CiviMail

"Supremes" rob women of Religous Freedom

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 The Supreme Court majority decided yesterday that an employer who has religious or moral objections to birth control can refuse a health-insurance contract that covers it for his employees.

They did this in the name of "religious freedom."

But in fact they refused to recognize the religious freedom, the moral freedom, the conscientious freedom, the freedom of conscience,  of thousands of workers. For the boss, it's money saved. For the workers, it's freedom lost. -- No, not lost. Stolen. A life lived by their own consciences in the most intimate parts of their lives --  stolen.

But they are only women. They have no moral agency, no right to consciences of their own, anyway, The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church and the heads of various "evangelical" denominations have a religious conscience. Even a boss who never goes to church but claims a "moral" objection has a conscience. But a woman who has decided to make her own choice whether or when to get pregnant has no moral choice, no conscience. No religious freedom. Please notice: This is not even about abortion, where it is possible to make a coherent ethical case at some point in a pregnancy that a viable fetus has rights. There is no fetus. No being that has rights.

Where does this come from? Two roots, like many practices: An intellectual formulation that meets the needs of some group for power over others. For the Catholic Church and some other forms of Christianity, a tortured interpretation of the Eden story plus power for a certain body of males. The interpretation in its best-shaped version came from Augustine -- I won't call him a "Saint."  The "original" sin of Eden was not just "original" in the sense of "first." It was the corruption of our origins -- that they came from the pleasure of sex. And the invitation of an archetypal woman --  Eve. So pleasurable sex was sinful. But sex was necessary for the continuation of the human species. Sooooo -- prohibit all sex that was not for procreation. No birth control, no contraception. And since "Eve" had invited all this, men should rule.  What a convenient theory to make "legitimate" the rule of men who claimed to be celibate (though they often lied).

It isn't what Eden was about. It was about refusing to have the self-restraint to leave even one tree uneaten -- to not gobble up the whole of material abundance. When that obligation to our Mother Earth was violated, two dangerous consequences: (1) The abundance vanished: Men had to work hard in the sweat of their faces because  Earth gave forth only thorns and thistles. And (2) Hierarchy entered the human community: If Humanity thought it could rule over Earth, then men would rule over women.

The story was urging the human race to grow up enough to rise beyond both consequences. Humans should learn to invent tools that eased their own labor while nurturing Earth. Women and men should learn to be equal. Nobody thought the first consequence was a command -- no tools! But the second -- aah, no equality!

But not everybody accepted Augustine's tortured -- and torturing -- logic. Not even Catholic women. Every sociological study, every survey, shows that about 97% of Catholic women actually use the very forms of birth control that the male bishops of their church prohibit. In the Church's convenient acceptance of Augustine, each of the all-male bishops has a religious conscience. Women? A laughable idea.

Let me be clear -- this is just as reprehensible when it is male Orthodox rabbis or male imams or males who claim to be the "heads" of any religious community

And of course this has a class and race dimension too. Many women will have the money to buy contraception, even while they are robbed of conscience, But the poor won't. No freedom of religion for THEM. How can a poor Black woman have a conscience?

There will be only two ways to reverse this decision to enforce religious tyranny.  Bodies on the line to vote, and bodies on the line to block and create in the same breath. When the Supreme Court dares again and again to Subjugate, not Liberate, when it denies those "inalienable rights," then get ready to "alter or abolish it." Get ready for a struggle to change the Supreme Court, not just the Senate and the White House. It is necessary but not enough for women to vote, if the Court insists on robbing them of conscience, of religion.

This is as much Subjugation, Tyranny, as police killing Blacks with impunity. As destroying health insurance. As yanking babies from their mothers' breasts at the Southern border. As imposing coal-plant dust and asthma epidemics on poor neighborhoods. As burning California and drowning Midwestern towns to multiply the profits of the Carbon Pharaohs. As pepper-gassing peaceful demonstrators to make space for photo-ops of holding a Bible upside-down.

We must unite to win our freedom, our bodies, our souls.

Shalom and salaam mean not only paz, peace, but wholeness. Namaste means "In you I see God." It is time for all of these. Fierce urgency of NOW. The vote and the body and the soul.

Your action is necessary. And right this moment, please help us help you to make these actions real by clicking on that "Contribute" banner in the left-hand margin of this page --  Arthur

#ShareSukkot2GrowVote.

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Dear friends,

If the religious communities of America are serious about our deepest spiritual teachings of the profound worth of every human being and every species, Growing the Vote is crucial. For Jews, sharing Sukkot (the festival from the evening of October 2 to the evening of October 9) and its profound teachings with the “seventy nations of the world” and drawing on its wisdom to Grow the Vote is crucial.  

We invite you: “Share Sukkot” to “Green and Grow the Vote!"

There are many values hidden in the Sukkot festival that may only show up when you need them. One is hidden in plain sight: Because both Sukkot and the dates of major U.S. elections are connected with the Harvest, Sukkot in every national election year always comes several weeks before the election. The festival could become a period of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual preparation for voting.

Could doing that take the values rooted in and affirmed by Sukkot, giving them a new voice in the broader world? And could that, for many Jews, give richer meaning to and more joy in a festival that has had little intrinsic meaning for them?

