Tag: Alabama

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CCAR on the Road Social Justice

Truth, Justice and Reconciliation – Day 2

Today started with us learning text, the lifeblood of our rabbinic life, the source of our authority.  It is essential that we not be seen merely as liberals, or worse, “do-gooders,” who can be dispensed with as those who lead with soft hearts instead of sharp minds.

Our teacher was our colleague, the incomparable Rabbi Rachel Mikva, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary.  We started with the classic text from Pirkei Avot 1.18:  R. Shimon ben Gamaliel says:  “The world stands on three things, on justice, on truth and on shalom.”  In Montgomery, Alabama, these words strike directly to the heart.  They seem more compelling and urgent than Shimon the Righteous’ claim that the world stands on Torah, Avodah and Acts of Lovingkindess.

She introduced the notion of “A Torah of Race,” building upon Rabbi Ellen Lippmann’s framing of authentic Teshuva upon core values of confession, regret, restitution and resolution.  The supporting texts from tractates Ta’anit and Sanhedrin forced us to confront what we are required to do publicly to acknowledge our wrongdoing as leaders.  We learned once again how a stolen beam of wood fashioned into a palace might render the entire structure illegitimate. 

We could not look away from our own responsibility regarding the illegitimate structures of the society whose benefits we enjoy, often richly.  We could not evade the debt we owe to those persons who were owned, degraded and denied dignity and opportunity even as our country was enriched by their forced labor.

After our shiur ended, we visited the PowerHouse, where women are cared for and protected when they seek abortions in the state of Alabama.  In the midst of unrelenting harassment, Executive Director Mia Raven and her fearless clinic escorts protect women who need abortions because of their life situations.

Anti-abortion protesters try to thwart poor, needy women, mostly of color, who choose not to bring their pregnancies to term.  They may need money, a bed to wait for 48 hours before the state will allow a simple D&C procedure.  They receive a soothing voice and strong arms to guide them through hostile crowds of men and women who hurl curses and abuse as they walk the 30 feet from PowerHouse to the clinic.

“They have weaponized Jesus,” Mia declared to us.  The irony was not lost on us.  The Prince of Peace in Christianity was being employed as a vehicle of shame,  hatred and violence.  The stories we heard literally took our breath away and underlined that these extraordinary efforts were being taken in the name of reproductive justice, not merely rights.

We went to Selma in the afternoon, Selma of legend and dark fame.  The real Selma is down to only 20,000 people, mostly African-Americans now. There we spent time with Joanne Bland, a fierce woman of color who demands respect and attention.  She walked us through the events of Bloody Sunday, took us to the church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the crowds to motivate them and steel their will.  She told us of her own personal experience and that of her family during those fateful days.  She showed us the concrete slab where John Lewis and the other marchers stood and we each picked up a stone from that sacred place to remind us to be strong and courageous when standing up for justice, as she and all the rest of the marchers had done, even when threatened with death.

Joanne had us drive on our bus slowly, no more than 15 miles per hour, so she could point out all of the significant places of her Selma, a place of so much pain and resilience it took my breath away.  After sharing with us the story of the heroes of the march and its martyrs, we finally began our walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, tracing the footsteps of the heroes from 54 years ago.

Though the bridge is enormous in my imagination, the actual structure is quite modest.  The walk across it is positively placid.  Walking slowly over the span I had to listen silently for the police sirens, the bullhorns, the anguished cries of the beaten from a half century ago.   On the other side is a park and shrine and a chance to speak to another witness who was there, who gives his vivid testimony to anyone who will stand and listen.

Finally we went to the Selma synagogue, Mishkan Israel.  Once a place of thriving Jewish life, it now serves four living members.  The structure is from 1899 and was built in only six months.  Its style is Romanesque and it is filled with rich wood and lovely stained glass.  The president (the youngest of the four remaining members) shared the story of the community and his love for the building.  For the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, the sanctuary was filled like it had not been for years.  But the footfalls have faded and such was the uniqueness of our rabbinic visit that the local television news was there to report on it.

We prayed in the social hall and my silent b’rachot were for mercy, compassion and justice for all who had suffered as well as for the will to respond to the urgent call to combat racism that still haunts our country, North and South, today.  

