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Shalom Bayit

Nicholas Jahr
June 3, 2010

by Nicholas Jahr
Like many kids, I grew up in a home where both my parents worked. Toss in a commute from Brooklyn to The City, and my folks were left with a three- or four-hour gap to cover every day, between the time school let out and the moment my mother finally made it home to start her second shift (my father just worked a brutally long first one). To make sure my brother and I didn’t fall through the gap, my family relied on a long succession of babysitters and au pairs and neighbors and whoever my folks could find to keep an eye on us.
I have fond, soft-focus memories of an elderly black woman – I think she was from the Caribbean – named Beryl who looked after my brother and me for a year or so. At some point I remember waging a prolonged battle with her over whether or not my brother was required to take a bath (I’m pretty sure she won). She was strict but caring, and one of a long list of women we were fortunate enough to have watch over us.
So it’s with a mix of gratitude and excitement that I (and the rest of us here at Jewish Currents, I’m sure) greet the recent victory of Domestic Workers United (DWU) in their long campaign for a domestic workers’ bill of rights. The New York Senate finally passed the bill this past Tuesday, and Governor Paterson is expected to sign it into law. I believe it’ll be the first legislation of its kind in the country.
It took eight years to reach this point, and DWU was supported throughout by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). (It’s worth nothing that Adrienne Cooper, the Workmen’s Circle’s Executive Officer for External Affairs, has been a member of the Board of Directors of JFREJ and our editorial board at Jewish Currents.) JFREJ launched a campaign to pass the domestic workers’ bill of rights under the banner of Shalom Bayit – ‘peace in the house’. Traditionally that’s a matter of marital or familial harmony, but JFREJ extended the principle to embrace the people who make that harmony possible. Call it a midrash in action.
It’s also an all-too-rare demonstration of solidarity. Whether it was JFREJ accompanying DWU to Albany, or DWU cooking and selling food at the JFREJ/Workmen’s Circle Purim celebration, this is an alliance that went beyond just signing the same press releases. Apparently members of both groups walked out of the Senate on Tuesday night singing ‘Solidarity Forever’. Here’s to DWU, and JFREJ, and Beryl, and everyone who worked to make the domestic workers’ bill of rights, and so many families, possible. Let’s hope this victory is just the start, and not the end.

Nicholas Jahr is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn and a member of Jewish Currents’ editorial board. In the past he has written for the magazine about comics, film, the diaspora, Israeli elections, and Palestinian nonviolence. His work has appeared in the International New York Times, The Nation, City & State, and the Village Voice (RIP).