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Rabbi Heschel: "Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience."

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

"Where were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation?

"When raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed?"

The yohrzeit (death-anniversary) of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is the 18th day of the Jewish midwinter lunar “moonth” of Tevet. In the Western calendar, this year it falls on Sunday evening and Monday, January 15-16  -- the real and the officially observed birthdays of Dr. Martin Luther King.

In this way, the different memorial practics of Christians, who observe birthdays, and of Jews, who observe yohrzeits, actually bring together these two spiritual/ political giants of almost 50 years ago. Together in death as they were in life.

Heschel was -- is  -- one of the most fruitful Jewish thinkers of the 20th century. He became also one of its greatest teachers of the unity of thought and action, of "spiritualty" and "politics," of prayer and activism.

He not only marched for voting rights with Dr. King in Selma,


but stood firmly with King against the Vietnam War, when many urged them to be quiet.He sat beside King on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church when King gave his most profound, prophetc, and provocative speech: "Beyond Vietnam --  A Time to Break the Silence,"



and he prayed alongsde King among the war dead in Arlington National Cemetery, cryng out against an immoral war.




This week of yohrzeit is an excellent moment to learn from him and with him, and each other. This year, for this yohrzeit, as we live through (and some of us die from) disgusting terrorist attacks, I have been remembering an extraordinary teaching of Heschel’s about responsibility for the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe in the 1930s.

By 1944, Heschel knew his family in Eastern Europe had been murdered by the Nazis. He himself had escaped to America only by the skin of his teeth. It would have been easy, sensible, for him to have thought about Nazism as itself solely responsible for millions of deaths and years of cruelty.

Yet amazingly, without in the slightest degree absolving Nazism of its evil, he went further. He examined what responsibiility others had -- a "we" that he did not quite define --  for the success of Nazism. He reflected more deeply on World War II and the Holocaust even while they were happening. In February 1944, he published a talk on "The Meaning of this War":

"We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.... Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.... Where were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed? ...

"Good and evil, which were once as real as day and night, have become a blurred mist. In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite. The vision of the sacred has all but died in the soul of man." ("The Meaning of This War [World War II]," pp. 210-212, in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. [Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996]).

One of these paragraphs may seem to speak in the language of politics  and econoomics, the other in the language of religion. To Heschel they were the same tongue. Early in the essay, he asks the question: "Who is responsible [that the war has soaked the earth in blood]?" And he answers as a Hassid would,

Leonard Cohen sings, “Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” -- IS IT?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Or Are We Stuck with Trumpery  --
Fake Populism and Real Robber Barons?

Leonard Cohen is no Pollyanna. When he sings the path through which “Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.,” you can see and hear the dark places, the deaths and infamies along the way. And yet, AND YET!!   This is not mere “hope.” It is determination. Commitment. Covenant.
Please join me on this journey by first listening and watching here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-RuR-qO4Y&feature=youtu.be>

I have included the words below to make sure you can hear them all. Please do actually watch and listen to Leonard Cohen sing them.  

After that, we will look honestly at what we are facing now.


It's coming through a hole in the air,

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

*** **** **** **** ***
So what is standing in the way, Brother Leonard?

Hanukkah and Christmas: Spiritual Siblings in a Time of Dark

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

The Deeper Story of the Dark-Time Festivals of Light

This coming Shabbat, we will have the opportunity to explore anew the meaning of Hanukkah. I hope we will go deeper than the Hanukkah story that is now most often shared --  the Talmudic legend of the  oil that should have been enough to last for one day but instead lasted for eight.

The story has its uses today in a time when we desperately need to conserve the use of  oil and other forms of carbon-burning energy in order to heal our wounded planet – but  there are deeper meanings to the festival  that may speak more deeply to our people, hungry for  connection to the Spirit in a time of Darkness.

This year, the first night of Hanukkah coincided with Christmas Eve. Hanukkah begins each year on the 25th day of the Jewish lunar month of Kislev. Christmas comes each year on the 25th day of the Western solar month of December. Since both Kislev and December are timed for early winter, both festivals come close to the day of the winter solstice, the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Is all this a coincidence? I think not.


What do we know about the origins of each of these festivals?

In Jewish lore, Hanukkah is connected with the desecration and rededication of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Its desecration by order of Antiochus, ruler of a Hellenistic Empire, came on the 25th of Kislev in the year we would now call 168 BCE. Three years later, the guerilla uprising led by the Maccabee brothers was successful in beginning the rededication of the Temple on the same day, 25 Kislev.

