Category: Immigration

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CCAR Convention congregations Immigration

Remarkable Moments in a 50-Year Rabbinate

Each year at CCAR Convention, we honor members of our organization who were ordained 50 years ago or more. In advance of CCAR Convention 2020, March 22-25 in Baltimore, Rabbi Sanford T. Marcus reflects on the importance of community outreach.

This coming year marks the 50th year of my ordination, the last class during Nelson Glueck’s tenure as president of HUC-JIR. It is also the 60th anniversary of remaining on the Brandeis University waiting list!

I had a first and last job at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island.  I succeeded Rabbi Braude whose vaunted reputation was deserved. I was only 31 when elected Senior Rabbi of a 1,200 family congregation. At the time there was no Placement Commission to prevent my succession. When I informed my mother of this happy news, she exclaimed, “Honey, do you think you’re competent?”  She had a point. Happily, it turned out that a caring presence can trump competence. I have been over-honored through the years. I am the only rabbi to be elected to the Rhode Island Hall of Fame. I have been awarded seven honorary degrees. It is satisfying to feel that I have made a difference for good.  

I have many life-saturated memories of my rabbinic career. Two are particularly compelling. Anya Volnyskaya was a youngster in the former Soviet Union who was “twinned” with many American young girls celebrating their B’nai Mitzvah. An empty chair was placed on their bimahs in her honor. This dramatized the plight of Refusniks. Years later, Anya and her family moved to Providence. She yearned to celebrate her own Bat Mitzvah. As this festive occasion approached, she invited the six girls from around the country who once prayed for her to be allowed to leave Russia. They all came. Surrounding Anya as she began reading Torah, they joined in a chorus of the Shehecheyanu prayer. There was not a dry eye in the congregation.  

Dr. Myer Saklad led a health team to the Warsaw Ghetto after it was subsumed by fire. When he arrived, the ground was still warm. Saklad came across a human skull and instinctively cradled it in his arms. He took it home. Years later when he was dying, the doctor came with the human remains wrapped in stiff brown paper tied with string. What should he do? The week following Rosh Hashanah we gently placed it in our temple cemetery next to prayer books that could no longer be used.  I have never participated in a more moving burial.  

I have been blessed by two remarkable women. Julie was instrumental building my career and our family. She was the cherished mother of Rebecca and Elizabeth. She died tragically in her fifties. Rebecca named her son Jonah in her memory. 

Janet Engelhart brought Allison and two more grandsons into my life. Her brother said at our wedding that she is distinguished by her big heart. He was so right. Her gifts of spirit created a loving, unified family.

On the Jubilee occasion of my ordination, I have much for which I am grateful.  Rebecca is a Reform Rabbi.  From generation to generation.  Now, if I could only hear from Brandeis!

Leslie Y. Gutterman is rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island, and currently serves on the CCAR Taskforce on Retirees and Sucessors.

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CCAR Convention Immigration Social Justice

Embedding Ourselves in Baltimore: What Rabbis at CCAR Convention 2020 Can Learn From an Immigration Outreach Center Born Out of a Catholic Church

When the planning committee for the upcoming 2020 CCAR Convention met last spring, we asked ourselves, “How could we be in Baltimore and not look to understand the issues that the residents of this city meet each day?”

Like Cincinnati, Orange County, and Atlanta in recent memory, this convening of the Central Conference of American Rabbis will include opportunities to learn from some of the social justice issues endemic to Charm City. When we are together in March, we will explore issues around immigration, the toll of gun violence, climate change, the safety and care of people who are sex workers, and much more. 

One workshop I am excited about will be with Baltimore’s Immigrant Outreach Service Center (IOSC). This 501c3 organization is an immigration center which grew out of a social justice campaign at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Baltimore, through the help of foreign-born parishioner volunteers. IOSC helps immigrants build successful lives, offering a variety of services as wide as the variety of people they serve. There is a lot for us to learn from this organization that we can apply to our work settings: in advance of Passover, we will hear from people who came to the United States running from terrible circumstances towards a better opportunity for themselves and their families. We can also find inspiration from the experience of St. Matthew; the congregation’s demographics shifted with each passing year and so did the variety of programs they used to meet the needs of this changing population. And we will learn from the IOSC Executive Director and Senior Pastor of St. Matthew about how they created an independent non-profit organization that does essential justice work and has served immigrants from 123 countries.