We are exploring the second possibility. Let me give an example:

Torah says that the runaway Israelites who had just fled from slavery to Pharaoh sat “in sukkot” (the plural of “sukkah,” the vulnerable “booth” or “hut” in which some sit and eat and even sleep. To remember this sojourn as refugees fleeing for our lives and liberty, we should live in sukkot for the seven days of “Sukkot”   --  with a capital “S,” the name of the festival.

You shall live in sukkot [huts]  seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in huts,  in order that future generations may know that I settled the Israelite people in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Narrowness [Egypt], I YHWH/ Yahhh/ the Breath of Life --  your God. (Lev 23: 42-43)

So Sukkot affirms the value of protection for refugees – – an important issue in the upcoming election.

Another value: the sukkah, a hut with a leafy, leaky roof is open to Earth. Its relationship to the fall harvest strengthens its connection with Earth. Rabbinic tradition teaches that the sacrifice of 70 bulls during Sukkot when the Temple stood represented Jewish prayers for the abundant prosperity of all the “70 nations of the world.”  So Sukkot represents a commitment to a loving relationship for all nations with all Earth.

Easy to see how that affirms a much stronger version of the Paris Climate Accords to work with all nations to make sure that we protect Earth’s ability to nourish every people.

These are values. How can we connect the festival of Sukkot with voting --= to make a real difference for those values?

Already The Shalom Center has prepared a number of posters that honor heroes of the struggle to achieve voting rights for all Americans. Why posters? Because there is a tradition of posting in sukkot the names and pictures of ushpizin -- sacred guests. Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, are traditionally among those sacred guests. Each represents a different aspect of God's world and our lives.

To them we would add Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman – – two Jews and a Black who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during Freedom Summer of 1964 for working to register Blacks to vote in Mississippi. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote a brilliant dissent against a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court which gutted the crucial provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  And many others.

Even these sacred guests are expressions of value and commitment, not action to Grow the Vote. What could happen during and after Sukkot to make the commitment real? Jews and others from the “70 nations” could take time during the festival to make phone calls and Zoom gatherings to make sure that people are ready to vote and know how to make sure that their votes get cast and counted. They could focus on constituencies that often undervote -- Black, Ladinx, and young Jewish communities, for example.

All this we are calling #ShareSukkot2GrowVote.

If you want to work with us on this, please write me by simply clicking “Reply.”  And if you want to help The Shalom Center do this work, please contribute through the purple ”Contribute” banner just below.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste – - Arthur



 

Elders Call: Defend Our Voting Rights

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

[Dear friends of The Shalom Center, For about nine years I have been a member of the National Council of Elders. It is a consulting council of veteran activists who helped shape the great social-change movements of the mid-20th Century. Among its founders was my beloved friend Vincent Harding, of blessed memory.  

[In the midst of the political convulsions of this past six months, we decided to issue several statements that draw upon our experience. One of them is about the current election campaign and various threats to the crucial right to vote. I was one of those most deeply involved in drafting this statement on Dangers to the Right to Vote.

[The Shalom Center is already involved in what we are calling “Share Sukkot: Green and Grow the Vote.” The Harvest Festival of Sukkot comes in every other year just a few weeks before a US national election. We have already prepared and are preparing more resources to make Sukkot in those years a time to express the eco /social justice and peacemaking values of Sukkot as a framework for greening and growing the vote. More information on Share Sukkot will follow. Today I am sharing the NCOE statement – AW, editor]

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF ELDERS

Immediate Release June 25, 2020

We call upon all Americans to exercise this fundamental and essential right to vote. We call upon all Americans to demand the right to vote by mail. We call on all Americans to make clear we will not allow any attempt to steal the election by any means.

Contact
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Philadelphia PA; Frances Reid, Oakland, CA;
Mandy Carter, Durham, NC
E-mail: elders4belovedcommunity@gmail.com

The National Council of Elders (NCOE) Call: Prepare to Defend Our Voting Rights in 2020 Election

We, members of the National Council of Elders, were deeply involved in the great movements of the 1960s and ‘70s to advance American democracy, winning many important victories for freedom. One of the greatest of these victories was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed after the non-violent actions of Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Selma to Montgomery March, which were met with violent repression, killings and brutal beatings.

The right and responsibility to vote in a free and fair election is an essential aspect of democracy. Yet that right has been weakened by two crucial and badly decided 5-4 verdicts of the Supreme Court:

The 2010 Citizens United decision to abolish decades of election law preventing great wealth from buying US elections on the grounds, among others, that corporations were “Persons” entitled to “free speech.” [I would add, No corporation is “made in the Image of God.” Human beings are, and their right to shape the society they live in and the government that governs them is partly rooted in that sacred character. --  AW]

The 2013 decision to cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, the requirement for preclearance to pass new voting laws for jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg brilliantly said, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."

As we prepare for the national election of 2020, the Supreme Court has again attacked the right to cast a vote by refusing to allow an expansion of voting by mail in Wisconsin in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, the citizens of Wisconsin defended their right to vote by showing up at polling locations in huge numbers, despite the danger of sickness or death, similar to the courageous men and women of the South in 1964 and 1965.

We call upon all Americans to exercise this fundamental and essential right to vote. We call upon all Americans to demand the right to vote by mail. We call on all Americans to make clear we will not allow any attempt to steal the election by any means.

The president has threatened to use military force against the American people to halt the practice of free speech and free assembly. We are concerned about the danger that the current holders of power in the federal government may use anti-Constitutional force before or after the election on November 3 to maintain their power.