According to I Maccabees, a sacred book in Christian but not Jewish tradition, when the uprising succeeded in establishing control of the Temple once again, the victorious guerillas decided to celebrate the eight-day harvest festival of Sukkot that had not been possible to observe during the three years of Imperial control. (Sukkot was traditionally the time of year when King Solomon dedicated the First Temple; a good time to rededicate the second one.)

But the Rabbis, about 200 years later, were worried that lionizing the Maccabees might lead to disastrous violent rebellions against the Roman Empire. (That’s why they never decided that the Books of the Maccabees were sacred for Jews.) So they put forward a legend about a bottle of olive oil that was supposed to light the Temple for one day but lasted eight – and thus explained the eight-day festival of Hanukkah.

But let’s go back to the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus’ army on 25 Kislev back in 168 BCE.  Why on that day?

Here let me make a leap of “midrashic history” or “imaginative historical reconstruction.” The 25th of a  lunar “moonth” is the time of any month at which the moon diminishes and then vanishes.   And Kislev is the month in which the sun is also at its darkest. This is a perfect time for a spiritually awe-struck ceremony affirming the dark-time and imploring both the light of the moon and the light of the sun to return –-- which it does, year by year, confirming that it is a good thing to honor the gods at that moment.  (And perhaps in terms we might today find more palatable, successful because the ceremony helped dispel dark depression and despair.)

So perhaps what for the Jews was Antiochus’ desecration of the Temple was for the Hellenistic Empire a celebration of this sacred moment in its own spiritual calendar, facing and transcending the dark of moon and sun --using practices that for the Jews were desecration?  

Perhaps it was not only the memory of a guerrilla victory but the attractiveness of celebrating this moment of Light Renewed  that drew the Jewish people into adopting and

8 nights of Hanukkah, my True Love says to me ----

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

For 8 days of Hanukkah, my True Love said to me:

“Help heal My Earth!”

 Hanukkah brings with it again this year three crucial teachings about healing our Mother Earth from the ravages of global scorching

The Green Menorah, a Tree of Light that is a fusion of human craft and Earth’s growth. On this Shabbat we read the Prophetic passage from Zechariah that emplaces the Temple Menorah as part of a tiny forest of olive trees that give forth their oil straight into the Menorah.  

We breathe in what these Trees of Light breathe out; they breathe in what we breathe out. We take new inner strength by breathing in the God Who breathes all life, by opening our eyes  to the Source of all Light in this wintry season of our dark foreboding.

We realize that Hanukkah teaches: We humans are not lords of the Earth, but part of the Earth. These trees feed us as we feed them. Read a little further to see how we at The Shalom Center are ourselves doing this, with your help.


The tradition of resistance to Imperial Antiochus and his Empire’s desecration of the Temple –-- a resistance crystallized in the teaching by Zechariah: “Not by might and not by power, but by My Spirit [b’ruchi — or even, “by My wind!”]. We take new inner strength to resist the Empires of our day – Big Carbon – that today are burning, despoiling, desecrating the Holy Temple Earth of all cultures and all creatures.  We take new inner strength not only to resist harm but to heal and grow the sprouts for our own Trees of Light.

The legend that one day’s worth of olive oil lasted for eight days –a teaching that we ourselves can minimize our use of oil and coal and unnatural gas; can through conservation and the sustainable use of sun and wind reshape our country and the world; can shave off seven-eighths of the fossil-fuel burning that is scorching earth and killing thousands.

 

That is our own Green Menorah commitment. We ask you – after lighting your menorah each evening – to dedicate yourself to making the changes in your life that will allow our limited sources of energy to last for as long as they’re needed, and with minimal impact on our climate.

Day 1: Hanukkah begins Saturday evening December 24; so we ceremonially say farewell to Shabbat before we light the candle to honor the first day.  We take note that the same evening, the Christian community is also celebrating the coming of new light into a world that seems dark.   Look carefully at the candle and notice that at its heart there is a spot of dark, like  a seed that sprouts into a glow of light.

We might, as we watch the candles flicker, talk about the darkness that has fallen on our country and indeed on our hopes for healing our wounded Mother Earth  -- and what for each of us it means to rellght the candle of rededication, of commitment, of action.

You might take a few minutes to order on Amazon two colorfully illustrated Waskow-Berman books: The Rest of Creation and The Looooong Narrow Pharaoh and the Midwives Who Gave Birth to Freedom.  If you order them on Sunday they will arrive before next Shabbat, when you can enjoy reading them on  the Shabbat of Hanukkah. Click here.
https://www.amazon.com/Looooong-Narrow-Pharaoh-Midwives-Freedom/dp/069275721X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=069275721X

Day 2: This year, Monday December 26 is a national holiday.  If possible, choose today to not use your car at all. Spend some of the day outdoors, enjoying Earth. Choose one day each week when as we move into the new secular year, you will not use your car. Every day, lessen driving: use public transit, bike, walk. Cluster errands.  Carpool. Don’t idle engine
beyond 20 seconds.

