Tag: RAC

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omer Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice

We All Count: Counting the Days toward Equality

This blog is the fourth 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. 

As we count the Omer this year in anticipation of receiving Torah, I am also counting the days in anticipation of a Supreme Court hearing on Marriage Equality to take place on April 28, 2015 and then sometime in June when the Supreme Court will likely rule on whether or not there is a right to marry in many of the states that have objected such as Alabama, Michigan, Tennessee and others.  As a long time Marriage Equality advocate I remember the happy summer of love in 2008 in California when I officiated at over 60 Jewish weddings between June 16, 2008 including the first legal wedding between plaintiffs in our California case, Robin Tyler and Diane Olsen.   But on November 4, 2008 it was over as a majority of Californians had gone to the polls to elect Barack Obama on the one hand but pass the notorious Proposition 8 which took away the equal right to marry from Californians.  As I stood on a stage in Hollywood that night at an election rally bubbling from Obama’s big California win, I had to comfort a community that had been sucker punched by an unholy alliance between the Catholic Bishops and Mormon Bishops in Utah and California.  More than 40 million dollars had been spent to demonize LGBTQ people and their families once again. It was the most expensive proposition race ever.

The next days and weeks were spent at rallies and protest marches.  I worked vigorously both in front and behind the scenes.  On the night after the election during a big rally in the city where I serve as rabbi, we began passing buckets to raise money to take this back to the courts. My congregation turned out in droves as did many in the Reform Jewish community who were stunned by the results.  I climbed on to the back of a truck that led the protesters through West Hollywood and back down Sunset Blvd. as my fellow activists and I took turns at the bullhorn.

The next night of protests one of the gay community leaders suggested a march on the Mormon Temple the next day.  I knew this would be bad from the start. As she led the marchers the next day down Santa Monica Blvd from West Hollywood to Los Angeles’ Mormon Temple you could feel the tension in the crowd and in the LAPD.  Traffic was completely snarled during rush hour-never a good thing in Los Angeles and those caught in the standstill were angry that they couldn’t get where they were going. That’s when scuffles began between drivers who got out of their cars and protesters.  More than one bloody fight took place. As the marchers turned toward the Mormon temple, my good friend and interfaith partner, Rev. Neil Thomas and I ended up guarding the Mormon Stake behind their Temple. The protesters were beginning to rush the doors.  It was Rev. Thomas and I that stood between the protesters and the Mormons. Luckily the protestors listened to us, kept to the sidewalk, remained calm and kept moving.

There are so many more stories to tell of that time.  But now this many years later I give thanks that marriage equality is legal in more than 33 states.  And so I am counting down the days-not only to receiving Torah at Sinai once again but toward Tuesday, April 28 when the case for marriage equality heads back to the Supreme Court.  Hopefully, it will be a positive resolution nationwide where marriage equality will be the law of the land everywhere.

The work of justice will not be done though. As long as you can still be fired for being married to someone of the same gender, as long as there are no protections in housing or education for LGBTQ individuals the work of equality and justice is not done.  And so I will still be counting in anticipation of that day and counting on all of you to help make that a reality.

———

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 Denise L. Eger is the founding Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami and the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

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Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Social Justice

We All Count: Last October, I went to Ferguson. Why?

This blog is the third 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. 

Last October, I went to Ferguson. Why?

The simplest answer is that my colleague and friend, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Justice, invited me. There would be an interfaith service and a protest in front of the Ferguson police department. We would stand in solidarity with young leaders crying out for justice following the death of Michael Brown, Jr. an unarmed African-American 18 year-old gunned down in the street by a white police officer on August 9, 2014.

Rabbis, we’ve been taught, show up. We show up at moments of agonizing pain and joyous celebration. We show up to teach Torah, to illuminate moments of holiness. We show up to animate justice and hope in the world.

In 1978, then UAHC President Rabbi Alexander Schindler (z”l) called for Reform Jews to engage in outreach.  He demanded that we “remove the ‘not wanted’ signs from our hearts.”