As the CCAR continues to serve rabbis who serve in a multiplicity of settings, the Convention committee is also working to create learning opportunities that serve us. As we navigate the future of Jewish life in this time of change, I know that the social justice offering at CCAR Convention will inspire us all and supply tangible resources and inspiration to fuel the work we will do at home. I will see you in Baltimore. 

Rabbi Eleanor Steinman serves as an associate rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Houston, Texas. CCAR Convention 2020 will be held in Baltimore, March 22-25, 2020. 

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CCAR on the Road Immigration Social Justice

Truth, Justice and Reconciliation – Day 3

The last day of any mission, trip or conference leads one to think about travel and arriving safely at home.  I mean, what could this last morning offer us that could possibly match the power and intensity of the previous two?

The answer was not long in coming.  We began, as we had done the previous day, in study.  Instead of text, we were guided in history by our esteemed colleague, Rabbi Bernard Mehlman, Emeritus Rabbi of Temple Israel in Boston.  With the aid of video materials prepared by Rabbi Gary Zola of the American Jewish Archives, we learned the stories of senior colleagues who served in the South, rabbis whose names we recognized but whose stories were unknown to us.

For we had reached the moral crossroads of our journey to Montgomery and Selma.  What had the Jewish community done in the face of rigid segregation and the violence employed to maintain it?  We like to bring out the names of Reform rabbis who traveled South to stand with Dr. King  We mention Jews who were jailed, beaten and even killed during the tumultuous fight for civil and voting rights for African-Americans.  But most of them came from the North.  They played their valiant part and returned home, singed but not burned.  The Reform rabbis who lived in the communities of the South, who served Jews whose lives and livelihoods were at stake, had to balance a tightrope taut with fear and danger.

Rabbi Perry Nussbaum of Jackson, Mississippi, Rabbi Milton Grafman of Birmingham, Alabama and Rabbi Charles Mantiband of Florence, Alabama and Hattiesburg, Mississippi were on the front lines as much as the more famous Rabbi Jacob Rothschild of Atlanta, if not more.  In a big city like Atlanta, you could find allies for equality.  In small cities like those mentioned above, one’s capacity to serve, one’s ability to survive, was much more tenuous.

 They were in physical danger from racists, but often without support in their own congregations.  Jews were afraid of losing their jobs, having their businesses torched and their homes firebombed.  Their fear was real and legitimate.  But from gradualists like Rabbi Grafman to those who took public stands against racism like Rabbi Mantiband, they stood and withstood pressures that I cannot imagine in my own rabbinate (despite once coming face to face with the notorious James Wickstrom of the Posse Comitatus in northern Wisconsin in 1987).

We then visited a holy place, the parsonage of Dr. Martin Luther King when he served in Montgomery.  Dr. Shirley Cherry guided us from the visitors’ center and told the story of the street we were on, how the neighbors opened their homes to the Freedom Riders from the North and hid them from the Klan.  She told of us Vera Harris, who lived four doors down from the parsonage where we stood and how she had personally fed and cared for those brave activists.  She told us that Vera was in her mid-90’s and was in hospice care at home.  All of us, 48 rabbis strong, would go that morning to her house and pray for her body and soul, that her passing from this world to the next might be without pain and in peace.

Dr. Cherry took us from room to room in Dr. King’s house, starting with the front room that had been bombed while he was preaching at church.  Coretta and her baby were there, but in a back room and miraculously emerged unhurt.  From there we went looked into the bedrooms and the saw the simple way the King family lived.  I was fascinated, as were my colleagues by the small study packed floor to ceiling with books and a writing desk.  She showed us the lovely dining room table where Dr. King would sit with his family for dinner and eat with guests, the simple and the high and mighty.

But the real sacred space in that home was the kitchen.  Dr. Cherry told us of Dr. King’s long, sleepless night after the bombing, when he was receiving 30-40 calls with hate and death threats each day.  He went into the kitchen, heated up some coffee and paced the floor to think of what to do.  He sat down and had his epiphany.  His enemies had hatred, guns and bombs.  He had faith, but felt despair. 

Dr. King pleaded with God, saying, “I think the cause we are fighting for is right, but I’m losing my courage…”  And he heard his inner voice call him by name and say, “Martin Luther, stand up for justice, stand up for righteousness, and lo, I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  And all of the fears left him, Dr. Cherry said.  He went on standing for justice and righteousness until the moment he was struck down by the assassin’s bullet in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Into Dr. King’s kitchen chair Dr. Cherry had placed Rabbi Jonah Pesner.  I don’t think she knew that he is the extraordinary, inspirational head of our Religious Action Center in Washington, DC, which has placed fighting racism at the top of Reform Judaism’s agenda.  As she described the divine experience of Dr. King during his long, lonely night of the soul, Rabbi Pesner, sitting in that simple chair, wept freely, as did many of us with him.

