CiviMail

Why the Refugees? -- When the US invaded Central America

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Tue, 2018/07/10 - 1:50pm

Children locked in dog kennels, crying by the sides of roads at night, wrapped in glittering Mylar blankets on the floors of Border Patrol processing centers, stowed away in an abandoned Walmart, flown thousands of miles from their parents. The sounds of their wails an “orchestra” to the ears of a border guard, who is heard quipping in audio captured at a child detention center that all that is “missing is a conductor.”

Inside Story Behind the Viral Video“Rabbi Arthur Arrested at 84”

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Tue, 2018/07/10 - 6:48am

We Offer a Handbook for Your Own ICE Action

Dear friends,

. Many of you were stirred by the story of our nonviolent civil disobedience action confronting ICE. Many have written to ask how you could make a difference in your own communities about the Trumpist attacks on refugees and immigrants, especially at the southern border and especially against families -- sending little children to prison camps.

So I am writing to describe how our action emerged, how we organized it, and what the results were.

To help you even more to create your own actions, here at The Shalom Center we have set up a small collection of items from the ICE action at which we were arrested: our press release, a “Did you know?” list about the back history of social chaos in some Central American countries, the program we used of chants and songs. We offer it to you as a model, a handbook, to use and modify if you find it helpful in your own situation. It is at <https://theshalomcenter.org/ICEActionHandbook>

The story begins on June 20. Someone I had known in the ‘60s in a different city called me to ask whether I would be interested in a possible direct action challenging ICE. I said I was. He said he had been talking with five or six other people who were veterans of the movement to end the US War against Vietnam, and they too were interested.

We worked out a date when somewhere between six and 10 of these people could gather, and we met. Most of the people were new to Phyllis and me, and we were clear about the need to ask how the people in the room whom we did know could vouch for the people we didn't know. They did.

When we were set, a couple of people reviewed some ideas about what we could do to keep alive the issue of brutal treatment of refugees and immigrants. After Trump had issued the Executive Order, some of us wondered whether the energy around the issue would now die out. Phyllis, with great energy, said that the children ripped away from their parents were already being deeply traumatized and that for her the most immediate demand is for the children at once to be reunited with their families. It was already clear that Trump’s executive order did not address that question at all, and she was burning with the need to end the devastation and traumatization of these families.

Most of the people in the room agreed. So then we focused on choosing a specific action

To frightened children, we Sow the Seeds of Compassion ---

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Thu, 2018/06/28 - 7:36am

And we ask you to join with us.

This past Tuesday, at the invitation of the American Federation of Teachers, Phyllis and I flew to El Paso, TX, on the very border of Mexico and the USA, to visit a children’s “detention” center (hear “prison”) and to deliver schoolbooks, teddy bears, etc etc as tools of keeping the kids sane and connected to loving care and learning.

Officials at the prison refused to let us even give them these items for the kids, let alone give them to the kids themselves. Why? Orders from above. Who would forbid giving gifts of love and learning to kids who have been yanked out of their parents’ arms?

We also held a vigil / press conference between the El Paso and federal courthouses, and then a prayer circle at the edge of the prison, at which each of the clergy shared a prayer. One participant, Harold Levine, videotaped my thoughts/prayers/ citations of American “Torah” & biblical Torah. You can hear me “sing it and say it” here:

<https://theshalomcenter.org/ElPasoJune2018> (Only 2 minutes, 40 seconds.)

And he caught a fragment of Phyllis’ sharing, a mother’s sharing:

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fhJOnpLDcIv-oIcAtnJ7ctJNgkS6FekD/view>

Among us were Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, and Dolores Huerta, iconic organizer of Farm Workers and the Latinx community more broadly. (I had never met her face-to-face, but she greeted me with a big smile of recognition. Told me she had read and loved my emails among our comrades in the US Council of Elders, veterans of the last great upheaval -- of the ‘60s & ‘70s).

And also among us were several dozen national, international, and Texas-local union teachers; about a dozen Latinx organizers; and a number of multireligious clergy, including six rabbis -- Sharon Kleinbaum, Sharon Anisfeld, Mike Moskowitz, Stephanie Ruskay, Phyllis Berman, and me, and Sarah Brammer-Shlay, a rabbinical student who has an astonishing job as “Rabbinic Research Fellow” for the AFT.

Next, in order to “Reunite Separated Families NOW” and “Stop Imprisoning Refugees NOW,” will be nonviolent civil disobedience for some of us, including Phyllis and me. And for many thousands of us this Saturday, June 30, huge rallies in Everytown, USA.

Click <https://act.moveon.org/event/families-belong-together_attend1/search/> to find your nearest.

As you already know from my email a few days ago, Phyllis & I spent last Shabbat in Washington DC, at the Erev Shabbat and Shabbat morning prayer-and-action services sponsored by the Religious Action Center, in close alliance with the Poor Peoples Campaign / National Call for Moral Renewal, and then at the multi-issue teach-in and the march sponsored by the Poor Peoples Campaign.

Next week at the ALEPH Kallah and a few weeks later at the National Havurah Institute and a week later, at New CAJE -- the Jewish teachers gathering -- I will be teaching on Eco-Judaism and the ways of bringing new life into Torah and drawing new life from her.

