Chocolate and Slavery

Fair trade chocolate-why we should care

I found recently a new translation of the first verse of Genesis:
In the beginning, the Lord created chocolate, and he saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the dark, and it was better.

Geronimo Piperni, quoted by Antonio Lavedán, surgeon in the Spanish army, 1796: Chocolate is a divine, celestial drink, the sweat of the stars, the vital seed, divine nectar, the drink of the gods, panacea and universal medicine.

Greek word for Chocolate: theobroma—food of the gods.

Story

I want to tell you the story of two children:

Maryam—12 yo girl from Segou, mali, whose parents quite poor, sent her to IC to make money to send back home to her family. She was sent by bus 270 miles to the south, to Zegoua, on the border w/Ivory Coast, with an escort. Her escort was really a trafficker, and she had really been sold into slavery without her or her family knowing- the going price is 230 euros, all of which goes to the smugglers. When she showed up there she had open sores on her knees and legs. If she had not been intercepted she would have been handed over to be smuggled by motorcycle, across dirt roads, into Ivory Coast, to work for no pay, never to attend school, in a country whose language she didn’t know.

Another child, Yaya konate: is a 16yo from Mali. He, too, was tricked into what he thought was employment as a cocoa harvester, but he was never paid. When he tried to escape, he was chased & hid, and finally escaped.

Facts about Cocoa

According to the department of Labor, most of the cocoa we consume is produced in countries using child labor: Cameroon ivory coast, ghinea, Ghana, Nigeria. These child workers labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat. And of course no education leaving not much hope for a future out of poverty. By International Labor Laws this is illegal.
In Ivory Coast (supplier of 40% of the worlds cocoa), 109,000 child laborers, 10,000 of whom are forced laborers—slaves, who work without pay and are subject to beatings and abuse. All major cocoa companies buy cocoa from farms using children, and reap profits off the backs of these kids.
Torah: Befarech
I wanted to delve a little today into what constitutes oppressive labor conditions.
According to Jewish law, inhumane employment goes beyond slavery, forcing someone to work against their will. It also includes the concept of “farech,” oppressiveness. In Egypt, after Moses asks pharaoh to let the jews go he oppresses them with hard labor, befarech (Shmot 1:13) The haggadah connects this verse to Deuteronomy 26:7, which refers to the Egyptians dealing harshly with us.
1st interpretation: bait & switch
Tanhuma explains Farech as peh rach, a soft mouth: At first asked nicely to work one day only, jews worked hard, then forced them to work at same energy level every day (like baiting children across international border with promise of better future)
4th interpretation: inhumane conditions
Asher meir: 192-193 time off each day and each week

Note that when we mention who rest, we specifically include servants—allowing people to rest and have time to themselves is part of honoring their humanity

Clearly, working someone without rest is inhumane. The midrash says that the Egyptians made the slaves sleep in the fields, not even giving them the time to return home.

2nd interpretation: pointless busywork
According to Rashi & talmud: farech means meaningless work, like asking someone to warm a cup when you don’t need one. One Midrash says that the buildings were crumbling.

Ben ish hai: “doing meaningless work, such as bulding a falling edifice, is the ultimate hard labor. Even a slave in bondage has satisfaction when he sees that his labor results in some purpose. But if he is told to draw water from the river and to pour it back, his labor will be a thousand times more difficult.” (Ben Ish hai haggadah, 128)
This includes asking even an employee for any meaningless busy work- asking someone to sort a closet which is never used, or to shuffle papers until the clock strikes 5. Rabbi Asher Meir, in the Jewish Ethicist, even includes holding a social hour where employees know they should go to if they want a promotion.
The idea is that this kind of work is psychologically demoralizing and demeaning.
3rd interpretation: hopelessness
Rabbi Simha Bunam of Peshiska: farech is bitterness when we realize our bad situation: “We eat matzah first and maror next, though it would seem the reverse order is appropriate, since we first suffered and later were freed. However, as long as there was no prospect of being delivered, Israel didn’t feel the bitterness of the experience keenly. But as soon as Moses spoke to them of freedom, they awoke to the bitterness of their slavery.” (Michael Strassfeld, in Passage to Pesach, 126)

Farech is when we awaken to the bitterness of reality. It sounds like a bad thing—wouldn’t they be better off being happy slaves than dissatisfied slaves? But really, this bitterness is a good thing, because it leads to change. We need to become dissatisfied with the state of things, rather than resigned to them. If we walk out of shul feeling better about the world, yes, we all feel better, but we haven’t made progress toward fixing the worlds problems or our own problems. It is saying that if I walk out of shul really despairing about the world, about my life, about my spiritual progress and about what kind of a person I am, that is the first step toward building a better world, becoming a better human.

Conclusion
Farech goes beyond slavery, to include laboring under inhumane, deceptive, or hopeless conditions. When we protest slavery, we also treatment oppressive employment, even if it is not truly slavery.
Buying fair trade coca and coffee always seemed like a luxury to me, until I watched a documentary on the topic, and realized that fair trade certification would be better called “slave & child free.” The fact is, any chocolate bar we buy that is not certified fair trade, probably was made by children, quite possibly by slaves. There is in fact only one kosher for Passover, fair trade chocolate: Equal Exchange, marked kosher but in fact always kosher for Passover. Any other chocolate we eat on Passover was probably made by children, and possibly by slaves.
Am I going to tell you not to eat chocolate this Passover, or that it’s simply not kosher? That would be a bitter pill to swallow, so you’ll just have to make up your own minds on that one. Personally, I am planning on having a bar of equal exchange chocolate on my seder plate as a symbol of the contemporary struggle against slavery. I also invite everyone to watch this documentary with me at our movie night on April 13. We will have a discussion after as well as a tasting of fair trade chocolate.
As we go through this pesach season, may we all become more aware of the oppression in the world around us, and strengthened in our resolve to stand up for human dignity and freedom.