Rabbi Arthur Waskow 4/27/2004

This past Sunday (April 25), I sauntered with Rabbi Phyllis Berman, my beloved life-partner, co-author, and spiritual guide, in the midst of an astounding sea of women, men, and children in the "March for Women's Lives."

Whether it reached 800,000 or 1,000,000 people, I don't know. I do know it was larger than the two largest Washington assemblages I had previously been part of: the Great March for Jobs and Freedom of August 1963 ("I Have a Dream"), about 240,000; and the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam of October 1969, about 400,000 people.

Phyllis carried a home-made sign of her own: "Another Grandma /Savta Nostalgic for Choice." (We had just come from visiting two of our grandchildren who live in Washington.)

Aside from hers, the signs I enjoyed most were also home-made, coming from that wonderfully American cockeyed sense of humor: " Keep Bush out of my bush," "I don't need a George in my bush," and similar takes on the same wry pun.

I recalled, with some regret, that I had thought about naming the New Passover Freedom Seder "The Seder of the Burning Bush" and holding it near the White House. But some people thought that would come too close to inciting violence. I gave in.

Why did I go to the march?

I could recite theories of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the civil right of privacy. I believe those theories, but they were not the reason.

In 1914, way long before I was born, my father's mother got pregnant once again. She had borne five sons. She and her schneider (tailor) husband could not — either physiologically or financially — bear another child.

So she had an illegal, "back alley" abortion.

And died.

Her death cast a shadow over my father's life, and was still affecting him when he died almost eighty years later.

So if I had been wearing a sign on Sunday, it would have read

"My grandma died because abortion was illegal. NEVER AGAIN!"

Shalom, Arthur

NO EARTH, NO TORAH!