Twenty-seven years later, Rabbi Eric Yoffie compelled the Reform movement to “fashion our synagogues into face-to-face communities of intimacy and warmth.”  This is what our best congregations are. Like Abraham’s guests, our members need to feel safe, comfortable, and connected. They need a congregation that supports the deep experiences of life; where you are there for other people and they are there for you; where they notice when you are missing and take the trouble to find out why; and where you never face a crisis alone.”

In 2013, Rabbi Rick Jacobs carried the holy light forward: “Audacious hospitality isn’t just a temporary act of kindness so that people don’t feel left out; it’s an ongoing invitation to be part of a community where we can become all that God wants us to be – and a way to transform ourselves in the process. Audacious hospitality is a two-way street, where synagogue and stranger need each other. Hospitality is not just our chance to teach newcomers but, just as important, an opportunity for them to teach us.”

The result: Many of us have listened to these inspiring words and we show up. We’ve worked on opening our hearts and our congregations; we’ve told interfaith couples and GLBT people and Jews of color and those with disabilities that they are welcome in synagogue life; that they count; that we count on them to make the circle of Jewish life complete.

The proximity of “the other” transforms what could be a political debate into a pastoral encounter. These matters are no longer “issues” for debate but people with lives and stories that enrich our congregations and our lives.

Our communities today are the direct results of courageously transforming our congregations from one filled with Jews resembling the mythic “Ozzie and Harriet” to beautifully diverse, holy communities that transcend walls and state borders.

And that means we bear witness to very real pain and suffering:

When a mother comes to her rabbi following the death of Travon Martin and says, “I’m afraid to let my (African-American) son wear a hoodie outside the house,” how does such a statement not shatter our hearts?

Or when another congregant who is African American chokes up, offering the name Michael Brown Jr. at Kaddish, what is our response?

Or when a pregnant interracial Jewish couple sits in our rabbinic study and weeps “Rabbi, if we have a son, how do we keep him safe?”

Surely, stating that everyone counts has political implications.

It is also deeply, profoundly personal. And moral.

For a generation, we in the Reform movement have proclaimed that we seek to expand the tent of Jewish life, to engage in the Biblical process of welcoming the stranger, to practice “audacious hospitality.”

These ideals must go beyond mere sloganeering. If we are to take seriously and count each member of our community—and live into the reality that their stories, their pain, their suffering, their hope—then we cannot ignore the impact of racism and police brutality on the lives of members of color of our congregations and our communities. Our empathy, our compassion, our humanity demands a response to both people we love and people we don’t know but whose suffering is real.

We rabbis must show up and cry out with the voices of the prophets, with moral courage, with a vision of a just society where all our children can realize their dreams. And that means we must stand up and speak out about racial disparities in policing, arrests, and incarceration.

If not us, who?

As Rabbi Schindler so eloquently explained 36 years ago, “Let us shuck our insecurities; let us recapture our self-esteem; let us, by all means, demonstrate our confidence in the value of our faith.”

———

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 Michael Latz serves Shir Tikvah Congregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Categories
omer Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

We All Count: Stacked Against The Underdog

This blog is the first 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. 

In Philadelphia, the Rev. William Barber and the Hon. Robert Reich, along with so many colleagues, inspired us to think about justice. We were challenged to consider: what roles might we play in breaking down structural inequality? What roles do we play, however unwittingly or unwillingly, in maintaining an increasingly unfair system? In what ways are we responsible for the fact that, in 2015 America, certain lives matter more?

This conversation coincided with the release of Robert Putnam’s Our Kids. In his new book, Putnam explores growing inequality in America, considering both its causes and effects. Much was written about the book in the days leading into our convention. I haven’t read it yet, but I find myself agitated by Jill Lepore’s lengthy review essay in the New Yorker, and columns by David Brooks and Ross Douthat in the New York Times.