Now there are three moments in Jewish time we are exploring, to give them new vitality and us new strength to face the great crises of our generation :

observances of Tisha B’Av as a Lament for Temple Earth;
using an existing fast day or proclaiming a special Ta’anit Tzibbur, a Communal Fast in Time of Calamity, in recognition of the deep dangers to human lives, to American democracy and to world livability that we are now experiencing. The Constitutional walls against tyranny are falling, one by one, to the onslaughts of a mindset as destructive as the Babylonian Empire was when it broke down the walls of ancient Jerusalem;
and “Share Sukkot: Grow the Vote.”

We are doing this on a staff of two and budget of less than $150,000. It is exhausting. It is also exhilarating. We work hard, out of commitment. Our outreach is amazing! But Money is frozen energy. It must be unfrozen in the service of healing, for change to come.

We cannot keep doing this without your help. Do you want us to keep planting the seeds that bear rich fruit in eco-social justice? If you do, I ask you to click on our maroon “Contribute” banner on the left-hand margin of this page, and reach deep for your tax-deductible gift. Can you aim at a minimum of $180?

Twelve thousand people have asked to receive the Shalom Report.

Let’s give them – all of us -- the gift they – all of us -- want to receive, the ideas, the emotion, the sacred wisdom old and new that strengthens us to work with compassion, for compassion. Against cruelty.

Thank you. As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed. -- Arthur

A Shabbat Shalom in Action

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2018/06/25 - 9:19am

The 40th Day: Birthing the Poor Peoples Campaign.

A Letter from Rabbis Arthur Waskow & Phyllis Berman

[Rabbi Waskow is director of The Shalom Center. Rabbi Berman founded and for 37 years directed an innovative and intensive school for adult immigrants and refugees from all around the wprld to learn English and America, and has a special concern about attacks on immigrants and refugees by the present US government.]

Dear friends,

The two of us had an extraordinary Shabbat day before yesterday (June 23) in Washington DC, from two perspectives: a Jewish perspective on the vision and work of the Poor Peoples Campaign, and the wonderfully multi-issue, multi-“identity” fusion vision and work of the Poor Peoples Campaign itself. It was the 40^th day and the culmination of the nation-wide work so far, which involved thousands in nonviolent civil disobedience in state capitals all across the country. This day was intended to be a beginning, not an end.

As Rabbi Jeff Roth taught us, the recurrent "״"40 motif in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels may be rooted in the real length of human pregnancy –- 40 weeks, not 9 months. So the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival began with Mother’s Day and lasted 40 days of pregnant maturation, to be born for a new life yesterday as a continuing movement.

The Jewish perspective first: Since the Poor Peoples Campaign had chosen a Saturday for this action, the Reform movement could have chosen either to keep hands totally off (which for some years had been their stance on social-justice actions called for Shabbat) or to enter with a strong Jewish action that flowed from Shabbat and into Shabbat. Their choice did a lot to bring Jewish and even more multireligious and spiritual depth and breadthinto the Poor Peoples Campaign action. We say "even more" because all along, the Poor People's Campaign has shaped itself as a "National Call to Moral Revival."

The Reform movement's Temple Sinai Erev Shabbat service and the 45-minute Shabbat morning service sponsored by their Religious Action Center were rich and creative. (Full disclosure of one dimension of why we felt good about it: : On Friday evening, to our utter surprise, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, head of the RAC, singled Arthur out among clergy present for having been a prophetic voice long ago and still. That certainly felt good.)

There was fine singing, and pointed comments from old or new tradition (e.g. a passage from Michael Walzer about living everywhere in some version of "Egypt"; Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s Ahavah rabbah). As part of the service Friday night, Reverend Barber gave a brilliant sermon on the various aspects of what the Poor Peoples Campaign is doing. And after he spoke, all the multireligious clergy present (lots!!) were invited to come up and physically bless Rev. Barber with the Priestly Blessing, Birkat Kohanim. Incredibly powerful moment!

For Shabbos morning, for the 45-minute pre-Rally Shabbat service a multitude of rabbis and Rev. Liz Theoharis, the co-chair of Poor Peoples Campaign, were given roles -- each of the rabbis in tiny slivers, so that many could take part. Arthur was invited to lead the Torah blessings. It seemed to be not an opportunity to teach in any way, till Phyllis suggested he use his responsibility for the Barchu and the brochas to teach the meaning of our new forms of the Brachot, and that we have ready a leaflet with our alternative version of them so that people could use them if they wished.

So that’s what we did, and he was able to get across at least a hint of why “Ruach Ha'Olam” ("Breathing Spirit of the wprld") instead of “Melech Ha'Olam” (”King of the world") and “Yahhhh” (simply a breathing sound) instead of “Adonai, Lord.” About half the aliyah-niks – called up for one Aliyah honoring people who had done nonviolent civil disobedience for the Poor Peoples Campaign -- used the alternative version of the brochas.

Then Arthur added one more piece. Why, he asked, are we doing “Barchu” (the prayer "Let us bless," calling us into community) for the Torah service anyway, after doing it already at the beginning of the Service? Aren’t we already a community? He said it was to teach us that becoming a community is not a one-shot deal, like getting onto a plateau and that’s it. We have to keep growing into an ever fuller community.

And then he said that in our case, for our day, we need to grow our community to include Central American families who are fleeing terrible violence, and he quoted the Torah verse that prohibits sending runaway slaves or serfs back to their masters –- instead, they must be allowed to live anywhere they choose “within our gates.” And the Torah adds, "Do not maltreat them!" (Deut. 23: 15-16) There was a strong murmur of support for that.

