Lifting Toppled Stones to Become a Sanctuary

Terumah 5777/4 March 2017

Thank God for Shabbat!

This has been a long and emotional week for our Philadelphia Jewish community. On Sunday, the Mt. Carmel Cemetery was vandalized, then on Monday, JCCs in Delaware, Cherry Hill, and Wynnewood received bomb threats. Many of us here at BZBI have relatives buried at Mt. Carmel and were worried that their loved ones’ graves had been vandalized. Many of us have children at Perelman Jewish Day School on the Kaiserman JCC campus who were evacuated. It’s been a lot for us.

Sunday afternoon, I was attending an event when I saw an email from Scott Shandler, a BZBI member. Scott had shared the first breaking news report about Mt. Carmel, with a note saying that he and his son, Max, were heading up there. I immediately tapped rabbinic colleagues that were there at the event and we went up to join them. We were not sure what there was to do, but we knew that we had to be there to honor the deceased.

We drove up to E. Cheltenham Ave and Frankford and entered at the top of the cemetery. Scott and Max were already there, along with half a dozen others who heard the news and came. At the top of the hill, only a small number of graves were affected.  As we descended into the cemetery, the magnitude of the desecration overtook us like a wave. The scene was like battlefield with toppled headstones in all directions. Row upon row, hundreds of massive stones strewn haphazardly. I stood there overwhelmed, as Scott called me to start lifting stones.

We lifted the headstones together with neighbors from down the  block, Christian men who had seen the story on TV, with the Quaker groundskeeper of a nearby cemetery who wanted to lend his expertise, with the members of the local Ahmedi Muslim community, who felt compelled to respond. In retrospect, I see that it may have been better to leave the restoration to professional crews with machinery, but at the time we couldn’t imagine leaving the desecrated burial site the way we had found it. This small group of Philadelphians, as diverse as this City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, came together to protect the dignity of those buried at Mt. Carmel who could not do so for themselves. We worked for hours, until the sun began to set and more folks began to arrive, some with pizza and hot drinks, which we welcomed at the end of a cold and windy day. We closed our day in prayer, davenning Ma’ariv amidst the graves with our Christian and Muslim neighbors standing beside us. With tears, we sang of building a world of love.

Whether we were physically at the cemetery or not, the desecration at Mt. Carmel touched our community deeply. We were saddened and angered. We grieved. We were scared. In the context of a surge in anti-Semitism in America to levels we have not seen in over half a century, many of us were shaken this week by the reverberations of anti-Semitic acts throughout our history. The vile act touched us viscerally, striking a chord of epigenetic trauma deep in our kishkehs.

There were also moments of hope. On Monday I felt encouraged standing with 200 of my colleagues, local religious leaders of different faiths who had come together to condemn the vandalism; strangers seeing my kippah stopped me on the street to voice their support; and on Thursday 5,000 Philadelphians gathered on Independence Mall to stand together against hate at the rally sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, at which Mayor Kenney and Governor Wolfe voiced their support for our community.

This is a difficult time for us. And this moment is not like other times when we’ve seen such levels of anti-Semitism in our country. We are in a better position in American society than at other such times. The American Jewish community as a whole has stronger relationships and more power and privilege that we’ve ever had.

I don’t mean to minimize the bomb threats, the swastika graffiti, the bullet holes in synagogue window’s or the vandalism of cemeteries. Every threat must be taken seriously. We need to be vigilant and protect ourselves, without any expectation that others will step forward to do so. As Hillel the Elder says, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי? “If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?” (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14). Also, it would be imprudent to forget that, at times, our privilege has proven tenuous. Still, we have more social capital than we’ve had in the past, and certainly more than lots of other groups in the US.

About a month ago we reach in the Book of Shemot how, on the night of the Exodus, before the Israelites had ever tasted freedom, in the midst of their flight toward the Sea of Reeds, God decides that it is a good time to stop and teach the people some laws, specifically the laws dictating how their descendants will commemorate their redemption, which hasn’t happened yet. At the end, God adds a line that is quite radical. “תּוֹרָה אַחַת יִהְיֶה לָאֶזְרָחוְלַגֵּר הַגָּר בְּתוֹכְכֶם, There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you” (Exodus 12:49).  

One day, God tells Israel, you will be free and empowered in your own land. When you pause to celebrate your freedom and recount the story of your redemption, think of the stranger among you. Remember that you were once that stranger and treat him the way you would have wanted to be treated. But God’s lesson goes beyond that. God stops the Israelites — who are now fugitive slaves, as their task masters are chasing them — to tell them that, even now while you are still a vulnerable and oppressed people you can commit to help others who are vulnerable. Before God would free us we had to learn the lesson that, in the words of Emma Lazarus, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

At times like this when we feel threatened, especially given our people’s past, we may feel an instinctive drive to turn inward, to close ourselves off in fear. Rather than reacting out of fear, the Torah calls on us to respond with strength, hope, love and justice, to look out for the marginalized in society.

 If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?  אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי? We must take care of ourselves, and let us not forget Hillel the Elder’s second line,  וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי?, if we are for ourselves alone what are we? There are many groups in our country who are vulnerable right now to acts of hate and violence and the curtailment of rights, including immigrants, refugees, trans people, people of color, gays and lesbians, Muslims, women, the poor. At times like these when we are experience threats ourselves, as we ensure our own wellbeing and dignity we are called to protect the wellbeing and dignity of others.

In our Torah portion this morning we read about the mitzvah of creating sacred space in which the divine presence may dwell. God tells Moses that the people shall make for God a sanctuary and “I will dwell among them”(Exodus 25:8). God doesn’t say, “I will dwell in it.” God’s presence does not inhere in any physical space. God’s presence dwells in the people who come together to create sacred space and community. Every person is a unique manifestation of the divine, and when we see that the dignity of every person in our communities and in our cities is honored, then we are letting God in, then God will dwell among us. When we ensure that our congregations and our cities are sanctuaries for our vulnerable and marginal neighbors, then they become sanctuaries for God as well.