And I pray now  – God, may our hearts and minds stiffen our backs, gird our loins and guide our hands to combat all those harm Your beloved creatures with their hatred, all who refuse to accept the simplest of our spiritual truths, that we are all one people, all from one God.  We Jews declare that God is One and we are one.  Could any truth be more clear or pressing today?

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

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CCAR on the Road Social Justice

Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

Montgomery, Alabama is a clean, glistening city.  Sunlight dances off the white, marble dome of the Capitol building.  There are posters for an African-American candidate for Mayor this year.  You might think that its terrifying past of racial terror is in the rearview mirror.

But then you talk to Pastor Ed Nettles, lifelong resident of Montgomery.  After sharing his memories of terrifying Ku Klux Klan marches he admits that his white neighbor living next to him turns his back on him every time they are near each other.  After recalling the childhood abuse he suffered from a white man stepping on his hand so he wouldn’t pick up a Mardi Gras necklace, he shakes his head slowly when we ask if things really are better.

He says that it will take several generations of young people who won’t tolerate with the legacy of hate, who will then finally throw off the yoke of this city’s racist legacy.  This is a legacy which still honors Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, which fought defend white peoples’ right to own other human beings, specifically because of their color.

That racist legacy is brilliantly brought to life by the Equal Justice Initiative, the work of Bryan Stevenson, the author of the best-seller, Just Mercy.  The initiative is publicly shared in two parts.

First, there is a museum chronicling the history of slavery and degradation of people of color over the centuries in America.  We walk the exhibits in silent awe and shame. 

But the museum is filled with more the eye-catching pictures and powerful video re-enactments and timelines. In one room there are hundreds of large jars, 24 inches tall and 6 inches wide, filled with dirt.  These soil samples are from where each of thousands of African-American women, children and men were lynched, murdered on the merest pretext, often in front of enthusiastic, blood-thirsty crowds.  Shelf after shelf neatly stacked with row after row of jar after jar – each one containing the DNA remains of a lynching victim listed by name.  We walk by the jars and read the names of the dead in silent awe and shame.

From there we take a shuttle from the Museum to the Memorial.  The memorial is composed of large, 10 foot slabs of metal with the name of more than 800 counties in the US in which lynching took place for the better part of 90 years.  Each slab has the names of the victims listed.   They are suspended from the ceiling of the outdoor exhibit.  We enter and walk the grounds in silent awe and shame.

There is a plaque on the grounds that reads as follows:

For the hanged and beaten.
for the shot, drowned and burned.
For the tormented, tortured and terrorized,
For those abandoned by the rule of law
We will remember.

With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice,
With courage because peace requires bravery,
With persistence because justice is a constant struggle,
With faith because we shall overcome

Yizkor – We will remember.  It feels like visiting Yad Vashem, but with no end of this story. We walk from the grounds in silent awe and shame.

I pound my head with my hand, trying to comprehend – Fellow Americans did these atrocities.  And past has been prologue – Fellow Americans still perpetrate violence against people of color because they are deemed to be of less value than white people.  The past was slavery and lynching.  The present is mass incarceration and violence, even death at the hands of the police and other white people.

At the end of the evening, back at the hotel, I walk slowly back to my lovely hotel room.  In silence and in shame.  And this is just day one.

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

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News Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

America’s Continuing Journey for Justice

Rabbi Seth Limmer

Thirty summers ago, my family packed into the station wagon for a cross-country road trip.  One of the highlights of our entire experience was a visit to the old Universal Studios. My favorite part of the back lot tour, was this trick you could play, back in the day when Universal was a fun-filled studio tour and not a massive amusement park.  After driving through Amity Island and having Jaws attack your boat, after parting through the waters of the miraculously parted Red Sea, there was a random van sitting in an otherwise empty parking lot. This was just a standard seventies junk-mobile: no crazy Cadillac or even quirky VW Minibus. Still, this van was special: it was made out of Styrofoam. Therefore, quite easily, you could lift up the entire “vehicle” with just one hand and hold the rear bumper high over your head. A properly taken photo made it look like you were Superman: saving the day, rescuing whatever family member had the tawdry task of lying down on the ground so you could “rescue” them.  Somewhere there’s a picture of my dad rescuing me from such a crash; I remember thinking how cool it was, and how much I wanted to grow up and be Superman, rescuing the day, just like my dad.