After the brief morning service, the Poor Peoples Campaign began its “rally” around the 5 major issue-clusters it had proclaimed. Direct front-line victims / survivors spoke. That was really great. PPC really tried to and mostly did join “a face” with “a fact.” That is, it was in many ways a multi-issue teach-in, focusing on facts of poverty, racial oppression, eco-devastation, etc., each spoken by someone who was suffering in the result. Live-streamed nationally & internationally. Interspersed with songs from great social-justice choirs.

Then there was a two-hour march around the Smithsonian campus. The march was itself a community. We met up with friends from Philadelphia who had come to DC that morning and with a number of people whom Arthur had known when he lived in DC 30+ years ago, and we made connections with folks we had never met before.

Last time we took part in a Poor Peoples Campaign action, the heat and long walk had exhausted Arthur before we could get to the arrest site. So this time we borrowed a light-weight foldable wheel chair from a temporary-lending collection of the Germantown Jewish Centre. Phyllis was the chief wheel-pusher, AND a number of people -- some good friends from Philly, some total strangers -- were wonderful about taking a turn to push. Community-building is the destination, community-building is the path.

Tonight, the two of us are flying to El Paso TX to visit one of the refugee child “detention centers” (prisons). The delegation we are in includes several other rabbis and other clergy. It is being organized by the American Federation of Teachers out of the commitment of teachers to childreen, and its president, Randi Weingarten, will take part. . We’ll write more afterward.

In our joy over this wonderful birthing of the next stage, let us not forget the pain of children and their families ripped apart at the border, not yet reunited. Please link to <https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=25&reset=1> to sign a petition for reuniting them NOW, and for making asylum a reality, as the Bible, US law, treaties the US ratified, and the best instincts of the American people all require. "You who have fled your beloved homes for fear of horrifying violence, come live where you choose within our gates."

May the week ahead be filled with our creating sparks of holiness as we respond to lightning flashes of cruelty---

Shalom, Phyllis & Arthur

SHORT & URGENT: "FAMILY REUNIFICATION NOW"

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Fri, 2018/06/22 - 11:16am

The “policy change” announced yesterday by Mr. Trump was barely a change at all and leaves traumatized children still with no way of reconnecting with their families. Our demand: FAMILY REUNIFICATION NOW! Trump’s reversal proves that his previous assertions that he had to rip families apart because it was the law were trumped-up lies.

For Families at the Border: IMMEDIATE ACTS OF COMPASSION

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Thu, 2018/06/21 - 11:26am

[By Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Berman*]

The American people have stood up! – against an encroaching tyranny that has been forced to take one tiny step not even back, but to one side. Even after the President claimed to change his policy, children as I write are being airplaned around the country, often with no ID, in a way that will make it almost impossible to reunite them with their families. The struggle for justice and compassion continues.

We suggest these action proposals for the immediate next stage of struggle for a spiritually and ethically rooted immigration policy for the United States. And we need to look more deeply into the ethics of “immigration” around the world as it morphs into great waves of refugees desperate for safety, on the one hand, and on the other hand into tidal waves of hypernationalist fear of losing a national culture and sense of identity.

The immediate and the deeper questions are connected. The deep moral collision over ripping children out of their families has been a lightning flash in the dark, lighting up the deeper issues beneath. But like a lightning flash, it may vanish before we can attune our eyes to see the deeper truths and questions.

We want to pursue those questions without losing sight of the most urgent needs exploding every day along the US, German, and many other borders. Reluctantly, we see the need to separate these immediate action needs from the deeper exploratory needs. Keep tuned!

1. PRAY OR MEDITATE [ACTION]: If you wear a Jewish tallit (prayer shawl) wrap it around yourself and say: ”May these fringes be for me always threads of connection to all humanity and all the Earth.” With or without a tallit, choose your own psalm or whisper, “You Who are the Breathing-Spirit of all life, help me remain conscious that all those who are gathering at our national borders bear Your Image in them, on them. Help the children and the parents who gather there to be nurtured by each other’s breathing as by Your Own.”

2. PETITION

Please sign a petition with two demands. The text and the signatures will be sent to at least one Senator and one Member of Congress to use in debates and discussions and to place in the Congressional Record.Here is the text:

" urgently demand the immediate prohibition of all separations of families and the immediate reunification of all families already separated by ICE and the Border Patrol in dealing with claims of asylum or efforts to immigrate, and the immediate admission to probationary asylum and welcome into our society -- NOT by new imprisonment -- of families from Central American countries that are under extreme pressure of violence, while their cases are investigated.

"We call upon White House aides John Kelly and Stephen Miller, Attorney-General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, all of whom have brought their power to bear directly on carrying out the recent cruel policy:

“Open your hearts to compassion and turn in a new direction. Not only ripping families apart but imprisoning families for requesting asylum as they flee unbearable violence is an abomination. Announce that you will no longer carry out a policy built on burnt-out cinder blocks of cruelty. Commit yourselves o finding and reuniting with their families every child you have ripped away. If that requires quitting, quit.

“We offer you three days’ time for repentant reversal or repentant resignation. If you then harden your hearts like Pharaoh of old, refusing to change, we will seek your immediate impeachment, removal from office, and prohibition on ever again holding office under the United States.”

ACTION: Please click to <https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=25&reset=1>

to sign.