We call upon the American people to be alert to such danger and to meet it:

With a vast and vigorous turnout of voters, casting no doubt that pro-democracy forces have won the Presidency and both houses of Congress

With maintaining vigilance if the current president is voted out of power, until he is well gone in January

With preparation by resilient grass-roots groups to be ready to apply broad and deep civil resistance, should a usurpation of our democracy be thrust upon us.

Come hell or high fever, we must vote – and we shall!

National Council of Elders Members: Ms. Rachele Agoyo, Ms. Dorothy Aldridge, Rev. Dorsey Blake, Mr. Louis Brandon, Ms. Candie Carawan, Ms. Mandy Carter, Dr. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Rev. John Fife, Ms. Aljosie Aldrich Harding, Dr. Gloria Aneb House, Dr.Shea Howell, Dr. Dolores Huerta, Mr. Phil Hutchings, Ms. Joyce Hobson Johnson, Rev. Nelson Johnson, Mr. Frank Joyce, Rev. James Lawson, Rev. Phil Lawson, Dr. Catherine Meeks, Mr. Gus Newport, Ms. Suzanne Pharr, Ms. Lyn Pyle, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Ms. Frances Reid, Ms. Kathy Sanchez, Mr. Charles Sherrod, Ms. Shirley Sherrod, Dr. G. Zoharah Simmons, Friar Louis Vitale, OFM, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Mr. Hollis Watkins, Mr. Junius Williams, Mr. Bob Wing, Rev. Janet Wolf.

Deceased Founding Members: Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, Dr. Dorothy Cotton, Dr. Vincent Harding, Father Paul Mayer, Mr. Ron Scott.

Facebook contact: National Council of Elders@ncoe20century

 

When Shabbat Is the 4th of July

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

This coming Shabbat is also the Fourth of July.

For Americans, that day embodies the deepest of our internal confusions. That day we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, affirming the equality of all "men" and the responsibility of government to meet the needs of the people – especially for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we affirm the right of the people to alter or abolish any government that does not meet those needs and to substitute new government that does.

That Declaration was written mostly by Thomas Jefferson. Yet he owned hundreds of human beings, and enslaved them. When he wrote about slavery in his native state of Virginia, he wrote “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Yet he owned hundreds of human beings, and enslaved them.

The contradiction between his words and his actions has been repeated through all American history. When slavery was abolished at the cost of many lives, after a brief period when freedom flourished and racism staggered, slavery was replaced by KKK terrorism, lynchings, and Jim Crow. When protests gathered and people risked and lost their lives to make equality real, the Black community created new power bases and racism staggered. But Jim Crow was replaced by a system of “criminal injustice” that began at the point of a policeman’s gun and culminated in unjust bail, unjust courts, and mass incarceration. It was replaced by the massive wipeout of Black ownership and personal capital in the Great Recession of 2008 and the Coronavirus Depression of 2020.

What was the use of the Fourth of July and the Declaration of Independence in all that history? As Frederick Douglass said in an extraordinary speech on July 5, 1852, what was the Fourth of July to a slave? Yet Douglass worked his way through a long speech to say:

… Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.
While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.
Notice that the Fourth of July still bears witness for him, IF. If it is connected to the “obvious tendencies” of the present.  That is a lesson to us. What can we draw on from the past, how do we make that vision take on bodies and action in the present – in ourselves, not elsewhere in the world?

Not only is Shabbat this year the Fourth of July, the Fourth of July is also Shabbat. How can we honor this confluence in a Shabbosdik way?

We can lift up for ourselves as Jews the commitment that goes back about 2500 years. There is an ancient ancestor of the Declaration of Independence. We should add it to the public Torah readings for this Shabbat:

 When you enter the land that YHWH / Yahhhh / Interbreathing Spirit of life your God is giving you, and you possess it and settle in it, should you say: I will set over me a king like all the nations that are around me-
You may set, yes, set over you a king that YHWH / Yahhhh / Interbreathing Spirit of life your God chooses; from among your brothers you may set over you a king, you may not place over you a foreign man who is not a brother-person to you.
Only: he is not to multiply horses for himself, and he is not to return the people to Mitzrayyim/ Narrowland [Egypt} in order to multiply horses, since YHWH the Breath of Life has said to you: You will never return that way again!
And he is not to multiply wives for himself, that his heart not be turned-aside, and silver or gold he is not to multiply for himself to excess.
But it shall be: when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he is to write himself a copy of this Instruction in a document, before the presence of Levitical priests.
It is to remain beside him, he is to read out of it all the days of his life, in order that he may learn to have-awe-for YHWH the Breath-of-Life his God, to be-careful concerning all the words of this Instruction and these laws, to observe them,
That his heart not be raised above his brothers, that he not turn-aside from what-is-commanded, to the right or to the left; in order that he may prolong (his) days over his kingdom, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.
                              (Deuteronomy 17:14-20, in the Everett Fox translation of the Five Books of Moses [Schocken])

What does that warning mean --- your leader, your ruler, shall not return you to Narrowland to buy horses?  