These lines, from Lepore’s assessment of Our Kids, are at the heart of my discomfort:

“Our Kids”…has a sad helplessness. Putnam tells a story teeming with characters and full of misery but without a single villain. This is deliberate. “This is a book without upper-class villains,” he insists in the book’s final chapter. In January, Putnam tweeted, “My new book ‘Our Kids’ shows a growing gap between rich kids and poor kids. We’ll work with all sides on solutions.” It’s easier to work with all sides if no side is to blame.

By not taking sides, Putnam leaves room for Brooks and Douthat to assert that the erosion of character and morality are at the heart of America’s growing inequality. Brooks takes the softer tone, writing about “habits and virtues” lost in a rush to relativism, while acknowledging that structural inequality exists as well. Douthat is more unforgiving, offering a weak acknowledgement that economic policies can’t be entirely ignored before launching into yet another all-too-predictable denunciation of the 1960s, Hollywood, and the public schools (complete with helpful links to some of his earlier columns).

It was against the backdrop of that reading that Barber and Reich spoke to me. I heard in their words a compelling rejoinder to Brooks and Douthat, bringing the focus back to where I believe it ought to be: the fight against structural inequality itself (and not only its negative effects).

In Philadelphia, Rabbis Organizing Rabbis took our first steps in a campaign focused on the structural inequalities that lead to injustice. With the commemoration at Selma and last summer’s events in Ferguson still fresh in our minds, we talked about how Reform rabbis can organize for power across lines of race and economic attainment. Sixty-two colleagues attended the session, and committed to spending sefirat ha’omer in conversation with each other, holding one, two, or even three relational meetings with colleagues. Trainings are coming at the Consultation on Conscience and by webinar, and this summer we’ll explore partnerships and coalitions, and (re)build and strengthen relationships in our local communities.

Seven colleagues will advance this conversation throughout the omer. Each week, one of us will share a story of bearing witness to structural inequality and how we feel the call to act.  Our series is guided by the principal that “we all count.”  During the sefirah we recall wandering in the wilderness, and we count these days in order to pay attention to and illuminate what we often ignore. This year, the lives of Black men and boys lost very publicly and painfully rendered a conversation about mass incarceration and racial inequality unignorable. This year, our country has accommodated economic inequality at levels not seen since the Roaring  Twenties. This year, we are especially called to acknowledge that everyone matters, everyone counts. Please read our blog postings on RavBlog and the CCAR and ROR Facebook pages. Add  your voice to the conversation in the comments section, and repost.

What will we learn over through this campaign? Perhaps we’ll learn that there is room to talk about values and culture (Brooks and Douthat aren’t entirely wrong), but that most important work lies elsewhere. Our justice system, our health care system, our voting system and our tax code are all stacked against the underdog. Leading (by and large) privileged lives does not give us license to ignore those facts. On the contrary, our privilege compels us to organize in solidarity with those who are beaten down by these systems. Avadim Hayinu.

Rabbis Organizing Rabbis invites all of our CCAR colleagues to be a part of this conversation, through the sefirah and beyond. We all count.

———

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 Larry Bach serves Temple Mount Sinai, in El Paso, Texas.

Categories
CCAR Convention General CCAR News Reform Judaism Social Justice

Join Rabbis Organizing Rabbis at CCAR Convention

“Who knows whether you have come to your position for such a time as this?”

Last week we told the story of Mordechai calling Esther to action for her people just days before our country commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama. We honored Esther and Mordechai, who risked their lives to rid their community of the injustice Haman intended to perpetrate, and then we honored Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, John Lewis and many others who risked their lives to rid our country of the injustice perpetuated by structural racial inequality.

Mordechai called Esther to approach Achashverosh. Rev. Dr. MLK Jr called clergy to join him in Selma. Today, a new, yet familiar, call is sounding. We hear it echoing in newspaper articles and protests all across our country. We hear it in the absence of indictments for police officers at whose hands black men and boys’ lives were lost. We hear it in the statistics comparing the number of black men under some form of correctional control (1.7 million) to the number of black men who were enslaved in 1850 (870,000). Those of us attending CCAR convention will hear it in the words of Rev. William Barber II, who launched the Moral Movement in his home state of North Carolina, during his keynote address. What are we called to do? In his speech in Selma this past Shabbat, President Obama said:

“If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel, as they did, the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize, as they did, that change depends on our actions, on our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”

I want to honor the courage of Queen Esther and those who marched in Selma 50 years ago. I want to respond to the cries of outrage about the racial and economic inequality that plagues America to this day – cries from others and from my own heart. I want to heal and transform the structural inequalities that break on race and class lines in this country. I want to join with rabbinic colleagues to exercise our moral imagination, feel the urgency of now, and take action together.