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Fifty years ago, two other phenomenal photos were taken that continue to inspire me, too. This one’s more famous. It was taken on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Captured in the center is Martin Luther King, undaunted, returning to cross that bridge peaceably no matter whet Sherriff Jim Clark had waiting for him on the other side. In the crowd of leaders walking with King stands out a bearded face: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who later famously described the moment crossing the bridge as “praying with his feet.” The second photo, taken three days later in Montgomery—when the voting rights march had reached its destination—featured not only Dr. King with Rabbi Heschel on his right.  Standing immediately to the left of Dr. King was Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, President of the Reform Movement of Judaism. In his arms, Eisendrath holds a sacred scroll of our Torah.  Judaism standing for justice: these photos are the reason I became a rabbi.  

Three weeks ago, I participated in a conference call for the National Conference on Civil Rights.  Because too little has changed in 50 years, most of the call discussed strategy and tactics for a key Voting Rights rally in Roanoake, VA. Yet, towards the end of the call, NAACP President Cornell Brooks asked for “fifteen more minutes of our time” to share with us some important news.  By the time that quarter hour had concluded, I was inspired: the NAACP was undertaking a 40 day march from Selma, AL to Washington, D.C., calling it “America’s Journey for Justice.” The remarkably appropriate headline of the trek was, “Our lives, our votes, our jobs, and our school matter.” Every night of the 860-mile journey, travelers would come together in prayer, and study together in teach-in sessions on the compelling civil rights issues of our day.  A massive rally would celebrate the Journey’s reaching our nation’s capitol, and a large-scale advocacy day for civil rights would follow.

I was “in.” My mind immediately made associations: 40 days of walking towards the promise of a better America were so perfectly parallel with my people’s saga of walking 40 years towards our own Land of Promise.  The two pictures from 50 years ago entered my mind: I knew the Jewish community needed to be on this march, from beginning to end.  Inspired by the image of King and Heschel on the bridge, I wanted to find a way to make sure a Rabbi—most likely a succession of 40 different ones—shared the entire distance of this journey.  Compelled by the picture of Eisendrath, I thought it would be powerful if our Torah scroll didn’t just appear in DC for the final rally, but accompanied us the entire 860-mile journey. I knew I could no longer be inspired by pictures of the past if I wasn’t willing to walk the walk in the present.

This week, our Reform Movement went public with our support for and participation in “America’s Journey for Justice.” Coordinated by our Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C., there will be countless opportunities for participation. Our Rabbis, through the work of our Central Conference of American Rabbis, and our Rabbis Organizing Rabbis campaign, will coordinate no fewer than 40 rabbis walking the distance of the journey, carrying the sacred scroll of our Torah (a scroll from my own Chicago Sinai Congregation, bearing the most appropriate cover “All its ways are Peace”).  The Congregations will come together not just to walk, but to be vocal participants in the many “rally days” to be held in multiple State Capitols along the way.  Learning resources and advocacy materials about voting rights, structural economic injustice, mass incarceration, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement will be brought to the institutions of Reform Judaism throughout America. Those who can walk will form relationships on the ground made through the experience of shared travel; the many who cannot attend will likewise be able to learn about the depths of racial injustice in America, and work to solve them. I cannot wait to see how I, how we, are changed by the experience. And how this shared experience of a Journey for Justice can change America.

I was lucky enough to visit Selma eight years ago. In its lovely Civil Rights Museum, visitors are greeted by a wall covered with post-it notes with the words “I was there” printed across the top.  The remainder of every note contained personal reminiscences of those who stood on both sides of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. It is a wall of powerful testimony.

I ask myself, “What do I want to put on the post-it note that will be read by the next generation?” That I watched the Journey on TV? That I read about it in the paper? No. I want to write, “I WAS THERE.”

This new generation can no longer look at pictures of the past to draw inspiration. We need a new generation of Reform Jewish leaders to step forward and to say, “We were there.” We need to be there today. There might be some who think the task is too big, be it the coordination of multitudes to march 860 miles, or making serious changes to the structural injustices so deeply ingrained in American society. However, if we really want to make our nation a true land of promise for all, we need to take a page out of the old playbook from Universal Studios: we need to think we are Superman, and we need to imagine accomplishing the impossible, we need to believe we can do all that is required to bring justice to our United States of America. And lest we think that is too long a road to travel, we need to remember every journey worth taking begins with a simple step.

