‘The first plank in any platform for economic well-being is justice.’

April 19, 1970

In this, one of his last radio sermons, Rabbi Olan addresses three themes:

• the role of religion in the struggle for social and economic justice;
• the immorality and long-term impracticality of war profiteering;
• the toxic effect of fatalism: ‘what difference can I make?’  His ringing answer is ‘You are not helpless.’

Rabbi Olan argues that without fair distribution, our economic system not only runs counter to God’s justice, it is not sustainable.  ‘Whatever else may be learned from the awful experience of the great depression, this fact is unquestioned—[what came before] was a false prosperity which was based on a platform of injustice.  There must be a better sharing of goods produced if prosperity is to be real.  If there is no justice, it is a false prosperity which will collapse.’

‘A healthy economy is not only a clever arrangement of buying and selling, producing and profiting.  It is first and foremost a way of life which is founded upon justice because justice is the most practical of all economic laws.’

In addition, when both rich and poor nations devote larger and larger proportions of their budgets to manufacturing and buying war materiel, it is the poor who suffer and become desperate, angry and resentful when social programs are cut to pay for weapons.  This leads to war abroad and social unrest at home.  ‘Maybe we had better listen to Isaiah: “The work of righteousness shall be peace.”’

How is this justice to come about?  Individually we may feel helpless, fatalistic or cynical.  Rabbi Olan leaves it to us, his listeners, to think through for ourselves how we can bring God’s justice into the world, but he suggests that in a free society, the nation responds to the collective will of the people.

Rabbi Olan worked closely with his Christian colleagues, and they spoke eloquently of the value of his teachings at his funeral, which we had the privilege of attending.  However, he did not agree with them that redemption would take place only in an afterlife.  For Rabbi Olan and the Prophets whom he emulated, healing the world could only take place in this world.

*Written by Frances M. Olan and Lionel S Joseph*