[FURTHER ACTIONS: Call your Senator or Congressmember at 202-224-3121 and urge them also to strongly support H.R. 6135, the Keep Families Together Act, which has over 100 cosponsors in the House, while the Senate companion bill has the support of almost 50 Senators. ]

[Action: Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 and ask for Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller. Call Homeland Security at 202-282-8400 or 202-282-8495. Call the Attorney-General at 202-514-2000 or 202-353-1555.]

[ACTION: Wait three days and call Congressperson Jerrold Nadler, 202-225-6906, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee and of its subcommittee on the Constitution. Point person for impeachments]

### ### ###

ACTIONS BEYOND THE PETITION

Visit an ICE (Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement) office and speak with stubborn compassion and concern to ICE workers who have themselves been carrying out this policy with their own hands.

[ACTION: To find a local office of ICE near you, click to

<https://www.ice.gov/contact/field-offices> and then click on your state. Note down the local offices that pop up, choose one to visit, visit along with a friend or a crowd, give the agents gifts of child-made crayon card saying “Kids & families belong together and free!” and start the conversation this way:]

“Do you have children? Grandchildren? How would you feel if you and they were living in a town where violence was totally out of control and the risk of rape or murder for you and for them was very very high?

"Would you after years of fear and struggle run away to another country? How would you feel if the choices you were given in that country were being sent to prison or back to death? How would you feel if your children had already been ripped away from you and nobody knew where they were? No contact with you, no information on what happened to them? Who is feeding the baby who was literally yanked off his or her mother’s breast, nursing? Who is changing diapers, holding them when they cry?

“Could you bear it if you were the target, not the enforcer? Can you bear it if you are the enforcer? What could you personally do to stop it? Could you talk with your co-workers? Could you get five or six of them, along with you, to simply stop doing it?”

2 . [ACTION: If you live near a child-detention or family-detention center, arrange with members and clergy of your congregation to visit one of them -- e.g., in Allen, Texas. Ask to talk with the children. Insist as long and as strongly as you feel able. Choose whether to sit at the door and risk arrest if they won’t let you meet the kids. ]

3. Support the lawyers who are trying against great odds to bring the legal system to bear in protecting these families. [ACTION: Click to Central American Legal Assistance in Brooklyn , which has been doing this work since 1985 and deals with thousands of immigrants and refugees every year: <https://www.centralamericanlegal.info/donate/> ]

4. Get together with your neighbors to read and discuss the article in the left-hand column of the Home Page, which looks at the more basic issues through biblical and spiritual eyes. See --

<https://theshalomcenter.org/families-torn-apart-lightning-flash-cruelty-power>

* Rabbi Waskow is the founder (1983) and director of The Shalom Center, a prophetic voice in the Jewish, multireligious, and American worlds. Rabbi Berman was the founder (1979) and director through 2016 of the Riverside Language Program, an intensive and innovative English-language school (six hours a day, five days a week, in multiple six-week sessions) that over the years worked with thousands of newly arrived immigrants and refugees.

Families Torn Apart: : A Lightning-Flash of Cruelty in Power

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Wed, 2018/06/20 - 11:46am

The Lightning Flash that Reveals our Hidden Cruelties and Lights our Way to Compassionate Action

The American people have stood up! – against an encroaching tyranny that has been forced to take one tiny step not even back, but to one side. Indeed, it is even now moving ripped-away children without adequate ID. They may never be reunited with their famiies. Disgusting! The struggle for justice and compassion continues.

Some immediate actions will still be needed. We will suggest these action proposals for the immediate next stage of struggle for a spiritually and ethically rooted immigration policy for the United States. AND -- we need to look more deeply into the ethics of “immigration” around the world as it morphs into great waves of refugees desperate for safety, on the one hand, and on the other hand into tidal waves of hypernationalist fear of losing a national culture and sense of identity.

^^^^^^ ^^^^^^

Our Hidden Cruelties & New-Found Kindnesses -- Now Visible

[Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I were the initial drafters of this Shalom Report petition about the crisis of US government action to tear apart families at the border. Rabbi Berman was the founder (1979) and director through 2016 of the Riverside Language Program, an intensive English-language school for newly arrived immigrants and refugees.

It has been modified in consultation with its initial signers: Sahar Ahlsalani, co-president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation; Cherie Brown of the National Coalition-Building Institute; Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the American Jewish University; Rabbi Raachel Jurovics, president of Ohalah: Rabbinical Association for Jewish Renewal; Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, member of the Board of Truah; Rabbi Ellen Lippmann of Kolot Chayeinu/ Voices of Our Lives, member of the Board of Truah; Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service; Rabbi Susan Talve of Central Reform Congregation in St Louis; Rev. Nancy Taylor of Old South Church in Boston; Rev. Rick Ufford-Chace and Kiitty Ufford-Chhase of Stony Point Retreat Center; Rabbi Elyse Wechterman, executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association; Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz of Uri L'Tzedek. --Rabbi Arthur Waskow, editor]

In hundreds of vigils and millions of letters, phone calls, and emails, we have witnessed a deep level of moral outrage that has responded to the forcible splitting of families and traumatization of children by agencies of our Government.

Not only outrage but action as well has been bubbling over. Later in this essay we offer forms of action that would express compassion in the means we choose as well as the ends we seek. Only compassion can cure cruelty.