She led us out to the Peace Garden behind the house where we gathered for the final time.  Dr. Cherry repeated what she he had declared to us over and over again that morning.  She said with all of her passion and inner fire that, “love is the ultimate security in the time of ultimate vulnerability.”  She concluded by saying that there are things in this world that will break your heart, but you must not let them break your spirit.”

These three days have wrenched my soul.  I have been touched by colleagues, scholars and heroes I had never known.  I have re-learned the lesson of our age, that radical hatred must be met head on with radical love.  Violence may win for a moment but faith and love and justice will prevail in the end, even if that is only be achieved beyond my lifespan.  This I believe with every fiber of my being.  By this ideal I will live the rest of my life.  For this I commit my head, hand and heart.  

This is the prayer of my life.  All from three days in Alabama’s furious past and thorny present.  Just three days to kindle within a spirit of fire, the fire of memory and justice.

—
Rabbi Jamie Gibson serves Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, PA.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

We Carry Them With Us

CCAR members and clergy from other faiths were in El Paso, Texas July 28-29th for two days in support of Moral Mondays at the Borderlands. We have invited them to share their experiences in a short series on RavBlog.

I don’t know the little girl’s name, but she is still with me.

On the side of a long, lonely road, with nine somber adults as her only company, this three-year-old delighted. She flitted about, unencumbered  by the midsummer evening’s heavy, Texas heat. The billowing clouds of dust left in her wake provided a welcome relief from the eerie stillness of Clint’s Customs and Borders Facility, and the harsh geometry of the razor-wire fence surrounding it. This formerly little-known building became infamous for imprisoning children, stolen from their parents, penned in cages far beyond capacity, in conditions eye-witnesses described as squalid, degrading and torturous. The girl’s frolicking reminded me of how, beyond the basics of love, food, shelter and clothing, children need very little. They can amuse themselves with a patch of space, and the freedom to move about in it. 

“Ghost Child”

My colleagues and I had come to El Paso to join Reverend William Barber and Rabbi Rick Jacobs in Moral Monday at the Borderlands, an interfaith call to peaceful action, protesting our government’s intensifying assault on immigrants and refugees. A crowd of approximately 100 clergy stood at the gates of the El Paso detention center and, with about 500 people of faith accompanying us, requested to make a pastoral visit to the inmates inside. It was a national event, publicized and covered in every form of media. 
Several hours later, a carload of Reform Jewish women – one lay leader, one cantor, three rabbis – drove 45 minutes to Clint for a far smaller, but no less meaningful, act of resistance. Every Monday night, people gather in front of this detention center for a candlelight vigil. It is energized by Peggy and Yvonne, who live in El Paso. They feel desperate, as do so many of us, to get as proximate as possible to the frightened children languishing inside. And so they come, and sometimes others join them. 

Ashamed Veteran

I connected with Peggy through #CitizenPresence. This grassroots twitter network enables enraged Americans to pool resources, ideas and talents to support a steady flow of ordinary citizens into the Borderlands, so we can directly witness, protest and document the atrocities at their epicenter. It was started by Georgetown Law Professor, Heidi Li Feldman, who models that one determined person who pursues a vision can make great things happen.

When we arrived, we first met Ray, a retiree from Florida, who calls himself an “ashamed veteran.” Agitated to act, he raised a couple of thousand dollars and drove to Clint, set up large, hand-made protest signs, and remained there all day, every day, for as many weeks as his shoestring budget allowed. Chatting with Ray was Amy Cantrell, a Presbyterian Pastor, who had traveled from North Carolina for Moral Monday and is also part of #CitizensPresence.

Lullaby Circle

Peggy and Yvonne pulled up. Peggy brought candles, and Yvonne brought her three-year-old granddaughter. Peggy invited us to join in their weekly ritual (my word, not hers). Dusk dissolved into dark, framing a full moon. We lit our candles and formed a circle. Each of us shared our reason for coming. We poured out rage and determination, helplessness and hope. Ray expressed his frustration at giving all that he could and still feeling like it wasn’t making a difference. I responded with the Pirkei Avot verse, “The task is not ours to complete, nor can we desist from it.” Pastor Amy gifted us with a simple and profound summary of Rabbi Tarfon’s teaching: “Love is never wasted.”