Day 3. Home and workplace: This Tuesday morning, call your electric-power utility to switch to wind-powered electricity. (For each home, 100% wind-power reduces CO2 emissions the same as not driving 20,000 miles in one year.)  Urge the top officials of your workplace to arrange an energy audit and switch to wind-powered electicity.

Day 4. National policy. In the morning, call 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to the Senators for your state. (If you are from DC, with still no Senator, call Senators McConnell, majority leader, and Schumer, minority leader.)  

Urge your Senators to oppose President-elect Trump’s appointments of three rapacious wolves to "guard” the Garden of all Earth, our common home, our common future:  Exxon boss Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State ;   anti-EPA extremist and denier of climate crisis Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who sued the EPA for trying to reduce CO2 emissions, to be chief of the EPA; and Rick Perry,  ex-Governor of Texas who sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, developer of the Dakota Oil Access Pipeline that tried to mutilate the sacred lands of the Sioux Nation and endanger the great Missouri River, [To read more, please click on "Read More" in red just below.]

Turning Dark Times into Light

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Can MLKing + 50 trump Trump?
Will You Help Kindle The Shalom Center's Lamp
Against the "Deadly Triplets" of King's Warning?

Dear friends and supporters of The Shalom Center,

Hanukkah and Christmas are upon us. Both these holy days celebrate light in a season of darkness. Both celebrate resistance to oppressive Empires and Emperors—Antiochus  and Caesar Augustus. Both celebrate active hope and hopeful activism in a time of despair.

Today we too feel fear and hope, grief and determination, as we face a government led by Billionaires and Bigots, with a Bully in the chair of power.  A government designed to destroy practically all the practices, protections, and institutions of democratic life in the United States.

Yet we have not only Hanukkah and Christmas but the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, to guide us beyond fear. A few months from now, on April 4, 2017, will be the 50th anniversary of   Dr. King’s Riverside Church speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence. ”

In that speech he named  racism, militarism, and materialism as deadly triplets afflicting America. And he called for a revolution of values in American society. He spoke of ’the fierce urgency of Now.”

 



Today the urgency of Now is even fiercer. We face a multidimensional attack from the new US government against democracy itself: --  

Against the public schools; against the healthcare system; against protections for the Earth  (including public lands, rivers and lakes and public water systems, clean air, and planetary climate healing); against regulations to prevent raw greed in the Wall Street 1% from imposing financial disasters on the rest of us; against civil liberties, religious freedom, Net neutrality, voting rights, and a free press; against the beginnings of oversight and accountability of the police and the criminal "justice" system to prevent racist violence and end mass incarceration.

Aready, the mere expectation of that government has multiplied demeaning words and physical attacks on Black and Latino and Muslim and Asian and immigrant communities; threats against the freedom and dignity of women; attacks on the web of human and more-than-human life that makes up Mother Earth. Many of us have even for the first time in our lives begun to worry about the safety of American Jews.

But those who lived through ancient Hanukkah and ancient Christmas were determined that they would not fall victim to oppression by Imperial Antiochus or Imperial Rome. As we light the Hanukkah and Christmas lights this year, we are determined that none of these communities will fall victim. We will stand shoulder to shoulder to heal America and heal the Earth.  



We are deeply grateful for your support of The Shalom Center’s past work. We want to tell you about our plans going forward in the hope you will feel they are worthy of investment—and that you will feel, as we do, how urgently they are needed.

The 50th anniversary of the Riverside speech will be followed exactly a year later by Dr. King’s yahrzeit, the 50th anniversary of his murder on April 4, 1968.

The nation will surely mark that day in 2018. But the times call for more than simple commemoration. The Shalom Center is initiating a yearlong campaign to begin on or just before April 4, 2017.

MLK + 50: A Jubilee Year of Truth and Transformation will draw on MLK’s words and actions to address the real grievances rooted in racism, militarism, and materialism that became so evident during the election and since.

Just as Dr. King spent his last year reaching across racial lines to blue-collar whites in his plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, we will draw on his work to address the real needs of the people who resorted to Trump out of despair.

We envision a culminating moment --- a vision intended to inspire action through the year: April 4, 2018, one million Americans take part in a Day of Action, Atonement, and At-One-ment in their communities with teach-ins, public activist prayer, work stoppages, fasts, and other forms of social and spiritual action.