Many in the American Jewish community have been showing up for our neighbors recently. We have shown up in force to rallies in support of immigrants and refugees, and congregations around the country are adopting refugee families and becoming sanctuary synagogues. Jews have shown up at Muslim community centers and mosques in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, here in Philadelphia and throughout America. We know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of immigration policies and of religious discrimination. And so we’re showing up. And it’s making a difference.

When we show up for our neighbors it strengthens those relationships, and we can begin to build mutually responsive communities together. Recently, the Muslim American community offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the wave of bomb threats to JCCs and explicitly acknowledge the outpouring of support from the Jewish community.

Last week, two Muslim Americans started an online fundraising campaign to repair the damage at the vandalised Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery in St. Louis. They reached their goal of $20K in hours and they immediately changed the language on their page to state that any extra money raised would go toward subsequent acts of vandalism against Jewish sites. Sadly, Mt. Carmel was vandalised only days later. One of the organizers of that campaign, Tarek el-Messidi, is a Philadelphian. When he heard the news about Mt. Carmel, Tarek came immediately to show his support and to tell the Jewish community in person about the funds that they had available for us.

I am so grateful to have met Tarek on Sunday, and not only because he lend me his scarf at the cemetery. Since he and I were among the handful of “first-responders” who showed up on Sunday we both ended up being interviewed by multiple media outlets this week, sometimes together.^[1] We took seriously the responsibility that we were given, for a brief moment, to talk together as a Muslim and a Jew against anti-Semitism and islamophobia. We were able to share with the public our hope and conviction as we take part in reinvigorating Jewish-Muslim relations here in Philadelphia and across the country, in building communities that show up and support each other and work together toward justice for all.

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי? וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי? וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתַי?

If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? And if we are for ourselves alone, who are we? And if not now when?

The third piece of Hillel the Elder’s wisdom came to mind a couple of weekends ago at a conference that Rabbi Abe and I attended in St. Louis. I had the pleasure of studying with a mentor of mine and Rabbi Abe’s, Rabbi Sharon Brous. Over lunch one day, she told me the following story: One day during rabbinical school, she found herself on the Upper West Side, near the home of the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who was sitting shiva for his mother. She told me that she was hesitant to go up. She assumed it would be packed, and that she might not even have a chance to see the Chancellor and offer her condolences. Her husband convinced her to go up for the evening minyan. When they got upstairs, they found that far from the apartment being overcrowded, they were the seventh and eighth people there. They had to go out to the street to get two more Jews to make a minyan! The next day Rabbi Brous went to the study hall at JTS, the beit midrash and told her colleagues what had happened, that everyone assumed that everyone else was going, and so no one showed up, and she urged them all to go the next night. But the next night, the same thing happened. Everyone thought, “well, now that Sharon told everyone to go, now everyone will be there,” and once again no one showed up.  The story hit me hard and I wrote it down and thought about what it meant to show up for each other. The next day, I noticed that Rabbi Brous was not at the closing program. Soon after, I saw that she was posting photographs of the vandalism at Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery, which was only a few miles from our conference. Then it clicked. Then I really began to get what Rabbi Brous was teaching me about showing up, and how hard it is to really internalize the lesson. It’s a lesson that we all need to learn over and over again, right?

If not now, when? When we are called, we show up. It’s that simple. When we see the need, we step in, regardless of who else might or should be there. And in order to be ready to show up when the time comes, we first have to have determined what is important to us. We need to have already thought about what and who are we willing to put ourselves on the line for.

This past Wednesday night, we held gathered upstairs in the Kahaner auditorium for a communal prayer service for hope and healing. We ended the evening look forward, think about translating our prayers into action. Rabbi Abe asked us each to commit to one act of kindness chessed and to put it on a post-it note and post the notes on the wall of the Kahaner. Here are some of the commitments people posted on the wall: “bring dinner to a sick person;” “speak truth to power;” “meet my neighbors;” “I will speak up when I hear racism, bigotry and anti-semitism.”

A week from tonight, we will celebrate Purim and read the megillah together. One line from that book has been running through my head for the past couple of months. After Haman has ascended to power and given free reign to enact his policy of annihilating the Jews, Mordechai delivers a message to Esther that helps her to transform into the powerful catalyst for change who saves her people. He tells her, “כִּי אִם הַחֲרֵשׁ תַּחֲרִישִׁי בָּעֵת הַזֹּאת” (Esther 4:14), “Esther, if you’re silent at this moment, I have faith that God will deliver us from harm somehow or other, but you will have missed your shot. It just may be — and this is so powerful — that the purpose of your entire lineage was to get you to this moment. “וּמִי יוֹדֵעַ אִם לְעֵת כָּזֹאת הִגַּעַתְּ לַמַּלְכוּת?” Who knows? This might be the moment for which you were brought into proximity to power. This might just be the very moment for which our American Jewish community has been blessed with privilege and power, with social capital. 

Today let’s say collectively, “I am not throwing away my shot.” Let’s take this moment to raise our voices, all of us, to forcefully denounce anti-semitism. אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי? Let’s take this moment to stand with all Americans who are marginalized and at risk. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי? Because if not now, when? וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתַי?

Today, I challenge you to commit to one act that will help transform our communities or our country into a sanctuary that reflects the dignity of all Americans  And if you’re feeling stuck or wondering how you might get involved, here at BZBI or in this city, come see me. I’m always happy to talk.

---

Tags: Philadelphia, Social Justice