We stood, our silence punctuated by little girl giggles and the occasional whoosh of a car zooming by.

Then, perhaps most poignant, our friends led us in singing lullabies, English and Spanish, to the children struggling for sleep under harsh lights, on hard floors, under Mylar sheets. Even if our offering couldn’t reach their ears, surely it was carried by God. 

Yvonne invited us to share a Jewish song. Cantor Hollis Schachner introduced Hashkiveinu, describing it as a lullaby assuring that the darkness of night is not something to fear, but a blanket of divine protection. We sang, weaving Hebrew into these melodies of resistance. 

By this point, sleepy from the late hour and her play, Yvonne’s granddaughter had made her way to our circle, settling inside at her grandmother’s feet. Peggy asked if we would offer a prayer. As the Jewish clergy began chanting and speaking the priestly benediction, all nine of us instinctively huddled close, protectively encircling the little girl. Nine adults, with a small child bringing us to minyan. A child whose name I don’t know.  A child happy and well fed, heading home to a bath, a soft bed and a house full of family. A child only separated from the many children, whose names we don’t know, by concrete walls and barbed wire, the distance of a ball toss, and luck. 

We carry them with us.

—
Rabbi Sarah Reines serves Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

Sunday Night’s Mass Meeting

CCAR members and clergy from other faiths were in El Paso, Texas July 28-29th for two days in support of Moral Mondays at the Borderlands. We have invited them to share their experiences in a short series on RavBlog.

As a mother of a young daughter, I cannot imagine being separated from her. I look at her and cannot fathom a situation in which she’s left alone, without any supervision – not one to watch her, to help her, to keep her safe, to love her. And yet, thousands of children are in that very situation. Not in some far away land but here, on our soil. Seeking refuge from the horrors of evil, families have been driven away from their homes, churches and communities and have come to America for refuge. As Jews we are taught to welcome the stranger, and to remember that we were once the refugee looking for safety and a home.

When Reverend Barber II put out the call to clergy of all faiths to join Repairers of the Breech in El Paso for Moral Monday, in order to protest this administration’s “policy” of separating families, of parents from their children, I felt compelled to attend.

Upon arrival, I entered a modest, old church and was met with hundreds of activists, clergy from all faiths and even media. There was an energy emenating from the pews, as people joined in singing songs about justice and faith. Each of the representatives from the faith communities shared brief words, one more powerful than the next. Rabbi Rick Jacobs was our representative who gave words of Torah to us all.

Of course, Reverend Barber II gave his homily, in which he passionately described the wretched conditions the families seeking refuge are currently enduring within the walls of detention centers. Little food, no showers, no running water! People drinking from toilets! Living in cages! Young children separated from their mothers! Private companies that own the Centers are actually making money off the backs of children. Where is the humanity!? I was and remain outraged that the American government is dehumanizing people, much like what was done to our People just a few decades ago.

Together as one community, we stood united in reflective prayer and inspirational song. We listened to Fernando, the Executive Director of the Border Network for Human Rights as he spoke about their work advocating for migrants at the border. He introduced us to two young men who had spent time in a Detention Center – they shared their stories of starvation, of thirst, of not being able to take a shower for weeks, and of wearing the same clothing for the duration of their stay. We then listened to a family whose patriarch was taken from them; his granddaughter at age nine asked why he was being treated like a criminal. Even she knew that this was unjust. It was difficult to listen to the stories shared, but important to hear.

As rabbis, we know that in the Torah scroll we are able to distill the word Ayd or Witness from the Shema. Indeed, during my experience in El Paso, I and others heard the call to serve as moral witnesses. When I returned home to Connecticut, I held my three year old and watched her sleep. She looked so peaceful, and so cared for. My heart continues to ache for the children who have no bed to lie in, have no mommy to care for them and feel anything but peaceful.

—
Rabbi Joui Hessel serves as the Associate Director for the Eastern Region for Recruitment and Admissions at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

Sunday Morning: The Shelter

CCAR members and clergy from other faiths were in El Paso, Texas July 28-29th for two days in support of Moral Mondays at the Borderlands. We have invited them to share their experiences in a short series on RavBlog.

Often, at the beginning of the summer, I am invited to bless the boats alongside a priest as families (some from my congregation) make their seasonal maiden voyage on their private boats from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, out to the Jamaica Bay or Atlantic Ocean. The priest makes his prayer as each boat passes in front of us. I offer the Priestly Blessing (sometimes in Hebrew for the Jewish boaters) and a Nisiyah tova or Tzetchem l’shalom as they go by.

