Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

This past week, Suzanne Gladney, the director of the Migrant Farmworkers Assistance Fund, informed me of the death of migrant farmworker Luis Octavio, age 49, due to cancer. (Suzanne is our featured Shabbat speaker on Friday, November 5.) With that in mind, I will keep my blog short this week.

Hearing about this loss and the difficulty for his family and for other migrant farmworkers with whom he worked is a vivid reminder that the policy changes we work for are not issues in the abstract. Rather, they concern real people, people of compassion and humanity, people who work hard to support their families, people simply looking for a decent life of dignity and purpose. 

We work for the rights of immigrants and asylum-seekers, giving everyone access to quality health care, as is their right, safe working conditions and a living wage for all who engage in the dignity that comes with hard work. We do this because it makes a difference in the lives of the many, many Luis Octavio(s). We see in their stories our stories, and the stories of our ancestors.  

May the memory of Luis Octavio always be for a blessing.