Horse-chariots were the great and expensive weapon of the Imperial Army. (Its jet bombers carrying H-Bombs.) To build and equip that army meant turning the citizenry into slaves in order to pay the bill. But the Breath of Life had freed the Israelites, even when the horse-chariot Army pursued them to the edge of the Red Sea, and the Breath of Life forbade an Israelite king from returning the people to slavery to equip his quasi-Imperial Army. The passage was a more vivid version of what Martin Luther King said when he called militarism one of the deadly triplets afflicting American society.

We American Jews are not only heirs of the Torah. We are heirs of the Declaration, too. And facing society-wide racism, we must also face our own. We are not only “white.” Among us are Jews as Black as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, as swarthy as Anwar Sadat, as colorful as Gandhi and Liu Xiaobo. We could treat the Declaration of Independence as a prophetic commentary, a Haftarah, on the Torah portion we have just read.

Hazan Jack Kessler has done the work of making the heart of the Declaration into a Haftarah. You can watch the exquisite way in which he brings his physical presence, his emotional and spiritual as well as intellectual focus into giving the Declaration new life in a very old form.

To see his “Declaration of Independence Haftarah” click to –
https://youtu.be/WIVDVOg-QkQ

And then we urge that in the discussion we raise questions and create activist midrash about the meaning of the Torah and Haftarah today.  Within the Jewish community and beyond it. Is “community” one of the “inalienable rights"? Is there a right to a livable income, livable time to pause and learn, a livable planet? Are we obligated to risk “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” if we face a government that defaces the Declaration and the Torah?

###  ###
For further thought toward action on these approaches see --

Jack Kessler’s article about his work in Kerem Magazine: Creative Explorations in Judaism Final Issue: #1 “English Leyning: Bringing New Meaning to the Torah Service”
‎kerem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Kessler-Final-PDF.pdf


 And for a collection of speeches like Douglass’ about the original Declaration and new imagining of what a Declaration for our own day might be like, see
https://theshalomcenter.org/treasury/103

Transformative Rebirth of The Shalom Center

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

The Shalom Center was born to play defense. Now it is time to play Transformation.

We were founded in 1983, specifically to speak a Jewish voice against the Reagan-Kosygin renewal of the nuclear arms race. Through the’ 90s until now, we have struggled against the poisonous disregard of various US governments and corporations for healing the wounded Earth. And since early 2017 we have been strengthening struggle against the would-be fascist government of Donald Trump.

All this time it has become clearer and clearer that we are struggling against one of the oldest and deepest tendencies of American culture and society – – the tendency to Dominate, Subjugate, encoded in racism against the Indigenous Peoples and the Black community. We have been struggling to support and redefine the other great impulse – – toward inclusive democracy, love for each other, and love for Earth.

Now we are seeing a great wave of that love – – especially in the form of a multiracial Uprising against racism. And we are also seeing the real danger of a violent attempt to negate democracy altogether, coming from a frustrated would-be fascist President.

When you are standing at the edge of a precipice, at the edge of the Red Sea, with an army of Subjugation right behind you, that is not the time for small and “incremental” steps that will simply drop you into the precipice, into drowning in the sea of the unknown. It is the time for the great leap across the precipice toward justice, toward compassion, toward the Beloved Community. So we are making the turn to Transformation.

Meanwhile, we are facing the need for rebirth in more mundane, more internal ways as well. Our remarkable nine-year-veteran Program Coordinator, Viv Hawkins, has decided to pursue a new life-career as a life coach. So we are looking for someone to fulfill that Program Coordinator role.

And even more intimately, my old computer has worn out its career. I have begun to work with a new one -- both a painful and a joyful experience.

Most intimately of all, I am in the midst of working on two books. One of them is Dancing in God’s Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion. That one is already written, working its birthing process in the womb of its publisher, Orbis Books. It will be born in early October, just in time for Sukkot, the Harvest Festival. It is intended to harvest all the experience, “spiritual” and “political,” of my life – – and like a good harvest, to feed the future.

The other book, How to Liberate Your Passover Seder, is a collection of essays that my beloved Rabbi and life-partner, Phyllis Berman, and I are editing together. That one has about 40 essays, written by people who have actually enlivened and liberated their Seders, public and familial-friendly. The essays have been written, and that book is ready to find a publisher.

The most urgent of all these internal rebirths is our search for a new Program Coordinator. We are looking for someone who has the skills in a wide range of social media and the ability to grow the seeds of new ideas into sprouting, vital plants.  Details are at

https://theshalomcenter.org/content/seeking-program-coordinator-shalom-center-position-description

Please check it out if you seem to fit, or pass this message to your friends who seem to.

Shalom,  salaam, paz, peace, namaste! --  Arthur

This Weekend -- Poor People's Campaign Against Racism, Poverty, & more

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

We are living in the midst of the greatest upsurge in American history of a multiracial Uprising against racism, led by Blacks and encompassing a very wide spectrum of American society.

Friday June 19 we will meet the holy day enshrined by the Black community itself to celebrate the effective date when freedom from slavery came to the Blacks of Texas. This year it is close to becoming an unofficial holyday for all anti-racist Americans.  The Shalom Center will send you some moments of spiritual offering in which all of us can join. 

And then, after years of planning and preparation, on Saturday and Sunday June 20-21, will come national “virtual” days of change-demanding celebration. Originally planned to be a physical day of presence in Washington DC, in the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic it became a decentralized Internet event.

The Poor People’s Campaign knows that systemic racism and multiracial poverty are not only interlocked with each other, but combine with three other evils -- climate crisis and ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.