That Sunday morning over a week ago in El Paso, families of a different sort “sailed” in front of me and my colleagues, as they passed by through the doors of a hidden shelter for asylum-seekers, following their release from a local detention center.

Thanks to Rabbi Sarah Reines’ preparation for our time in El Paso, we learned that we could volunteer at this temporary shelter for the “lucky” families, who possessed a phone number or a sponsor. They arrive at these “hidden” shelters for a few hours, perhaps even overnight, until they would get on a bus, or into a car, or on a plane, headed to somewhere in the US. A week later, a white supremacist gunned down 22 people in a nearby Walmart. Now I understand why the location of this shelter is secret.

I learned later, that the shelter is staffed entirely by volunteers and that the rent was $60K per month. The shelter had a large room of cots, a children’s playroom, a dining area, an office, rooms to interview families and to make the phone call, a Hygiene Room, and a clothing “store.”

My morning began in the Children’s Room where I stayed for a few minutes. The language barrier was a problem and well, I’m not a “natural” with small children. Since Cantor Jen Rueben had it down to an art, I moved to a room to sort used clothing into different sizes where I didn’t need to speak to anyone. The donated clothing was ratty, nonetheless, it was a change of clothes, something each family member needed. However, when a new busload of asylum-seekers arrived, I was transferred to the Hygiene Room, to disburse toiletries.

It wasn’t really a Hygiene Room, but rather, a Hygiene Closet, an un-air conditioned, two-doored closet. While there, in between families who passed through, my daughter happened to call me on my cell phone. I complained to her about the lack of air-conditioning in the “room.”  She asked me to repeat my complaint word for word back to her. Oh, right, I hadn’t left my town or homeland and walked 500 miles or exorbitantly paid someone to drive me to escape a dangerous situation. Rather, I was kvetching about the lack of air conditioning. Humility is one of the greatest gifts a child can bestow upon parents.

Three years of High School Spanish was for naught. A poster on the door with translations and our charade-game body movements helped Rabbi Kim Geringer and I manage the disbursement of toiletries. But like the story of Balaam and Balaak, every time I opened my mouth, Hebrew came out. Neither a curse, nor blessing, the brain cells dedicated to language had, sadly at that moment, been usurped by Hebrew. Again, another lesson in humility.

After an asylum-seeking family would complete a phone call with a Spanish translator to their sponsor or family member, to arrange for transportation to a home where they would await a hearing, they were sent to the Hygiene Room. Prior to entering the room, there was a box of stuffed animals. With delight, children picked out one stuffed animal and put it into a recyclable grocery bag, that contained the entirety of a family’s earthly possessions. Upon entering the Hygiene Room, where they would receive a large Ziplock worth of goods: diapers in all sizes (they were allotted four diapers), and if needed, a Ziplock bags of infant formula. They received one comb, toothbrushes, one razor, a tube of shaving cream, a bar of soap, one barrette, one hair tie and one headband. One small “travel-size” roll-on deodorant, one hair brush, a small tube of toothpaste, a few tampons or sanitary napkins, one lip balm, and one towel and one washcloth per family member. I invited the girls to select hair ties and barrettes. Alas, there was only one “Elsa” lip balm, which I gave to the first girl who entered the room with her mother. Who knows whether this young girl had even seen the film “Frozen.” Children I know have seen it multiple times.

But I was not there to learn about humility or gratitude. A secondary gain perhaps, but the point was to make this horrific, traumatic trek from Central America a little easier. I was there to volunteer. They did not arrive with suitcases. They arrived with a bag. We didn’t know their stories. We didn’t know their fears. Who knows whom they left behind, or what they left behind, or even where they were going? Which child who came through the “Hygiene Room” perhaps, had to drink water from a toilet? Were these reunited families or separated families? Were they wearing ankle “bracelets” that knew their every move? I do not know the answer to these questions.

We only saw the “lucky ones” who had been released from detention centers.

Nisia Tova and Tzetchem l’shalom, I wanted to say. It was on the tip of my tongue.

—
Rabbi Marjorie Slome serves the West End Temple in Neponsit, New York.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

Is Seeing Believing or Believing Seeing?