A wide wave of religious folk stand in and with that outpouring. Specific sacred verses from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other Scriptures speak to this moment.

One leading official of the United States Government has claimed that biblical calls to obey the law are paramount here. We affirm that the Bible actually speaks the contrary.

Some officials are saying – even boasting -- that the policy was deliberately intended by its ruthlessness to deter families from coming to the United States, seeking asylum because of well-founded fears that their lives and the lives of their children are in immediate danger if they were to stay in Central American countries that have been overwhelmed by violence.

But the Bible sees the world through God’s commitment to justice and compassion: "You shall not hand over to their masters slaves [or, some translators say, “serfs”] who have escaped from their masters to you. They may dwell with you in your midst, in the place which they choose within your gates, wherever it seems best to them. You shall not maltreat them.” (Deuteronomy 23: 15-16)

Of course neither the biblical understanding of serfdom, indentured servitude, or slavery nor the experience of these refugees today, fleeing murder and rape and seeking asylum, is identical with the past of chattel slavery in the United States. Yet their experience bears elements of the same ruthless and violent subjugation. And this biblical verse is uncanny in its direct address of the crisis we face now, even more than other, broader teachings about love and justice for “foreigners.”

And the “law” that Attorney-General Sessions cites to subjugate love and destroy our families is not law at all. It is a policy concocted by elements of the present US government that actually violates the law. It is intended to keep asylum-seekers from making their case as they are entitled to do both by US law and the binding law of the land, embedded in treaties the US has ratified.

It is about “laws” like these that the Bible speaks and Isaiah (10:2) cries out, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

Out of exactly that Prophetic outlook, Jesus broke the law, nonviolently. That’s why he was crucified. Does the fact that the Roman Empire crucified Jesus mean that it is legitimate for the United States Government to destroy the lives of children and parents? Or does it mean exactly the opposite?

There is a reason that one of the key moments in the story of Pharaoh is when he orders babies killed (Exodus 1: 15-22 ). And in the Christian story, one of the key moments is when Herod orders children killed in the “Massacre of the Innocents.” (Matthew 2: 16; imagined below). Those are the moments when a tyrant becomes monstrous.

Outrage at these actions comes from a very deep gut level. The “prime directive” for every species, including the human species, is to make sure the next generation thrives. The children! You can only rip children away from their families by dehumanizing the people you are facing. Down that path lies genocide.

The cruelty we are witnessing is being blatantly exposed as intrinsic to racism and militarism. All societies face the dangerous impulse to exalt only their own culture as fully human and treat others as sub-human. Indeed, for centuries, American policy has ripped the children of enslaved Africans, African-Americans, and Native Americans away from their families.

But the vision and hope of the Bible, the Quran, and other sacred wisdom is summed up in the Bible’s teaching, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:39) and the Quran’s teaching (49:13): “O humankind, We have created you from a single pair of male and female [as one family], and appointed you diverse cultures and communities, that you may get to profoundly understand one another [not to despise one another].”

Centuries of struggle between carrying out this ultimate religious wisdom and descending into dehumanizing “the Other” have been like a case of blood poisoning that at first is hidden and then breaks through into the bright red streak of inflammation that signals extreme danger. We have seen those red streaks before, and we see them now.

Does all this mean the opening of US borders to an unknown unbounded number of refugees, without limits or planning? No. There are solutions rooted in compassion, not subjugation. Here, for example, might be one approach:

Ripping Children from Parents: Torah vs. Trumpery

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Fri, 2018/06/15 - 8:21am

Last night I took part in the coming-together of about a thousand people, jamming both sides of the street for a city block at the local ICE office in Philadelphia. (“ICE” = “Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”)

On barely 24 hours notice, all of them were protesting the actions of ICE to disrupt families on the southern US border, to traumatize distraught kids and parents. I’ve been to dozens of vigils, rallies, and whatnot in Philadelphia, and there were hundreds of people at this one whom I had never met. There were two hours of home-made signs, chants, songs, tears, many many very short speeches by people who came up from the crowd. (This sign, "You've got ICE Where Your Hearts Should Be," was made and carried by Rabbi Phyllis Berman.)

People are outraged by what has been happening. It’s the highest level of outrage I’ve seen this whole 18 months. People can identify with what it’s like to have children ripped away from their families.

And the outrage comes from a very deep gut level. The “prime directive” for every species, including the human species, is to make sure the next generation thrives. The children. You can only rip children away from their families by dehumanizing the people you are facing. Down that path lies genocide.

There is a reason that one of the key moments in the story of Pharaoh is when he orders babies killed. And in the Christian story, when Herod orders children killed. That is the moment when a tyrant becomes a monstrosity.

--- All the atrocities we are facing, all the issues in tte "Fusion Politics" of the "Call for a Moral Revival" put forward by the Poor Peoples Campaign, come to a head in this moment. The cruelty we are witnessing is being blatantly exposed as integral to racism & militarism. It is like a blood poisoning that at first is hidden and then breaks through into the bright red streak of inflammation that signals extreme danger. And for the sake of traumatized children -- who, we now know, actually have their brain structures damaged by trauma -- it is urgent to act.

Clear demands: 1) The immediate end of all separations of families and the immediate admission to probationary asylum of families from Honduras, El Salvador and other Central American countries that are under extreme pressure of violence, while their cases are investigated; (2) Immediate impeachment and removal of the head of ICE and the Secretary of Homeland Security

This is what a true morality looks like:

Effective politics, including fusion politics, is always about knowing where the cutting edge is in which our side of the slice is much bigger than the other side of it. I think this is it. The Trumpist behavior is absolutely consistent, and I think they have gone too far.

