The Latest from BZBI

An Inescapable Web of Mutuality: Launching a Listening Campaign

Va'erah 5777/28 January 2017

January 30, 2017

Last Shabbat morning, we read about a pivotal moment Moshe’s moral development. Though born an Israelite, Moshe was raised as a royal in the Pharaoh’s palace. He never forgets his true identity. As a young adult, Moshe witnesses and allows himself to experience the full extent of his people’s suffering in servitude. With heart and eyes newly opened, he sees an Egyptian beating a fellow Hebrew. He intervenes and strikes down the Egyptian oppressor.

Moshe’s moral awakening extends beyond defending his own kinsfolk. A few verses later, having fled Egypt, Moshe stands at a well in Midian and witnesses shepherds mistreating a group of Midianite women. Moshe “rises to their defense, saves them, and waters their flock.” (Exodus 2:17) As my teacher, Rabbi Shai Held, wrote in Ha’aretz this week, God appoints Moshe to lead our people out of the house of bondage because the compassion for and willingness to act on behalf of his own people also extends to a “broader human solidarity.” Rabbi Held writes that “Jewish leadership worthy of its name, must not only be offended by — and must not only act against — injustices perpetrated against our own people; as Moshe models for us, Jewish leadership must also be outraged by — and must act against — injustice committed against anyone.”

Our exile in Egypt and the Exodus live in our collective memory and national consciousness. The Exodus marks the birth of the Israelite nation and our covenantal relationship with God. The Exodus is also the foundational paradigm for social justice in the Jewish tradition. Over and over the Torah exhorts us to protect the vulnerable amongst us — the orphan, the widow, and the stranger — for we were once strangers in the Land of Egypt. We are obligated to more than ourselves.

Each year, as we read about these painful and formative experiences, we are challenged to internalize the message of the Exodus. We are challenged to ask ourselves: In what ways do these experiences of our people affect how we treat those individuals and groups in our communities who are most vulnerable? When we see injustice, when we hear the groans of the oppressed, in our community and beyond, how do we respond?

Today, against the backdrop of the Book of Exodus, Sefer Shemot, we will begin a community-wide conversation about how our congregation can respond to injustice together and work to create positive change in our city. Each one of us has a story about witnessing or experiencing injustice, and the ways in which we have chosen to respond, and later we will have a chance to share those stories.

Working for justice is an essential part of my rabbinate and my Jewish identity. I trace this commitment back to my father. My Abba demonstrated for me true moral leadership in the model of Moshe- standing in solidarity with our own people and acting against injustice against any groups or individuals. I grew up hearing the stories of his advocacy work for civil rights and his leadership in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Demonstrations were a familiar occurrence for my brother and me.  I remember going to political events for Congressman Jerry Nadler and Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger. In the 1980s New York had a large homeless population, as did the rest of the city. My father knew many of the homeless people in our neighborhood, and in addition to giving them food, my Abba, the social worker, often stopped to talk to them about their lives and offered to help them find housing and employment. On Passover, my father would invite non-Jewish coworkers and friends to our seders. As we shared the story of our people’s liberation, they shared personal stories of hardship and oppression, and  liberation- people like a Cuban-American colleague who shared the story of his family’s flight from Cuba after the revolution. Hearing those stories as a child, I understood the power of our liberation story to sensitize us to injustice and to galvanize us to act on behalf of all people. I understood that our freedom is intertwined; when some of us are not free, none of us can be fully free.

My most formative experience of organizing for justice as an adult came while I was in rabbinical school. I entered the Jewish Theological Seminary in the first year that openly gay and lesbian students were admitted to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. Along with a group of students, I worked for policy change and culture change to make the seminary a truly inclusive place for LGBTQ students. Traditionally, JTS rabbinical students had spent their Israel year at Machon Schechter, the Israeli Masorti movement’s rabbinical seminary, which did not at the time ordain openly gay students. For reasons of conscience, Annie and I were among a group of five students, gay and straight, who left Machon Schechter to study in other Israeli institutions that welcomed students of all sexual orientations. This action came with risks – with financial costs and fear of academic penalties. And yet, in order to live out our deepest Torah values, we knew we had to act. We were strengthened to know we were not acting alone. During our time in Israel, I served as a rabbinic intern at the Jerusalem Open House, an LGBT center downtown, and met gay and lesbian Israeli students who dreamed of becoming Masorti rabbis. Over the next few years, Israeli students and Masorti leaders pushed forward in their work for inclusion,  two other JTS students studying in Israel followed our lead and refused to study at Schechter. It was not long before Machon Schechter changed its policy. We learned the power of being part of a group standing together for positive change.

I thought of these stories this past Shabbat, marching on the Parkway with 50,000 people for women’s rights. I carried these memories with me on Thursday, as I stood with a group of fellow clergy alongside 10,000 other Philadelphians to fight for healthcare and for the dignity of those who are most vulnerable in our city and in our country.

I saw many members of our BZBI community out in the streets this week, and I thought of all of the BZBI-ers, who are involved in the crucial work of building a stronger, more just, more healthy Philadelphia. In your professional lives, your volunteer work and philanthropy, BZBI members are committed to the common good. BZBI, and the congregations that joined together to form BZBI, have been part of the fabric of the city of Philadelphia for almost two centuries. At a time when other congregations were fleeing across the city line for the suburbs, we stayed put. Our commitment to this city is essential to who we are. Of that, we can — and should — be proud.