Recently, I read a report from the Rand Corporation entitled, “Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing role of Facts and analysis in American Public Life” written by Jennifer Kavanaugh and Michael D. Rich in which the researchers rediscovered that, “…national political and civil discourse in the United States has been characterized by “Truth Decay,” defined as a set of four interrelated trends: an increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and lowered trust in formerly respected sources of factual information. The most damaging consequences of Truth Decay include the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, alienation and disengagement of individuals from political and civic institutions, and uncertainty over national policy.”  While this should surprise no one, it lead to wonder how much decay was really going on with me as it relates to the most pressing issues of our day.  How much do I “know” and how much do I “believe” or want to believe about what is happening all around me.

This concern has surfaced most acutely as it relates to the immigration and asylum seeker policies unfolding in our country and prominently felt in my current home state of Texas. I saw the reports of families separated; I watched in pain and horror of overcrowded detention centers, children sleeping on floors, frantic parents, crying children.  I listened to analyses trying to explain away what I saw, and trying to emphasize what I saw, sometimes in the same news program.  I absorbed the politician’s spin ono both sides of the aisle.  I talked to immigration attorneys and asylum seeker support service providers.  I spoke with a close friend who works for the Department of Homeland Security who works on the border who told me flat out, “don’t believe what you see or hear because it’s all wrong.”  Apart from the irony of insisting I believe him over everything else, part of me knew what he was really saying was, “you gotta see this yourself.”

So when the invitation came from Repairers of the Breach, the Rev. Dr. William Barber’s organization, to join with Rabbi Rick Jacobs,  my friend and colleague Imam Omar Suleiman and others to bear witness to this issue in El Paso last Sunday and Monday, I knew I had no choice but to go and see for myself and this was the time to be a part of the testimony of this great stain on the soul of our country; that there is, in the words of Kohelet, “…a time for tearing and a time for sewing; a time for silence and a time for speaking…” and that time is now.

Upon arriving in El Paso and connecting with URJ and RAC staff, clergy, and congregants from our movement from as far away as New York and Boston, it became clear that this was not just a press conference and an opportunity to march in the Texas heat, but to add a moral voice to a policy problem that will become a defining moment in American history.  We gathered to learn about non-violent direct action – a euphemism for civil disobedience that might result in arrest.  This dominated the conversation for the next couple of hours; will you get arrested?  What does your arrest mean in light of this issue?  Does it matter?  Is being arrested more about you or about the moment and movement?  After the training were honored to hear from a number of powerful and important people.  Dr. Barber Spoke.  Imam Suleiman spoke.  Rabbi Jacobs spoke, as did a few other of our leaders.  But the most powerful witnessing that first night came from people directly affected by the immigration and asylum problems.  There were asylum seekers from Guatemala sharing their ridiculously dangerous and lengthy journey; asylum seekers sent back to Mexico to wait; people who were separated from their parents and children.  It was heartbreaking to hear their firsthand accounts.  It was liberating to hear their words without commentary, derision or spin.  It was maddening to know this is happening in our country, in my state, right in front of me.

The next day was the day we would make our way through the heat to the detention center.  We learned that non-violent direct action and getting arrested would make the work of the local support systems for immigrants and seekers more difficult.  Instead the hundreds assembled would march to the entrance of the detention center and as clergy gathered toward the front, make numerous demands; to pastor to those detained, the end of inhumane conditions at the detention centers, end of family separations, end to the wait in Mexico asylum process.  Of course we were not let in, but as Dr. Barber said, “We condemn and call evil and unjust the caging of people, the making people drink from toilets, the refusal to even give them a toothbrush. You’re holding angels in this place. But you will not hold them forever. We join them now, and not only do we bring condemnation, but we bring hope. It doesn’t have to be this way. America, turn around. America, repent. America, stop. America, change your ways.”

Seeing is believing and indeed I do believe I saw.

—
Rabbi Andrew Marc Paley serves Temple Shalom in Dallas, Texas.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

Silence is Not an Option

“Somebody’s hurting our people and it’s gone on far too long, and we won’t be silent anymore…”

Songs of protest such as this permeated the two days in El Paso this week when faith leaders and people of conscience, including several rabbinic colleagues and cantors, came together in support of Moral Mondays at the Borderlands. Hundreds from across the country answered the call from Reverend William Barber II, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Imam Omar Suleiman and other leading clergy to come witness and peacefully protest the inhumane, immoral, and unjust detention and caging of individuals seeking asylum and refuge in our country, adults and children, countless of whom are still separated from parents (the practice tragically persists according to news outlets on 7/31).