June 20-21 we are coming together to demand that the 140 million poor and low-income people in our nation — from every race, creed, gender, sexuality and place — are no longer ignored, dismissed or pushed to the margins of our political and social agenda.

The Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington Digital Justice Gathering will be broadcast on Saturday June 20, 2020 at 10 AM EDT & 6 PM EDT and on Sunday June 21 at 6 PM EDT at June2020.org. 

Register today for June 20, 2020.

 At this unprecedented moment, we must tell the truth about the dire failures of our political leaders. We must also demonstrate that it is the leadership emerging from our communities that is paving a different way forward.

 History teaches us that it is exactly in moments like these that a movement of the many is necessary to force the nation into action and that the key to real and lasting change lies in our ability to come together in new and bold ways. Rise with us by registering for June 20, 2020 and join the broadcast on June 20 at 10 AM EDT & 6 PM EDT and on June 21 at 6 PM EDT at June2020.org. 

 Share the news by sending your friends this message.

Blessings to us all -- of shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste!  --  Arthur

Jewishly Honoring Juneteenth

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

On June 19, 1865, the US Army announced the emancipation of enslaved people to the public in Texas – the last of the Confederate states to be liberated from slavery  

 That day each year became known as Jubilee Day and later as Juneteenth, and became a day of celebration, education, community, and political vision first for the Blacks of Texas and then for Blacks throughout the United States. It has been recognized as a special day of celebration by 47 of the 50 states and by some major corporations. It has slowly become recognized and observed by some whites -- especially this year, in the great wave of multiracial Uprising against American racism. (For a history of the day, see “Juneteenth” in Wikipedia.)

Beginning seral years ago and increasing this year, several waays have energed of  Jewishly underling the celebration of Juneteenth. I will review them here. They include sharing a Seder for Juneteeth; suggesting a Kavvanah (focus) for the Blacks killed by racism in reciting Mourners Kaddish on Juneteenth; and shaping a Kabbalat Shabbbat and Havdalah for the day. Each of these is noted below.

Beginning in 2018, some Jews Of Color have shaped a Seder for the day, drawing on the structure of the Passover Seder and using foods, songs, poetry, symbols, and other elements of Juneteenth celebrations. In 2018, a vigorously progressive Jewish group in New York City, Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), observed a Juneteenth Seder and then published its Haggadah at  

https://www.jfrej.org/news/2018/06/jfrejs-juneteenth-seder

As the author of the original Freedom Seder in 1969, the first Haggadah ever to welcome the Black struggle for freedom into the heart of the Passover Seder, I have been especially moved by this introduction of the form of the Seder into a Black holyday of freedom.   And I have been warmed and excited by the notion that Blacks who are not Jewish and whites who are or who are not Jewish might find it a welcome way of affirming and working for the end of American racism. At the same time, I encourage caution in its use – not easily “appropriating” the symbols and practices of Black America.

So I decided to share one sliver of the Juneteenth Haggadah that felt to me especially relevant to the struggle to end racism, and especially both Jewish and universal in its drawing on Torah and on the post-history of the Holocaust to urge a serious discussion of “reparations”  for slavery.  Here it is:

THE SECOND CUP: Behold this cup of wine. Assata taught us: It is our duty to win. We drink to her, to our commitment to winning, and to our ancestors who invested in our winning and building power: Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Ella Baker, Pedro Albizu Campos.

 Raise glass. Say one of these blessings: P’ri hagafen, ito nishteh, “l’chayim!” The fruit of the vine, with it let us drink “to life!”

 Bruchah at Yah, Shekhina, eloheinu malkat ha’olam bora p’ri hagafen. Blessed are you, Shekhinah, Queen of the universe, creator of the frui of the vine.

Baruch atah Yahhh (Adomai)  Eloheinu ruach (melekh) ha’olam borei p’ri hagafen. Blessed are You God, Interbreathing Spirit (Sovereign) of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.בְּרוכָּה אַתְּ יָהּ שְׁכִנָה אֱלֹתֵינוּ מַלְכַּת הָעוֹלָם בוֹּראַ פְּריִ הַגָּֽפֶן.בָּרוךְּ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ רוּחַ )מֶלֶךְ( הָעוֹלָם בוֹּרֵא פְּריִ הַגָּֽפֶן.

Love & Support: We must love and support each other, and for that love and support to have any meaning, it must be material as well as spiritual.

 “The Torah says: And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock ... And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt...”

 Black liberation is something that has been compromised again and again, through actions monstrous and tiny — the incompre-hensible violations we promise to never forget, and the endless diminutions we all decide to ignore.

 White supremacy is centered in Christianity, but Jews with white skin privilege have been enacting it and actively benefiting from it for centuries. In the recent history of the United States, white Jews benefited from the G.I. Bill; moved to, and profited from, racially segregated housing; accepted and enabled massive disparities in education; and received loans, financial aid, salaries, and benefits denied to Black people.

 White folx: even if you personally find the idea of white supremacy repulsive, even if you are afraid of antisemitic neo-Nazis and white nationalists — you still benefit from the culture of white supremacy we all live in.

And so tonight we are asking you to think about what it means to commit to reparation — to take a small but challenging step toward accountability and disinvestment from white privilege — a step that also leads toward a bolder, more moral, more vibrant future for Jews and for all people.