At CCAR Convention this coming week, Rabbis Organizing Rabbis will begin harnessing the power of the Reform rabbinate to deepen and develop relationships across lines of race, class and faith to dismantle racial and economic inequality. Join me at the ROR workshop on Tuesday, March 17 from 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. to discuss structural inequality – how we as rabbis are affected by it, how rabbis across the country are working on it in their communities, and how we might address it together. Because, perhaps, we have come to our positions for such a time as this.

This blog was originally posted on the RAC blog.

Categories
Immigration Rabbis Social Justice

We Stand with Ruth of Moab, And We Stand With the Ruths of Today

This blog is the last in a series from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis connecting the Omer to Immigration Reform. This Shavuot, we recommit ourselves to working with the modern-day strangers among us. This Shavuot, we stand with Ruth. Rabbis Organizing Rabbis is a joint project of the CCAR’s Peace & Justice Committee, the URJ’s Just Congregations, and the Religious Action Center. Learn more and join the mailing list.  

We Stand With Ruth of Moab 

The Book of Ruth begins with the introduction, “It happened in the days when the judges judged” and concludes with the birth of King David, the representative figure for Malchut, the sephira of sovereignty.  The book itself is a kind of cri de couer for a better time—free of this book’s rampant poverty, loneliness and maltreatment (in Ruth 2:9 Boaz warns his workers not to molest Ruth, implying that they regularly molested other women).  We know that that is the Biblical view of the period of the Judges, when periodically “Israel did what was wicked in the eyes of Adonai” (Judges 4:1 et al.) because “in those days there was no king in Israel; each person would do what was right in one’s own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

For while it was a time when the Judges judged, they did not seem able or interested to judge how they might stop the famine which had sent Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi and her family into exile in Moab to seek food.  In our own time, so many people come to the United States to flee famine, drought, poverty or political oppression, often because they have given up hope that the powers in their own countries will be able to assist them, or care about assisting them.  They too are searching for a sovereignty which cares for them.  They have learned to believe that Americans do care.

To leave Eretz Yisrael for another land was a major decision, just as it is today.  To leave the country of one’s birth, however oppressive its living conditions, remains a difficult decision, never made lightly.  Today’s immigrants, like those in the Book of Ruth, have to abandon family, friends, the only language they know, sometimes the only place they have known.  Naomi, widowed by the man who led them into Moab, speaks of herself often as a bitter woman.

Her husband’s name was Elimelech, “My God is Sovereign”.  Yet what is sovereign in this book?  Naomi seems to believe that for each person—at least in her family—homeland is sovereign; in the book’s most famous passage, 1:14-17, three times Naomi urges Ruth and her sister Orpah to return (shovna)to their homes—the source for the custom of turning away potential converts three times.  They were all immigrants, Naomi held, and with their husbands dead, the sisters should return to the place from which they came.  But Ruth perceives a higher obligation—a higher sovereignty, if you will; using the same word as her mother-in-law, Ruth says, “Don’t entreat me to abandon you, to turn back (la-shuv) from you.”  For Ruth, to “return” to her own home would be to turn away from her proper home—the home she felt called upon to go to, because of her loyalty and love for Naomi.  If this book is a tribute to the rewards that come from following the precepts of the Torah (obedience to parents [or in-laws], caring for the stranger, leaving grain for the poor, etc.), Ruth turns to the sovereignty of God rather than the sovereignty of her own native place.  But the sefirah of Malchut also has a human dimension, representing kenesset Yisrael, the community of Israel—since it is through the community of Israel that God’s sovereignty is manifest.  When Ruth embraces the people Israel in choosing to go with Naomi, she embraces this dual dimension of Malchut as well.