A spirited assembly Sunday evening illustrated the incredible diversity of the group who made the journey; participants reflected every religious tradition, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, and gender orientation. The powerful evening was marked by song, impassioned charges from leading clergy and organizers, the testimonies of former refugees now working with the Border Network for Human Rights to support individuals presently detained, among other memorable moments.

When we came together again Monday morning, Reverend Barber delivered a stirring message in which he tenderly described the love and care with which he attends to the needs of his German Shepherd puppies – providing them special food and treats, bathing them, giving them constant affection and attention. Then with a dramatic shift in tone, Barber thundered the painful and tragic reality that in our country at present, we treat our dogs better than we do fellow human beings, individuals seeking refuge in the hopes of a new home and life.  Minutes after departing the church, we reassembled in a large lot in view of the El Paso DHS detention center.  Protest signs in hand, we marched alongside the street en route to the center, the repeated honking of passersby indicating their support, until we reached the closed gates of the detention center.  There, Rick Jacobs and others prayerfully requested that clergy be allowed to enter the grounds to offer spiritual and pastoral support to the detainees. Unsurprisingly, the pleas went unheard by the Border Patrol agents, but with numerous media outlets covering and recording our presence, we still departed the grounds feeling confident about the impact of our collective voices and presence.  We departed the formal protest appreciating fully that for justice to be realized, our ongoing efforts to bring national attention to the crisis of inhumanity at our border must continue.

Since returning home to Atlanta, a few questions and observations about the time in El Paso have persisted. Among them is one glaring recognition – likely evident in video footage and photos of the gathering – that some of our justice efforts will result in a dais shared with individuals and/or organizations whose virulent views about Israel, for example, are antithetical to everything we believe and hold dear. Though not a new challenge or realization, the situation at the border reminds us yet again that there are times when our abiding need to confront serious and unconscionable injustice necessitates the capacity to set aside deep-seated conflicts regarding one matter in order to marshal energy and efforts for the sake of another cause.

For several participants, the trip to El Paso also raised questions about how to measure the efficacy of such actions. Acknowledging the not-insignificant investment of time and financial resources needed to participate, it begs the question as to whether there might be better or more impactful uses of both. For example, would directing the same dollars to the campaign of a candidate who could potentially help to legislate change be a better use of limited resources? No doubt this question invites debate, but I think it is honestly a bit of a conundrum, with an answers that will likely vary, even for the same individual.  Each of us must determine whether investing financial resources in potential, systemic change or utilizing those same dollars to enable one’s physical and emotional presence in a place of brokenness and pain holds sway. Obviously both can make a profound and lasting difference in people’s lives, bringing into sharp focus yet again why the efforts of the RAC and other agencies that facilitate both expressions of support simultaneously are so critical.

The desperate plight of fellow human beings, adults and children currently held in deplorable detention centers in the name of our country, is urgently calling us to action. The ICE raids evoking terror in cities throughout the south, adding to the trauma of separating parents from children, calls us to action. The current policy mandating that all who are seeking asylum remain in Mexico, in violent communities where their lives are endangered, calls us to action. And the fact that we are part of a faith tradition and sacred spiritual heritage which commands us – more often than any other mitzvah — to care for the stranger…the migrant, the refugee, the asylum seeker, and the immigrant in our midst, calls us to action.  The need for action and justice is undeniable, because “Somebody’s hurting our people and it’s gone on far too long, and we won’t – we simply can’t – be silent anymore!”

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Rabbi Ron Segal serves Temple Sinai in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Categories
Immigration Social Justice

For You Were Strangers…

How fitting. My last official public statement as the CCAR Chief Executive was about protection for the immigrant and the refugee.

I say “How fitting” because my own family’s history is one of flight and immigration.

My sister Karen and I are children of immigrants–our mom fled from Dortmund and our dad immigrated to the States from Vienna. One of our uncles would have been, by today’s standards, an “illegal” immigrant. Our great-grandmother was forced to return from the safety of America to Germany and died in a Concentration Camp.

Our parents saw great opportunities in this country for themselves and for their children—both of whom, to their great surprise, became rabbis!

There is no ambiguity in my world. I am alive because somebody stood up for my parents.

For many of us, such stories are part of our family’s histories. We retell them, and we will never forget them. Today, again, people are arriving in our country, seeking to fulfill for themselves the American dream that we were so blessed to be able to realize for ourselves.

As we grew up in our parents’ home, we were aware that voting was a privilege.  We had come to this country as immigrants. We became Americans. And we were proud to participate in American democracy.   