Rabbi Sharon Brous writes: “Most American Jews came to this country years after the abolition of slavery, but we have thrived under a national economic system that was built on stolen land and stolen labor, a foundational wrong that has yet to be rectified. As survivors of generational trauma and beneficiaries of reparations [from Germany, to Israel] granted after the Holocaust, Jews have a special obligation to help advance this conversation.”

In addition, Eric Greene, a member of the board of the Jewish Multiracial Network, has suggested preceding a recitation of the Mourners Kaddish with this kavvanah (‘focus’):


Friends:

This Friday night Shabbat coincides with Juneteenth, the commemoration of the official ending of mass enslavement of African Americans.  In observance of this important day, and in remembrance of the countless African Americans who have been victimized and killed by ongoing racism, we are lifting up the suggestion of Black Jewish journalist Robin Washington and we are asking our friends and allies in the Jewish community—Jews of Color and White Jews, Sephardic and Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, religious and secular, in private or on Zoom—to recite a Kaddish for Black Lives during this Shabbat. 

We are providing the text of Jewish Multiracial Network’s “Black Lives Kaddish” below. Depending on your practice, you may choose to recite it along with the traditional Kaddish or, after candlelighting, join us in reciting Psalm 31 (traditionally recited as a plea for protection from those who would do us harm) on this special Juneteenth Shabbat.  We ask that you share this ask with your networks, friends and contacts throughout the Jewish Community so we may all come together to give appropriate honor to those we have lost.  May their memories be a blessing.                                                   

                    KADDISH KAVANNAH FOR BLACK LIVES

 Creator of life, source of compassion. Your breath remains the source of our spirit, even as too many of us cry out that we cannot breathe. Lovingly created in your image, the color of our bodies has imperiled our lives. 

 Black lives are commodified yet devalued, imitated but feared, exhibited but not seen.  

 Black lives have been pursued by hatred, abandoned by indifference and betrayed by complacency.  

 Black lives have been lost to the violence of the vigilante, the cruelty of the marketplace and the silence of the comfortable. 

 We understand that Black lives are sacred, inherently valuable, and irreplaceable. 

We know that to oppress the body of the human, is to break the heart of the divine.

We yearn for the day when the bent will stand straight.

We pray that the hearts of our country will soften to the pain endured for centuries. 

We will do the work to bind up the wounds, to heal the shattered hearts, to break the yoke of oppression.

 As the beauty of the heavens is revealed to us each day, may each day reveal to us the beauty of our common humanity. Amen.

I suggest that we add these readings to our Shabbat observance, either or both on Erev Shabbat (Friday evening, June 19) or Shabbat morning, fitting in with our attention to the nationwide gathering of the Poor People’s Campaign at 10 am and 6 pm Saturday  and 6 pm Sunday at June2020.org

Bechol Lashon is sponsoring an early Juneteenth Kabbalat Shabbat with Rabbis Sandra Lawson and Isaama Goldstein-Stoll  at --
 
 
And the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) of Chicago and the Kol Or Caucus for Jews of Color are excited to invite you to the 3rd Annual Juneteenth Havdalah on June 20 at 7:00 pm, where we’ll come together as a community to commemorate the emancipation of Africans and African-Americans from slavery.  Please RSVP by clicking here.

Blessings of shalom, salaam, paz, peace, namaste!-- Arthur

Lerner's "Revolutionary Love"

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Michael Lerner wrote his newest book, Revolutionary Love (University of California Press), in 2019. There was already in the world and in his mind’s eye the brutality of the Trump Administration. There was only a hint of the possibility of a world pandemic resulting from the rampant disregard by human institutions – mostly the Hyperwealthy – for the habitat of other species. And though he notes with hope the existence of Black Lives Matter, a massive national Black-led multiracial Uprising against racism was not on the country’s, or Lerner’s, agenda.

What his book is mostly about is an imagined series of social changes that would make America, and the planet, a society focused on loving connectiveness -- not competition and subjugation – and the loving means of getting  there.

 Among his proposed loving alternatives is:

  •  “Gradually disband police forces and replace them with neighborhood  security committees,  trained in de-escalation  and empathic intervention.  (These committees will be backed up in emergency situations by local community forces (neighbors trained to meet violence effectively).” (page191)

 Who knew (I think not Lerner) that this would be on the front pages everywhere while his book was still new?

 The book is peppered with such ideas. The question is how to make them do-able. Not every one of them is going to have behind it the force of an Uprising deep enough to make tens of thousands of people forget their fears of Death by Coronavirus and erupt onto the streets.

 I do want to note one other proposal out of dozens, partly because It is a special concern of mine and because Lerner gives it five pages (pp. 233-238), not just one small paragraph. That is his examination of whether it would be possible to organize in our own society, so different from ancient Israel, the Sabbatical Year commanded in Leviticus 25. 

For Torah, this is the crucial way of preventing both social disaster as economic inequality worsens and eco-disaster as Earth is treated with contempt. The Torah considers this program so central that it is said to come from Sinai, just like “Don’t make idols” and “Don’t murder.” – And so, in Lev. 26, is the recitation of specific disasters that will come if Earth is not allowed to rest every seventh year.  Lerner thinks we could do this Great Sabbath in modern America. Wonder how? Read the book!