The implications of this decision for today’s immigrants is instructive.  While we usually attribute primarily economic motives to contemporary immigrants’ desire to remain in the United States, we do our country a disservice by playing down a motive similar to Ruth’s: a belief, or a desire to believe, that the United States is a more caring country than the one from which they came.  How often do we tarnish that belief with the insensitivity, fear, and hostility we show particularly to undocumented immigrants, but often to all immigrants! How insensitive we often are to the still present American commitment to being a beacon to the oppressed—to the malchut, if you will, of the “American dream”—and of the American people as, at their best, the embodiment of it.

As a result of Ruth’s decision to remain with Naomi, the older woman feels an obligation to care for her.  A word that pervades the book, chesed, usually translated “love” or “lovingkindness”, really means love borne of a covenant.  Ruth shows chesed to Naomi, Naomi shows it to her, and Boaz shows it to both of them.  This covenantal love stems from the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai, which the Holy One will renew with us when the period of the Omer climaxes with Shavuot.  Devotion to the covenant is a sign of acceptance of the sovereignty of the God who made it—ol malchut shamayim, the “yoke” of the rule of heaven, and ol mitzvot, the “yoke” of the mitzvot.  Ol in Hebrew is related to the word al, above, with the sense that the yoke links us to the God above, rather than the more usual image of joining two creatures on the same level.

Are we ready to feel a sense of “covenant” with the undocumented immigrants of our time?  Are we ready to link them with the memories of grandparents or other relatives who endured many hardships to reach these shores—often out of the same motives as today’s undocumented?  And if we say, “Well, our ancestors came legally,” we forget that most of them came here at a time when immigrants were wanted, invited, encouraged by the state.  Now that the state is hostile to immigrants, to which sovereignty are we going to be loyal, that of a welcoming, covenanting God, or a too often frightened state?  Or, in the language of the Book of Ruth, are we going to be  citizens of a too often uncaring rule of Judges, or of the ideal, embracing sovereignty of God’s Malchut?

The season in which we read this book makes our choice quite clear.

We Stand With the Ruths of Today

Rabbi Shoshanah Conover of Temple Sholom of Chicago speaks with Erendira Rendon, Lead Organizer at the Resurrection Project in the Pilson neighborhood of Chicago. As Naomi stood with Ruth of Moab, Reform rabbis are standing with the Ruths of today – undocumented immigrants like Ere. Watch the Youtube video. 

Rabbi Richard N. Levy is the Rabbi of Campus Synagogue and Director of Spiritual Growth at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, CA. He completed a two-year term as the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and was the architect of the Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism, the “Pittsburgh Principles,” overwhelmingly passed at the May, 1999 CCAR Convention. Prior to joining the HUC-JIR administration, Rabbi Levy was Executive Director of the Los Angeles Hillel Council. He is also the author of A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism.  

 

 

 

Categories
Immigration News Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

We Stand With Ruth: Staying Connected to Our Families

This blog is the sixth in a series from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis connecting the Omer to Immigration Reform. This Shavuot, we recommit ourselves to working with the modern-day strangers among us. This Shavuot, we stand with Ruth. Rabbis Organizing Rabbis is a joint project of the CCAR’s Peace & Justice Committee, the URJ’s Just Congregations, and the Religious Action Center. Learn more and join the mailing list.

In this week’s post, Rabbi Joel Simonds and Reuben Banks, President of University Synagogue youth group and a member of Reform CA, share a powerful video message for the 6th week of the Omer. (Youtube Video)

“As we prepare for Shavuot, as we prepare to receive Torah from Sinai, and all of the beauty that is wrapped in our Torah, this week, the week of the foundation of yesod, We Stand with Ruth. We stand with all our brothers and sisters who seek to keep their families connected, who seek to keep their families together, who seek to keep their families – the foundation of this country we love so much. We stand with Ruth, we stand with all our brothers and sisters.”