Sadly enough, on Thursday, we saw the Supreme Court betray its responsibility to protect the right of all people to participate in American democracy. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowed for the continued practice of gerrymandering, which means that some people’s voices in our country go unheard. As Justice Kagan said “Part of the court’s role in that system [of government] is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.”

For decades, the Reform Rabbinate–in partnership with courageous lay leadership, our cantorial colleagues, other Jewish professionals, and our interfaith clergy partners–has led the Jewish community in our shared efforts to protect the immigrant, and the right of all citizens to participate in our government.

Today, we–as Reform Jews, and, often, as children of immigrants and refugees–stand for immigrants and refugees of this generation. We raise our voices for all those who suffer from hate and discrimination, whether it’s because of their country of origin, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, or any other aspect of their identity. Today we look to the next generation of leadership in Reform Jewish life. As Rabbi Hara Person begins her work as the new CCAR Chief Executive, and a new generation of rabbis enters their rabbinates, I am confident that we, as Reform Jews and as children of immigrants, will remain at the forefront of the battle for our values as Jews and as Americans – without any ambiguity.

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Rabbi Steve Fox is the Chief Executive Emeritus of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Categories
Immigration Passover Pesach Social Justice

Let My People Go

Over 1,000 men in detention. Fifty men sharing a dormitory room, sleeping on bunk beds seemingly made out of plywood and nails, topped with thin plastic “mattresses.” Men under constant surveillance, wearing prison uniforms, fed unappetizing-looking meals, and  working as barbers, cooks, or custodians for $1 a day. Days spent mostly lying on their beds, with occasional outings to a cement yard topped with barbed wire. For most of them, they have committed no crime, only exercised their human right to seek asylum. 

These are the conditions inside the New Mexico Otero Detention Center for migrants awaiting a hearing. It is run by the for-profit company Management and Training Corporation(MTC) which collects $100,000 of our tax dollars daily to house these men. There is one part-time physician and one chaplain for all of them. The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office made a surprise visit to Otero in 2017 and “found evidence of the unjustified use of solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions and non-working telephones.”

The Torah tells us 36 times that we are to care for the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Our freedom from slavery is celebrated every year at Passover, which begins the night of April 19. So when I see hundreds and thousands of people from Central America fleeing from violence and desperate poverty, coming to our borders seeking asylum, only to be locked up in detention centers or detained in the elements under a bridge, my heart aches and I am called to action.

This is why I joined HIAS and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights on a recent trip to El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to learn what is going on at our border. I was not unfamiliar with the plight of migrants from Central America. Near where I live in Riverside, CA is the town of Adelanto, a desolate location in the high desert and home to another private detention center, this one run by the private company GEO Group. With the help of organizations such as the New Sanctuary Movement and Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, I had visited detainees there but was never allowed beyond the visiting room. The conditions at Otero were more upsetting than I had expected.

Under international and federal law, people have the right to request asylum. Asylum seekers are not criminals; many are people with legitimate fears of being killed in their countries of origin. Why are we treating them like this? Judaism certainly insists that we are all made b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. How do we as a country justify making a profit off those seeking safety by locking them up in private prisons?

As a rabbi, I take seriously our mandate to free the captive — those who are unjustly imprisoned. The people in these detention centers made dangerous journeys to arrive on our soil. As they await their trial, their detention can last months in these conditions. In El Paso, the rate of deportation following this ordeal is close to 97 percent.

On this trip, we also visited shelters in El Paso and on the other side of the border, in Ciudad Juárez. We met true tzaddikim, righteous people doing everything they can to provide a respite for those on these arduous journeys. At the nonprofit Annunciation House, for example, Ruben Garcia tirelessly places migrants released by ICE in a variety of shelters throughout the area. In fact, ICE would have to release over 600 people a day if Garcia did not provide them with these locations.

At this point, the shelters are being overwhelmed beyond capacity. The day we left El Paso, Customs and Border Protection had begun to detain migrants under the bridge connecting the U.S. to Mexico. We were horrified to witness crowds of women and children behind barbed wire, forced to sleep on the rocky ground outside.

What can you and I do to address this problem? You can support any of the wonderful organizations mentioned above. You can volunteer your time at one of the shelters, whether you live in El Paso or not. And you can bring these stories to your seder table, drawing the parallels between the journeys made by our own ancestors and those of today’s refugees. Let us adhere to Rabbi Hillel’s dictum: If I am not for myself, who will be?  But if I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?

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Rabbi Suzanne Singer serves Temple Beth El in Riverside, California.