We’re close to launching the website that will connect the year’s work across the U.S. You’ll be able to find events, connect with partners, download the Riverside speech along with commentaries, sermons, and guides for public events, and find downloadable liturgies, songs, artwork, and policy proposals it has inspired.

Between now and April 2018, we are working to seed public readings and discussions of the speech, Passover and Palm Sunday passages incorporating its values, public dialogues, and activities to raise awareness and inspire healing action.

The Shalom Center plays a unique role here as the coordinating body for this yearlong mobilization, trusted by many faith-based and other activist groups to catalyze the partnerships needed to honor Dr. King’s memory not as an artifact of the past, but as a galvanizing call to future action.

To kindle and sustain the sparks that will enable this national mobilization, The Shalom Center needs to raise money beyond our usual budget. So we ask you to give beyond your usual gift. Please click on the maroon Contribute button just below.

Every gift of any size will help and will be received with gratitude not only by our Board and staff, but by all those who so badly need a resounding echo of Dr. King’s message in a time that calls out for love and justice.

Blessings that in this moment of the fierce urgency of Now, we can kindle inner and outer light to once more turn a time of Dark into the Season of New Light.

President, The Shalom Center

Rabbi and Director, The Shalom Center

Gathering in January: "MLKing + 50" planning "Truth & Transformation"

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

[Late News Added: At the end of this letter,  I want to share with you-all both a moment of celebration for the victory of the Sioux of Standing Rock and their allies over the Dakota Oil Access Pipe Line, and a moment of grief for the human costs of the victory.] 

April 4, 2017, will be the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's most profound and provocative speech. He spoke at Riverside Church in New York City, and his talk was entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence."

April 4, 2018 will be the 50th anniversary of his death.

The Shalom Center has initiated a campaign to make the year from April 4 to April 4 MLK + 50 — A Jubilee Year of Truth and Transformation.

Before the year begins, we need to start planning how to bring Truth and Transformation into the life of our nation.

Stony Point retreat center, one hour north of New York City, has created a time and space for us to gather to begin that planning. Stony Point practices King's vision of the Beloved Community. People of all races and religions gather there in loving relation to the land and to each other. Our retreat there is called "BEYOND 'Beyond Vietnam: Reclaiming King’s Courage for Movement Building Today."

Just below, you will see a description and invitation to explore the possibilities. The retreat begins on Monday, January 16, Martin Luther King Birthday, and ends on Thursday, January 19, the day before the inauguration of a new president –- the president most hostile to Dr. King's vision of the world among all the presidents of the last 50 years.

In his Riverside Speech, Dr. King pointed to "racism, militarism, and materialism" as the "deadly triplets" afflicting American society. He called for a "revolution in values" throughout America. He pointed to "the fierce urgency of Now."

Fifty years later, the urgency of Now is even fiercer. How do we draw on Dr. King's wisdom, his understanding of American society, his insistence on nonviolent challenge to oppression --  to help us bring nearer a "revolution of values" in our own generation?

I hope that many of us will be able to gather at Stony Point to deepen our experience by seeing each other face to face.

Please register by clicking here:

<http://stonypointcenter.org/book-a-room/upcoming-events/event/58-winter-institute-2017-beyond-beyond-vietnam-reclaiming-king-s-courage-for-movement-building-today>

I hope that we will be able, face to face, to share with each other the blessings of shalom, salaam, peace, Earth!

*** *** *** *** ***

The victory of Standing Rock was won by months of determined prayerful public nonviolent challenge by Native communities and their non-Native allies. The Water Protectors were and are rooted in the spiritual tradition of the Sioux and their sacred relationship with Earth and water. Their sense of Earth and Spirit aroused the Spirit in millions far away.

The movement also drew on the experience of the 50-years-ago nonviolent Black-led movement to advance American democracy, which was voiced most eloquently by Dr. King.  All the more reason for us to reawaken broader knowledge of his deepest teachings.

I am joyful to report that the Rabbinic Statement on Standing Rock, signed by more than 300 Rabbis, was submitted last week to President Obama and also, on the ground at Standing Rock, by Rabbi Julia Vaughns on behalf of The Shalom Center and The Jewish People. Rabbi Vaughns writes:


 

  A printed copy of the Rabbinic Statement was delivered by hand last night to Chief Elder Leonard Crow Dog ....  This morning I met with him again for a brief Counsel where also was present Chairman David Archambault who was holding the now very worn and obviously well looked over copy of the Rabbinic Statement I had given Elder Crow Dog the night before.  We spoke briefly about this letter of Solidarity, what it is and what it represents and they are very welcoming of the political influence and advocacy that the Jewish People can give to their cause at this time.