Yesterday an organizer asked me:

"What would you say to [ICE agents] if you could talk to them directly. Not the bosses, but the line workers. What would you say to them?"

My answer:

Do you have children? Grandchildren? How would you feel if they were ripped away from you or from your kids, if it’s grandchildren we are talking about, and sent to a fenced-in jail? No contact with their parents, no information on what happened to them? Who is feeding the baby who was literally yanked off his or her mother’s breast, nursing? Who is changing diapers, holding them when they cry?

Could you bear it if you were the target, not the enforcer? Can you bear it if you are the enforcer? Could you read Exodus I: 15-22 (about Pharaoh’s order to kill children, and how a couple of women resisted.) Could you read Matthew 2:16 (about Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents)? Could you read Deuteronomy 23: 15-16 (about welcoming runaway slaves to live wherever they want in the land)? What could you personally do to stop it? Could you talk with your co-workers? Could you get five or six of them, along with you, to simply stop doing it?

Attorney-General Sessions has just defended his actions by citing biblical passages that counsel obeying the law. But first of all, he and ICE have construed the law so as to prohibit asylum-seekers from making their case. He has invented the law that he then insists that refugees obey. Indeed, his behavior itself violates the law – the Treaty on Asylum and Refugees carved out after World War II and the experience of Jews who were denied asylum. And there is no law requiring ICE to rip children from their families.

For the Bible, laws imposed by an unjust and unaccountable government are not the standard for behavior. Isaiah (10:2) cried out, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

What is more, out of exactly that outlook, Jesus broke the law, nonviolently. That’s why he was crucified. Does that mean it’s OK for the United States to destroy the lives of children and parents because Rome crucified Jesus? Or does it mean exactly the opposite?

Moreover, if Mr. Sessions wants to quote the Bible, let us quote him this:

"You shall not hand over to their masters slaves who have escaped from their masters to you. They may dwell with you in your midst, in the place which they choose within your gates, wherever it seems best to them; you shall not maltreat him.” (Deuteronomy 23: 15-16)

We might call this to the attention of his down-home folks in Alabama and to his church in Washington DC And in letters to our Members of Congress and Senators and to the editors of our newspapers. And to the workers at ICE offices all across America. We might – and we should.

For if the present government of the United States has chosen to become the Pharaohs of old and the Roman Caesars of old -- tyrants, murderers, and monsters -- then it is time for a Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority.

National organizers of the protests seem to be Families Belong Together https://www.facebook.com/pg/familiesbelong

And we do not need to wait for a national plan to respond to Pharaohs and Caesars on our own. ICE exists everywhere. And so do we.

Mourning Temple Earth: Tisha B'Av for Our Generation

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Wed, 2018/06/06 - 3:11pm

This summer, Tisha B’Av -- the traditional Jewish fast day of mourning for the destruction of two Holy Temples in Jerusalem -- begins Saturday evening July 21 and ends Sunday evening July 22.

This timing may offer more space than usual for exploring how to make it not only a memorial of past disaster but a forward-looking practice in the spirit of the closing words of the biblical book that is read that day -- Eicha, the Book of Lamentation: “Chadesh yamenu k’kedem: “Make our days new, as they were long ago.”

On 9 Av the summer of 2010, the summer of the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, The Shalom Center held a demonstration at the US Capitol that used an English-language version of the Book of Lamentation. It did "make our days new." It was focused not on the ancient Jerusalem Temples but on Temple Earth today, protesting the lack of government action to control the Carbon Pharaohs that are scorching our planet, devastating neighborhoods or regions,and killing humans and other life-forms, like this sea gull in the Gulf eight years ago.

This reinterpretation of the ancient Book of Lamentation was written by Rabbi Tamara Cohen, then an intern at The Shalom Center.

Rabbi Cohen’s “Eicha for the Earth,” chantable to Eicha trope, treats the endangered Earth itself as the Holy Temple of all the cultures of Humanity and of all lthe life-forms of the planet, now under attack by Carbon Pharaohs as the Temple in Jerusalem was attacked by the Babylonian and Roman Empires.

Hundreds of people, including members of other religious communities and also a number of “secular” but spiritually concerned environmental activists, took part in 2010 -– maybe the first time in history that a sizeable number of non-Jews observed Tisha B’Av.

We have used “Eicha for the Earth” a number of times in the years since, in various Jewish communal observances of Tisha B’Av. Last year, the National Havurah Summer Institute used it on Erev Tisha B’Av, which fell on the first night of the Institute. People responded with great excitement and involvement.

This summer, could congregations add the reading of "Eicha for the Earth" to their own observance of Tisha B'Av? In communities across the country, could Jews join in multireligious groups, working with climate activists, to create public multireligious events similar to what we did in 2010, prayerful and powerful?

There is ancient midrash that looks deeply into Tisha B’Av to see it as not only a uniquely Jewish experience but as a crystal of universal experience. Says the Talmud, “When was the first “Eicha”?

The answer: ”Ayekka,” using the same consonants with different vowels. God’s own wail of disappointment in the Garden of Eden. Obviously pointing to a universal human experience of exile, the ruination of the first Temple of all humanity --- the delightful Garden of all Earth.

