent theft and their workers form taking breaks. The doors remained locked as the foreman escaped and the owners who were present, found their way safely to the roof.
In the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire the kind of basic safety laws we often take for granted were passed and a greater understanding and sympathy for the need for unions to protect the lives and livelihoods of workers were fostered. While the kind of conditions that were commonplace in 1911 are unheard of in 2011 in the United States, which is certainly not the case in other countries of the world. Countries with which all of us do business- whether through the clothes on our backs or the appliances in our homes this anniversary is an opportunity. An opportunity to speak out as Jews on values that we hold dear and for which we must advocate in all good conscience.
- Hebrew Free Burial - 22 of the 146 victims were buried by the Hebrew Free Burial Society in the Mount Richmond cemetery on Staten Island. Ranging in age from 15 year old Ida Brodsky, in this country 9 months after leaving her native Russia to the eldest 38 year old Jacob Bernstein a married man who had been here for 7 years. We believe that every Jew is entitled to be buried as a Jew and it is the community’s obligation now, as it was then, to take responsibility for this mitzvah.
- The divinity of the human being – the bedrock principle behind the protection of workers remains rooted in our Torah. That humanity is created in the divine image, this means that no one person’s life is more valuable than another’s whether owner or worker.
- Silence is like acquiescence – the Talmud teaches us shtikah ke hoda’yah damei. When we are silent, others take that silence as agreement. When we see injustice, we are obligated to speak out against it otherwise be become complicit in it.
- The Dignity of Work and Workers – we are blessed to be part of a tradition that not only values but also insists upon the dignity and honor of the worker. God is brought into the workplace through the interactions between employers and employees.
These principles and the social movements built around them have historically been strongly represented with the Jewish community. Yiddish was one of the main languages heard on the factory floor and Yiddish was one of the main languages heard at the meetings of Union organizers and written on the placards of protesters who helped bring about the labor reforms of the last century.
In three weeks we will sit at our Seder tables and tell the story of our slavery in Egypt and our redemption from slavery. The Torah instructs us that the experience of being slaves in Egypt imposes certain obligations upon us as Jews – especially caring for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. Our tradition sees history as an obligating force – that is true in the case of slavery in Egypt and true in the case of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. We know what it is to be workers on the factory floor an few know what it is to be owners and managers. In either case we want a workplace which offers dignity to both employers and employees.
This Shabbat we pray for Rosie Wiener and for all who perished that day. We pray for our country which was changed for the better after their passing. May their names and their stories inspire us to be vigilant in the fight against callousness, steadfast in defense of the powerless, so that we might fulfill our mission to be an or la goyim, a light unto the nations.