Will you stand with Ruth? On this Shavuot, we recommit ourselves to working with the modern-day strangers among us. On this Shavuot, ROR stands with Ruth – and so can you! Pledge to participate in ROR’s Shavuot campaign, “We Stand with Ruth.”

Categories
Immigration News Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

This Shavuot, Will You Stand With Ruth?

To our colleagues and friends:

We created Rabbis Organizing Rabbis (ROR) for the same reason so many of us became rabbis – because we believe in the power of the Reform rabbinate to change the world! We know you feel that way, too. We have the opportunity this Shavuot to stand together and to stand with Ruth. Will you join us?

Please take the pledge to use any part of ROR’s Shavuot liturgy, written by Rabbis Adam Stock Spilker and Shoshanah Conover, and/or ROR’s Shavuot text study, written by Rabbis Erica Asch and Elana Perry.

You can share the liturgy by reading it during services, including it in your synagogue bulletin, sharing it over email, printing or posting it for your congregation/community, or sharing on Facebook or Twitter (using the hashtag #WeStandWithRuth). You can use the text study during your Shavuot tikkun, or in adult education classes leading up to Shavuot.

However you chose to share these ritual components, let us know that you are joining ROR – that you Stand with Ruth – by pledging at rac.org/ROR.

B’shalom,
Adam Spilker, Ari Margolis, David Adelson, Elana Perry, Erica Asch, Esther Lederman, Gary Glickstein, Greg Litcofsky, Jason Rosenberg, Joel Mosbacher, John Linder, Josh Caruso, Karen Perolman, Kim Herzog Cohen, Larry Bach, Mark Miller, Peter Berg, Sam Gordon, Seth Limmer, Shoshanah Conover, Sissy Coran, and Wendi Geffen

Categories
Immigration News Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

Omer: Recalling the Value of Gevurah

This blog is the second in a series from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis connecting the Omer to Immigration Reform.  This Shavuot, we recommit ourselves to working with the modern-day strangers among us. This Shavuot, we stand with Ruth.  Rabbis Organizing Rabbis is a joint project of the CCAR’s Peace & Justice Committee, the URJ’s Just Congregations, and the Religious Action Center. Learn more and join the mailing list. 

This week, we recall the value of Gevurah–strength through judgement. We are taught that true strength must always be tempered by wisdom just as justice is balanced by mercy. We are given the ability, through judgement, to use our strength for good.

We live in a nation that is the most powerful in the world. America has economic, military, and political strength. Being strong, however, must not mean that we use our power with  belligerence or to oppress others.  Rather our strength is to be a positive force in our world. America is a beacon of hope for so many people who live in places where strength and power are misused. This country attracts those who wish to add their talents, loyalties, and creativity to add new energy to our nation.

During this first week of the Omer, we recall the strength of Boaz who protected and sheltered Ruth. He welcomed this stranger from Moab and valued her own kindness shown to Naomi. Ruth labored in the fields as a stranger, a widow, an outcast. But Boaz used his strength to provide for her and for her mother-in-law, Naomi.

We who were strangers in Egypt are taught to treat the stranger as the native. We are commanded to protect the outcast, the widow, the orphan, and the poor. We are no longer slaves in Egypt. We are not the outcasts. We are indeed fortunate to benefit from all the gifts that this strong nation bestows upon its inhabitants. Let us use our own spiritual and political powers to ensure welcome to this land for others, especially  the undocumented adults and children who seek shelter here in this land of freedom. We stand with Boaz. We stand with Ruth.

 Rabbi Samuel Gordon serves Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, IL.

(In case you think you might have already seen this piece, in our excitement about this great series we posted this too early last week.  So here it is again, this time in the right order!)  

Categories
Immigration Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

Omer: Recalling the Value of Gevurah

This week, we recall the value of Gevurah–strength through judgement. We are taught that true strength must always be tempered by wisdom just as justice is balanced by mercy. We are given the ability, through judgement, to use our strength for good.