For the text of “Eicha for the Earth” and for the pattern of an observance of Tisha B’Av that includes it and other sources that speak of grief and also of hope and joy, in the tradition that Mashiach is born on Tisha B’Av, see https://theshalomcenter.org/node/1733.

For an exploration of rabbinic midrash on the universality of Tisha B’Av, see https://theshalomcenter.org/content/mourning-temple-earth

Also, Rabbi Phyllis Berman and I wrote a midrashic tale called “The Last Tisha B’Av” about how the Mashiach, in a truly Messianic way, goes about building the Third Temple as an act of Jewish-Muslim reconciliation. On the afternoon of Tisha B’Av, for Mincha when traditionally t’fillin are wrapped and the hope element is renewed, we have told the story, and various communities have used it this way without us, on their own. You can see it at --

<https://theshalomcenter.org/content/last-tisha-bav-tale-jewish-muslim-reconciliation>. People have written us that they found it very moving.

You might want to do in your own community what we did in Washingon in 2010: Bringing together a sizeable multireligious crowd to chant the wrenching words of "Eicha for the Earth" at a public place could challenge political or corporate leaders to go beyond their apathy or greed.

I would be glad to hear thoughts from any of you-all about these approaches and to hear about any plans you make to use either or both of these resources. Write me at <Awaskow@theshalomcenter.org>. And please, if you do use "Eicha for the Earth" in any of these ways, let us know. If it is comfortable and appropriate for you to take a photo, we would love to see it.

Comment on this essay or share it here -- <https://theshalomcenter.org/content/mourning-temple-earth-tisha-bav-our-generation>.

Torah Study, Eco-Science, & Activism

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on Sun, 2018/06/03 - 7:16am

Ecological Devastation & the Poor Peoples Campaign

Several weeks ago, Truah: A Rabbinic Call for Human Rights decided to support the organizing efforts of the Poor Peoples Campaign by supplying Torah-study texts and questions for the six different focuses of the six different weeks of the 40-day PPC campaign. Truah asked several rabbis, including me, to provide these texts and studies.

The way this was to work: Each of us proposed some texts of Torah (in the broad sense: the Hebrew Scriptures and rabbinic commentaries) that dealt with the key Spirit--rooted areas of the PPC campaign: poverty; racism; militarism; ecological devastation and health; jobs, income, and housing; and “a fusion movement rising up in response to a false moral narrative.”

Along with the texts we chose, we provided some questions to encourage and enrich exploration of these issues from a Torah perspective. We did not provide “correct answers”; the purpose was to encourage open exploration by a gathering of people.

The texts and questions for the six weeks were published at <www.truah.org/ppc>. I encourage you-all to look at them and to draw on them for conversations in your own community (face-to-face or on-line.) Below I will add my own section, which addresses “Ecological Devastation” -- the issue that the Poor Peoples Campaign is dealing with this week.

As you will find by exploring these biblical texts, both ancient Torah and modern science predict climate chaos and ecological disaster, if we keep on overworking our Earth and denying her the rhythmic restfulness that the Breath of Life requires. So I urge you to join in the Poor Peoples Campaign at your own state capitol this week, demanding action to prevent even worse disasters than the droughts, famines, floods, and wildfires that our modern Carbon Pharaohs are already imposing on us. Find your closest action by clicking here: <https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/events/>

I asked the Truah staff whether there might be a way to invite people to respond with their own thoughts to any and all of these explorations of Torah, and to circulate their responses. The answer came back that Truah was not in a position to do this.

So I am inviting you-all to do this. I invite you to read the Truah gathering of wisdom -- either on your own or in community -- and to respond with your own thought by clicking to the ”Comment” section for this report, on The Shalom Center ‘s website. So please click <www.truah.org/ppc> to read the rabbis’ thoughts that Truah collected, and then click here <> to share your thoughts with each other and the public.

Here is my own contribution to Truah’s effort:

The biblical passages about Creation (in Genesis) draw our attention to who we are as human “earthlings” and our relationship to the Earth. And later texts (especially in Exodus 16 and Leviticus 25-26) explore how we can fulfill that relationship so that future generations can prevent ecological disasters and live sustainably.

(Torah translations are slightly modified from Everett Fox’s The Five Books of Moses (Schocken); the passage from II Chronicles, from the New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh. For this section of Truah’s exploration of Torah, I chose the texts and the accompanying questions.)

I. ADAMAH & ADAM

A. Genesis 2:5

No bush of the field was yet on earth, no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for YHWH [Yahhhh, Breath of Life], God, had not made it rain upon the earth, and there was no human/ adam to till the soil/ adamah.

AW: Isn’t this backward to our understanding of evolution and to Genesis 1, in which vegetation emerged before Homo Sapiens ? Why would this Torah passage say it was necessary for the human (adam) to be present for shrubs of the earth (adamah) to grow?

The Torah continues (Gen. 1: verses 6-7): “but a surge would well up from the ground and water all the face of the soil; and YHWH, God, formed the human [adam], of dust from the soil [adamah]. YHWH [Yahhhh, Breath of Life] blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being.

AW: From the adamah (earth) comes forth adam (the human earthling). First this newborn loses the –ah, the Hebrew letter hei that is the sound of breathing. Then the Creator Breath of Life (YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh Elohim) “blew into the newborn’s nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living, breathing person.” What do these two passages mean about relationship between adam and adamah?