Through our Tikkun Olam committee, led by Alyssa Bailkin, we work together for the wellbeing of our neighbors in the city. We hold, among other things a High Holy Day food drive, the #serveforeight 8 days of service over Chanukkah, and we recently opened our doors with our monthly Gemilut Chasadim Closet, where BZBI members distribute coffee, water, and toiletry kits to homeless Philadelphians.

Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with many concerned individuals in our community who have asked how we can do more to help those who are most vulnerable and to respond to threats to health care or the rights and protections of immigrants, refugees, women, African-Americans, with disabilities, LGBTQ folks, Muslims, and Jews. This week, I’ve had many conversations about what’s at stake in these times and how we are responding. My friend, Abby, said, the only thing she knows for sure, is that responding is not a one-person job. Any response is something that happens in relationship, in community.  Whatever we choose to do, we will be strengthened by doing it together.

In the coming weeks we will be launching a social justice listening campaign at BZBI. We want to hear from you about what you and your neighbors are most concerned and passionate about, and we want BZBI to be a place where you can address those concerns and passions.

In doing so, we are committing to work together as a congregation for a more just Philadelphia. We will more deeply involve ourselves in the issues of greatest concern to the residents of our city, and we will rethink how we are expressing our Torah values in the public square. Our social justice task force, now in formation — along with our Community Engager, Terri Soifer and I — will engage the members of our community one-on-one, in house meetings, and a community-wide listening event. We want to hear your stories. We want to learn what issues you’d like BZBI to address as a congregation and what each of you would like to contribute to that work. Based on what we hear from you, our social justice task force will choose one or two areas that our members are particularly passionate about and we will focus our collective energy and resources on those to create positive change in Philadelphia.  The range of potential issues is wide. It could include, just to name a few examples, immigration and sanctuary, literacy, education funding, homelessness, economic dignity, anti-racism or any issue that moves you. The goal is a long-term self-sustaining commitment, with strong lay leadership. And for that we need you. We cannot do this without you. If you are interested in getting involved in this work, please get in touch with me or Terri. We be happy to get together and talk with you.

A congregational listening campaign of this sort can have powerful results. I’ll share with you a few stories of of successful synagogue campaigns:

  • House meetings with 150 members at a large Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, Shomrei Torah, recently resulted in their first ever initiative with the greater LA community- a partnership with Imagine LA, an organization that partners members of churches and synagogues with homeless families to mentor them in budgeting, parenting and interviewing for job skills.
  • In Long Island, house meetings at the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore engaged around 200 people, or 70% of the congregation. It uncovered leaders who had never been active in the synagogue before. It also brought into focus the urgency of the lack of quality home health care for seniors in the area. A series of house meetings at several churches to which a lot of home health aides belonged resulted in a large campaign that leveraged state dollars for transportation for home health care aides working with seniors, and a commitment by a prominent home health agency to recruit, train and hire 100 new home health aides living on Long Island.
  • Germantown Jewish Centre, a Conservative synagogues, held a listening campaign and discovered that many members were passionate about public education and supporting our Philadelphia schools. They have been working along with over forty other city congregations as part of a group called POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild) to push for full and fair funding for Pennsylvania’s public schools. A lay leader, David Mosenkis –son of our members Naida and Bob — did a data analysis definitively showing racial discrimination in school funding distribution statewide. It was brought to the Governor’s office in Harrisburg. A group of organized Philadelphians, with the backing of large numbers of citizens and with powerful data, played a major role in the proposal and passage of a bill in the PA legislature establishing an equitable and transparent formula for allocating new state funds for education.

In all of these cases, these congregational efforts created positive change in their cities, while strengthening the synagogue communities themselves. The process created new webs of relationship, opportunities for people to find their voices in leadership, and a chance for the congregations to reflect on and articulate their values.

We have the opportunity to create positive change, both within our own congregation and out in our city. And engaging in this work as a synagogue has the potential to be both more meaningful and more effective that work done individually in secular contexts. In her book Where Justice Dwells, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, asks the question: Why Do Social Justice Work in the Jewish Community? She offers that, when we take on issues together as a Jewish institution we demonstrate that our Jewish community is dedicated to social justice, and we define the issues important to our communities as “Jewish issues.” When we show up in the public square as Jews, we have the opportunity to bring Jewish wisdom into the public discourse. It is important for us to remember that religious institutions have power; when prominent religious institutions or coalitions of congregations raise their voices, public officials listen. And crucially, Rabbi Jacobs writes that, “engaging our institutions in justice work creates a space in which we can live full and integrated Jewish lives. Our prayers sustain and inspire our actions, and our actions take prayers and texts off the page and into real life.”

As we read our Exodus story over these next few weeks, let us ask ourselves how we are taking our prayers and our Torah texts off the page. How are we we translating these holy words, our ancient obligations, into action?  We know that working for freedom for ourselves and for others is not a simple process. As we read today, when Moshe is called to action, he is filled with fear and self-doubt. He worries about his difficulty speaking, and is afraid that the people won’t listen to him. God promises that Aaron, his brother, will be by his side. Just as it took a whole village to save Moshe’s life – midwives, his mother, his sister, Pharaoh’s daughter – collective redemption will only come about when are working together. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be… This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

We’re going to take some time for this work today at kiddush, as we seek to understand each other’s stories. Who are we as individuals? Who are we as a community? And what can we do together to make our city and our world a better place for all?

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