 


And I cannot celebrate this victory without sorrowfully recognizing the profound debt that all of us owe Sophia Wilansky, Sarah bat Devorah, may she live long and fully heal, who brought the best of Jewish values to her courageous act of kiddush haShem,  making-holy the Name of the ONE Who breathes all life.

====  Arthur

 

A Time for Giving Thanks. Thanks for What?

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

“Hallelu-Yah!” says the last of the Psalms, #150. [By David? It doesn’t say “By David.”]

“Let us praise [or Thank]  Yahhhh.

Not “Adonai, Lord,” but Yahhhh, the Breath of Life, the Wind of Warmth, the Hurricane of Change, the Interbreathing Spirit of the world.

The Breath that keeps all life alive:

We Breathe in what the Trees Breathe out;

The Trees Breathe in what We Breathe out,                               

 The Interbreath that is in crisis precisely in our generation, as our machines and our corporations and ourselves on the drug of carbon breathe more CO2 into the world than our trees can breathe in and turn to oxygen.

So Mother Earth is fevered, burning hotter. Choking. “I can’t breathe,” coughs the planet.

And “Hallelu-Yahhhh,” says the last of the Psalms.  [By Leonard? Yes, it says "By Leonard."]                                                                           

 Please click here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4imJ7wWB9FU>  and watch/listen to the first of Leonard Cohen’s  songs in this series.

Thanks to Rabbi Robert Tabak for sharing this link, with his note ---  

"On Leonard Cohen’s last trip to Israel, in 2009, he performed in a sports stadium in Ramat Gan outside of Tel Aviv. There was a huge crowd, mostly secular Israelis.  

“He closed the concert with a surprise:  praising members of a Palestinian and Israeli group of bereaved families whose beloveds had been killed by ‘The Other Side’ --  Palestinians killed by Israelis, Israelis killed by Palestinians, whose bereaved families had chosen to work for peace instead of for revenge.

“And then blessing the crowd with the ancient priestly benediction: 'May the Face of the Holy One breathe into you the glowing of Shalom.' ”

Cohen was, after all, a Koheyn, a priestly bridge between Heaven and Earth, as were the ancient Kohanim.

Or between Heaven and The Other Side.

Now please click here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q>

and listen to "Hallelu-Yahhhh."
 

I did my best, it wasn't much

I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.

And even though it all went wrong

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelu-Yah

 

"Hallelu-Yah, Hallelu-Yah

Hallelu-Yah, Hallelu-Yah

Hallelu-Yah, Hallelu-Yah

Hallelu-Yah, Hallelu-Yah

Hallelu-Yah 

      He also wrote, "There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in."

        "True, Leonard; but it's also true, That's how the dark gets in. Time to mend some of the cracks. Among them the crack in Yahhh Itself, the Breath Itself, the crack  that lets in all the scorching heat."


Yet still, and still, and still --

Even if it all goes wrong

We'll breathe into the Breath a Song

With nothing on our tongue but Hallelu-Yah!

EXTREMELY URGENT: HELP Sophia Wilansky, Water Protector badly wounded at Standing Rock

Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on

Sophia Wilansky  — Sarah bat Devorah —  a Jewish woman who took part in a nonviolent protest led by the Sioux Nation of Standing Rock, was desperately wounded Sunday night by a concussion grenade, fired by the police and mercenaries hired by the Dakota Pipe-Line companies,  that blew apart her left arm. She is now in hospital at Hennepin  County Medical Center.

We have written a Minneapolis Rabbi and a Shalom Center Board member in Minneapolis to ask them to help her in every way possible, including visiting her in hospital, leading Mi Sheh-Beirach prayers for healing in their and other synagogues in Minneapolis, helping raise money for her medical needs, and taking part in efforts to  make publicly clear how the Water Protectors of Standing Rock are struggling to stop the Dakota Oil Pipe Line in order to protect life in three concentric circles:

  •  the sacred lands of the Sioux and Lakota Nations;  
  • the millions of people who depend on the drinking water of the Missouri River and who must be protected from poisoning of the River by leakage from the PipeLine;
  • and  billions of human beings and other life-forms throughout the Earth, our common home, who need to be protected  from the added CO2 emissions hat will come from burning this additional oil.

And to  explain how the cruel behavior of the massed police forces there toward nonviolent prayerful protest is aiming deadly — literally death-risking —  force not only against the Water Protectors there but against us all.

We are asking all of us to do what we can, including sending a message to President Obama (see the end of this letter).

Sophia Wilansky lives in New York. She left New York City several weeks ago

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