 Lerner deals with almost every bristling “Impossible!” and “Unrealistic!” by challenging the “liberal” and “progressive” Lefts that express considerable contempt for “Love” as a transformative possibility. The Lefts’ reaction translates into contempt for religion, the one aspect of American society that still holds some love for Love.  And into contempt for the “deplorables” who depend on religion as their last gasp of breath – and of Love at least in their local communities.

 Lerner recalls the sense of frustrated and frayed connections between people, and the experience of many working-class Americans that their once-upon-a-time liberal allies see them as damaged and disreputable because they seem to be translating psychological and social fears into attacks on “the others.“

 He hopes to bring together the old Left-outs --  Blacks, Indigenous Peoples, Muslims, Spanish-speakers, women,  GLBTQIA communities, Jews – with the new Left-outs --  the “forgotten whites.” He looks to heal their split in part by their economic resentment against the ultra-rich 1/10 of 1%, but more by his appeal to their separate but shareable Love.

 His book ends with what I would call despair masked as hope. As a last resort, Lerner imagines dividing the USA in two, using the new technology that could unite clusters across territory to separate the “Progressive States of America” from the “Conservative States of America.” His comments remind me of the despairing advice on the edge of the last Civil War: “Let the erring sisters [the Southern states] depart in peace.“

But most of all he is hopeful. He hopes that the steps he proposes of actually embodying “revolutionary love” and an ultimate “Love and Justice Party” will enable the creation of a transformed United States.

Responding to the Nation-Wide Uprising

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

 

The overnight news means there is a nation-wide uprising going on, 

 Trump is so far teasing people, partly because he can’t help himself from threatening even more violence – that’s what his ego lives on --   and partly because he may think he can fire up his base and enough other whites out of fear of the “out-of-control” Blacks to win the election without needing to send the Army.  Or he is biding his time and will send the Army in a week. I think we need to make clear five things:

• Our experience in myriad movements of the mid-20th-century and later shows that “nonviolence” worked, and now needs a fuller expression in  the “culture of love and eco-systems" where everybody counts precisely because of their differences, instead of the "culture of hierarchy, domination, subjugation, and violence.”  
 
• We built empowerment of some of the powerless through the vote. Supreme Court decisions that encourage huge amounts of money from the Hyper-wealthy to buy elections and that cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have weakened but not eliminated that success. But it needs to be enormously expanded beyond 1965 anyway, We must do what we can to create a massive vote, and if after the election Trump has lost but tries a coup to hold power we need to be ready with a national strike with local neighborly resilience. 
 
• Our experience was built on a mostly friendly national government,  not an utterly hostile one.  In the present moment, we need to be opposing use of the Army or federalization of the National Guard, calling on mayors and governors to turn to teachers, public employee unions, activists, etc to create peacekeeping networks in the cities, not police and not the Natl Guard, to point toward a NEW kind of order, not the old one.  
 
• There is increasing evidence,  some eyewitness and some by journalists, that much of the arson and looting is being done by RIGHT WING neo-fascists hoping to bring about a race war. Some of those reports will be posted tomorrow morning in the Shalom Reporton June 1. If you don't get it already,  click on "Sign Up for Weekly Emails"  banner on left margin this page, Note that Trump has mentioned outside intervention in  Minneapolis, probably based on FBI reports he has seen, but carefully refrained from saying it’s by right-wing whites – leaving the implication it is Black radicals. This is important for the public to know.
 
• We ought also to urge the creation soon of a series of linked national conferences that brings together the Black community in one, immigrant/ Spanish-speaking and other communities of color in another, Earth-oriented groups in another, women, faith communities,  GLBTQIA communities, etc with links between and among them, to energize voters immediately and a new culture/ Constitution soon.

Deeper: From #Shavuot2Sukkot: Green & Grow the Vote

Submitted by Editor on

[This fall, Americans will hold an extraordinary election –- addressing profound questions of health and life in the midst of a pandemic plague, democracy in the midst of Hyperwealthy pharaohs, and survival of a million species (including our own) in the midst of global scorching.

[At 8 pm Eastern Time on Thursday, May 28, the eve of Shavuot, there will be a Zoom conversation among a range of rabbis, youth activists, cantors and other singers, poets, and organizers about “greening and growing the vote” during the period beginning with Shavuot.

[The Zoom conversation is co-sponsored by The Shalom Center, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Dayenu: A Jewish Call for Climate Action. Faryn Borella is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Ira Silverman Memorial Intern at The Shalom Center. Her essay here draws on the Torah roots of “Grow the Vote.” You can register to join the conversation, including breakout groups for your own conversation, by clicking here:  https://tinyurl.com/Shavuot2Sukkot   -- AW, ed.]

Shavuot as Eco/ Social Contract: Grow the Vote!

By Faryn Borella

Shavuot began as an agricultural festival. A pilgrimage festival. A festival of the first fruits.

Shavuot became a revelation festival. A Torah festival. A covenant festival.

In some ways, these two frameworks can feel like opposite poles. Shavuot as agricultural festival is about earth, land, harvest, offering. Shavuot as revelation festival is about book, mind, intellect, law.

Yet in both instances, Shavuot is about opting into a social contract, a political system, and an ultimate sovereign in Hashem Eloheynu--the divine that is our divine.

In biblical times, during Shavuot, devotees of Hashem from all over the land would make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, carrying their first fruits to offer up to their one true sovereign at the Temple. 