We live in a nation that is the most powerful in the world. America has economic, military, and political strength. Being strong, however, must not mean that we use our power with  belligerence or to oppress others.  Rather our strength is to be a positive force in our world. America is a beacon of hope for so many people who live in places where strength and power are misused. This country attracts those who wish to add their talents, loyalties, and creativity to add new energy to our nation.

During this first week of the Omer, we recall the strength of Boaz who protected and sheltered Ruth. He welcomed this stranger from Moab and valued her own kindness shown to Naomi. Ruth labored in the fields as a stranger, a widow, an outcast. But Boaz used his strength to provide for her and for her mother-in-law, Naomi.

We who were strangers in Egypt are taught to treat the stranger as the native. We are commanded to protect the outcast, the widow, the orphan, and the poor. We are no longer slaves in Egypt. We are not the outcasts. We are indeed fortunate to benefit from all the gifts that this strong nation bestows upon its inhabitants. Let us use our own spiritual and political powers to ensure welcome to this land for others, especially  the undocumented adults and children who seek shelter here in this land of freedom. We stand with Boaz. We stand with Ruth.

 Rabbi Samuel Gordon serves Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, IL.

This blog is the first in a series from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis connecting the Omer to Immigration Reform. 

Categories
Ethics Immigration News Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

High Holy Day Inspiration from Rabbis Organizing Rabbis

As we enter the month of Elul, we are aware that Tishrei is almost upon us. Sitting in front of our computers, we might think to ourselves “Stop mulling and just write the sermon!” But writing High Holiday sermons really does require that we ponder what to preach. Every year, we ask ourselves the same questions: what message will resonate with our congregants, what are we passionate about saying, and what wisdom do our texts and tradition have to offer us.

This year, there is a new question to add to the list. In the past, I did not think much about what my colleagues were saying in their sermons. I might check in with a few friends, or bounce ideas off some people, but I was never speaking as part of the North American Reform Movement. This year, it will be different.

In 5774, like many colleagues, I will be speaking about the topic of immigration reform. This issue calls to us as Jews. We are immigrants. We fled slavery in Egypt to journey into freedom. More recently my great-grandparents fled the pogroms and mandatory military service in Russia to find a better life here in the United States. We know what it is to wander and to be treated as outsiders.

We also have a chance to make a real difference. The Senate has passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The House will be debating moving a bill to the floor in September, perfect timing for us to have an impact. Imagine what hundreds of rabbis can do together as we preach or teach about immigration reform this High Holidays.   

I’m going to be honest and say that while immigration reform is not my issue, justice is. Acting together powerfully is vital to who I am as a rabbi and who we are as Reform Jews.  At the CCAR Convention in Long Beach, we asked the question: Do we want to act together as a Reform Movement? The answer was a resounding yes, as hundreds of colleagues across the country joined the efforts of Rabbis Organizing Rabbis, a project of the Reform Movement’s social justice initiatives: the Justice and Peace Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Religious Action Center, and Just Congregations.  Since then, we have worked on passing legislation through the Senate. Teams of colleagues in seven states met with key swing senators and their staffs. Many of us gathered in Washington DC for a lobby day, or participated in a national call-in day. Nearly 400 of us are staying connected through the Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Facebook group. We have worked together to amplify the rabbinic voice for justice, but there is more work to do.

Now we have another chance to act together to make a real difference in the debate in the House. In the weeks to come, we’ll share more with you about which legislators are crucial to the passage of compassionate, common sense immigration reform. But in the short term, there is something that only we as rabbis can do: speak from the heart to our congregants about this defining issue of our times.

So, will you join our effort and make preaching and teaching about immigration reform part of your High Holidays this year? To make it as easy as possible we have compiled text resources and sample sermons. If you willing to join the effort please share your thoughts and plans on the Rabbis Organizing Rabbis Facebook group so we can log your participation. And, it never hurts to reach out to another colleague or two to ask them to join us as well.

As we move into Tishrei we have the opportunity to begin our year by speaking out for justice. Join us in showing our legislators, our congregants and ourselves what it means to be part of a national movement and to put justice at the center of the Reform rabbinate.