What do they mean about the relationship between God and Breath? About the YHWH Name?

About the relationship between an individual human birth and the emergence of the human species?

TWO PARABLES: EDEN AND MANNA/SHABBAT

AW: Do these two parables have any connection with each other?

A. Eden

Genesis 2:15-17: YHWH, God, took the human and set him in the garden of Eden [Delight}, to work it and to watch it. YHWH, God, commanded concerning the human, saying: From every (other) tree of the garden you may eat, yes, eat, but from the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil—you are not to eat from it, for on the day that you eat from it, you must die, yes, die.

AW: Paraphrasing: “On this earth there is wonderful abundance. Eat of it in joy. But you must restrain yourselves just a little: Of this one tree, don’t eat.” But the humans refuse to restrain themselves, and insist on leaving no part of the Garden uneaten.

Genesis 3:17: To Adam [Human] God said: Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying: You are not to eat from it! Damned be the soil on your account, with painstaking-labor shall you eat from it, all the days of your life. Thorn and sting-shrub let it spring up for you, when you (seek to) eat the plants of the field! By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, until you return to the soil, for from it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust shall you return.

AW : By trying to gobble up all the abundancee, we have ruined it. Only by toiling every day of our lives with the sweat pouring down our faces will we find enough to eat from an earth that gives forth mostly thorns and thistles.”

B. Manna & Shabbat

Exodus 16:13b-18 (and continuing through verse 35)

...And at daybreak there was a layer of dew around the camp; and when the layer of dew went up, here, upon the surface of the wilderness, something fine, scaly, fine as hoar-frost upon the land. When the Children of Israel saw it they said each-man to his brother: Mahn hu/what is it? For they did not know what it was. Moshe said to them: It is the bread that YHWH has given you for eating. This is the word that YHWH has commanded: Glean from it, each-man according to what he can eat, an omer per capita, according to the number of your persons, each-man, for those in his tent, you are to take. The Children of Israel did thus, they gleaned, the-one-more and the-one-less, 18 but when they measured by the omer, no surplus had the-one-more, and the-one-less had no shortage; each-man had gleaned according to what he could eat.

AW :The Torah provides us this near-Edenic parable on the same theme, a story that points toward the healing of the disaster at the end of Eden. This is the parable of manna and Shabbat (Exodus 16). For in this story, as in Eden, the Great Provider showers adam again with almost free abundance. The only work the Israelites need to do is to walk forth every morning and gather the manna—a strange “vegetation” that is like coriander seed but far more nourishing.

No sweat, no toil, no thorns or thistles. Self-restraint is built in: Anyone who tries to gather more than enough to eat for a day finds that the extra rots and stinks. On the sixth day, enough manna falls to feed the people for another day, and it does not rot. It will meet their needs for the seventh day. On the seventh day, Shabbat, no manna falls. Self-restraint is again built in. But the two versions of self-restraint are quite different.

What was the self-restraint required in Eden? What was the self-restraint required in the wilderness when the Manna appeared? How do they differ?

III. SPIRITUAL PRACTICE & THE LAND: SHMITA AND ITS FAILURE

A. Leviticus 25:1-4, 6, 10, 23.

YHWH spoke to Moshe at Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the Children of Israel, and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to cease, a Sabbath-ceasing to YHWH. For six years you are to sow your field, for six years you are to prune your vineyard, then you are to gather in its produce, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of Sabbath-ceasing for the land, a Sabbath to YHWH: your field you are not to sow, your vineyard you are not to prune...Now the Sabbath-yield of the land (is) for you, for eating, for you, for your servant and or your handmaid, for your hired-hand and for your resident-settler who sojourn with you...

You are to hallow the year, the fiftieth year, proclaiming

freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants; it shall be Homebringing [Yovel or Jubilee] for you, you are to return, each-man to his holding, each-man to his clan you are to return... But the land is not to be sold in-harness, for the land is mine; for you are sojourners and resident-settlers with me...

AW: Can we apply these teachings in our day? How?

1. Excerpts from Leviticus 26:14–46, especially verses 34–35 and 43

14 But if you do not hearken to me, by not observing all these commandments... you I will scatter among the nations; I will unsheath the sword against you, so that your land becomes a desolation and your cities become a wasteland. Then the land will find-acceptance regarding its Sabbaths, all the days of desolation—when you are in

the land of your enemies—then the land will enjoy-cessation, and find-acceptance regarding its Sabbaths. All the days of desolation it will enjoy-cessation, since it did not enjoy-cessation during its Sabbaths when you were settled on it.

B2. II Chronicles 36: 20. Those who survived the sword he exiled to Babylon, and they became his and his sons’ servants till the rise of the Persian kingdom, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, until the land paid back its sabbaths; as long as it lay desolate it kept sabbath, till seventy years were completed.

AW: Through drought and famine, pestilence and plague, through an exile that today we would call a flood of refugees, our Mother Earth will indeed “rest” by failing to be fruitful. (N.B. Verse 23 of this chapter is the end of the entire Hebrew Bible.)

Are these disasters punishments? Consequences? How do we understand them? How do they compare with what modern climate scientists are predicting if we keep spewing CO2 and methane into our atmosphere?

I invite you to respond with your own thoughts by clicking to the ”Comment” section for this report on The Shalom Center ‘s website, to share your thoughts with each other and the public.

The Shalom Center