I look forward to taking my simple steps on August 1, in Selma, Alabama.

Rabbi Limmer currently serves as Senior Rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation. He is also the Chair of the Justice and Peace Committee of the CCAR. 

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Chanukah Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice

We All Count: Chanukah, Alabama, and Inequality

This blog is the fifth in a series from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis connecting the period of the Omer to the issue of race and class structural inequality.  Rabbis Organizing Rabbis is a joint project of the CCAR’s Peace & Justice Committee, the URJ’s Just Congregations, and the Religious Action Center. 

There is a meditation in Mishkan T’fillah that was carried over from Gates of Prayer: “Prayer invites God’s presence to suffuse our spirits, God’s will to prevail in our lives.  Prayer may not bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city.  But prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, rebuild a weakened will.”  This meditation was penned by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was personally invited by Dr. Martin Luther King to help lead the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in March 1965.  When he returned from that march, Rabbi Heschel wrote, “I felt as if my legs were praying.”

Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King are long gone, but I felt their presence and those of everyone who marched from Selma half a century ago: those who marched and were beaten and clubbed in “Bloody Sunday,” those who tried to march and stopped to pray, and those who finally succeeded in marching to Montgomery, where they heard Dr. King tell us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  I felt their presence and even heard from some of them when I traveled to Selma in March for the commemoration of the marches.

Rabbi Fred Guttman of North Carolina organized a Jewish contingent to participate in the event.  We met at Temple Mishkan Israel, the beautiful (Reform) synagogue of Selma’s now tiny Jewish community.  In addition to Jews, those present included members of the African American community, and among them was a contingent from the North Carolina NAACP.  I made friends with a future divinity student in that group.  We were challenged by Dr. William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP, who reminded us that “moral dissent can never take a vacation.”

We heard from David Goodman, whose brother Andrew was lynched along with Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Mississippi during the Movement.  We heard from Dr. Susannah Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Heschel, about the challenges her father set forth for us.  We joined in as Peter Yarrow sang “Blowin’ in the Wind,” just as he had done in Selma 50 years ago.  And we heard Clarence Young, one of Dr. King’s chief advisors, tell us that “the true story of Selma is the story of the participation of the Jewish people and Jewish leadership.

And we saw a beautiful African American woman, short in stature but proud in bearing, who faced the weapons and the hatred 50 years ago.

Then we left, and with tens of thousands of others, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  It was celebratory, and it was emotional, but it was much more than that.

Our gathering in that synagogue was a form of prayer.  It served to rebuild a weakened will.  Much has gone wrong in our country when it comes to creating a unified society.  The Supreme Court has gutted the very voting rights protections that the Selma march was designed to guarantee.  Since then, states have engaged in campaigns of voter suppression.  Economic inequality continues to grow, and racist actions, some trivial, many not, continue to show up on our television and computer screens.  It is tempting to throw up our hands and let the world go on its way.

But Selma is always there to remind us that despair is not the way.  Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel first met in 1963 at a conference on religion and race.  In his keynote address, Rabbi Heschel said,

“At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses.  Moses’s words were, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go….’  The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end.  Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.  The exodus began, but it is far from having been completed.”

As we move away from Passover, we must recall that we are the descendants of those who challenged Pharaoh.  We are the people who crossed the sea to freedom.  We have to keep crossing it, and bring all those in search of freedom with us.

And this brings me from Passover to Chanukah.  The word means “dedication,” and the holiday celebrates our rededicating the Temple after the forces of oppression had vandalized it.  What I learned in Selma is that we have to rededicate ourselves every day to making this world – God’s temple – into a holy place.  We need to repair the damage that has been done.  That is the true meaning of tikkun olam.  And that is the meaning of Selma.

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis is project of the Reform Movement’s social justice initiatives: the CCAR’s Committee on Peace, Justice and Civil Liberties, the Religious Action Center, and Just Congregations.

Rabbi Tom Alpert serves Temple Etz Chaim.