“Early in the morning the officer would say: “Let us arise and go up to Zion, into the house of Hashem our God” (Jeremiah 31:5). Those who lived near [Jerusalem] would bring fresh figs and grapes, while those who lived far away would bring dried figs and raisins. An ox would go in front of them, his horns bedecked with gold and with an olive-crown on its head. The flute would play before them until they would draw close to Jerusalem.

"When they drew close to Jerusalem they would send messengers in advance, and they would adorn their bikkurim. The governors and chiefs and treasurers [of the Temple] would go out to greet them, and according to the rank of the entrants they would go forth. All the skilled artisans of Jerusalem would stand up before them and greet them saying, “Our brothers, men of such and such a place, we welcome you in peace.” The flute would play before them, until they reached the Temple Mount.

"When they reached the Temple Mount even King Agrippas would take the basket and place it on his shoulder and walk as far as the Temple Court. When he got to the Temple Court, the Levites would sing the song: 'I will extol You, O YHWH, for You have raised me up, and You have not let my enemies rejoice over me.' (Psalms 30:2).” Mishnah Bikkurim 3:3-5

In bringing these first fruits to the Temple, the devotees of YHWH were reaffirming, each year, their commitment to the covenant and their trust in the king and the priests to serve their best interests as the appointed officials of Hashem’s order. With their bodies, their movement, their journey, their offering, they reenacted Sinai in their own way each and every year, consenting to covenant and consenting to God over and over again. For, at its root, shevuot means “vows.”  

Their “eco/ social contract” included not only human beings but all the other life-forms that created the harvest and made human community possible: pollinators, earthworms, seed, streams, dew, sun, air, wind.

Rabbis remade Shavuot in their image. Or perhaps they simply unearthed something about the holiday that was always already there. They tugged at the thread of consent, covenant and divine-human relationship and spun it on a new wheel. They spun it into a covenant of klaf. Of black fire on white fire. Of the entirety of unfolding tradition in one moment and every moment.

For “All the people answered as one saying, ‘All that YHWH has spoken we will do.’" (Exodus 19:8). A moment at which we were all there, are all there, and will continue to all be there. And in that moment, we are all saying yes. Yes to Hashem. Yes to rule of law. Yes to the social contract.

Biblical Israel was an aristocracy. Rabbinic Israel was a meritocracy. In neither case do we find democracy. And yet, as our civilizations change, so does our rule of law. So does the way we opt into social contract. In the shift from Biblical to Rabbinic Judaism, you see the way one entered into covenant shifting from bringing offering to the Temple Cult to engaging in the study of Torah, God’s divine revelation. So what is our equivalent in contemporary times. How do we opt into social contract?

Today, social contracts are formed through the process of voting. Through an electoral, representative democracy. Whether that be at a local level within our very own synagogues, or at a national level where we try to change the course of an entire country of mixed multitude, our system is set up so that to vote is to make change. And now more than ever, we need to embrace Shavuot as a time calling us into active engagement in the formation of and consent to our covenant.

But not everyone has equal access to their civic duty, despite what the powers-that-be might try and convince us to believe. In biblical times, only those who owned lands, produced agricultural product and who had the means to make pilgrimage could do so. In rabbinic times, only men of a certain level of literacy could opt into social contract through the act of studying Torah and deriving its law. And now, our electoral system is set up to disenfranchise voters and potential voters whose collective being might actually alter the status quo. Through gerrymandering. Through a racist and classist voter registration process. Through polling hours and the fight against mail-in ballots. And in our own moment, by minimizing the import of free and fair election in a moment of global pandemic.

So on Shavuot, we are not only called to do our civic duty. We are called to ensure that the entirety of klal America can too.

Yet reaffirming covenant doesn’t end in Shavuot, and neither does our election cycle. On the contrary, it is just the beginning. In biblical times, Shavuot served as the beginning of the period of time in which one could bring first fruits as a gesture of reaffirmation of the covenant. The beginning of a time that ended on Sukkot.

Sukkot this year falls shortly before the 2020 Presidential Election. How can we, in contemporary times, use the extended period of first fruits as a time where we too can be in a continuous and iterative process of active participation in covenant-building? How does a season of growth, harvest and offering call us to be more engaged, active and committed to our own democratic process?

In biblical times, every 7th year, during the intermediary days of Sukkot, the entirety of Klal Yisrael was called to gather in Jerusalem before the King, who would recite before them excerpts of Torah that related to covenant with community, covenant with leader, and covenant with Supreme Sovereign, an iterative, systematized process of reaffirmation of the Covenant. This always directly followed the year where the land was called to be left fallow and unharvested.

In this moment of global pandemic, we find ourselves too in a time of being left fallow. Of waiting. Of surrender to forces beyond our understanding. But may we soon gather, in whatever form gathering may become, to be reminded that no covenant can exist without our continuous and willing consent. And that means all of us, not just those of us to which the system is willing to give some power. May we use this time of global pandemic, of first fruits, from Shavuot to Sukkot to ensure that we all can and will give consent, come November, to our form of governance and our leadership. May we ensure that that to which we are consenting is good, just and fair.

From Shavuot to Sukkot, grow the vote!

You can register to join the conversation, including breakout groups for your own conversation, by clicking here: 

https://tinyurl.com/Shavuot2Sukkot  

 

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