faith action – "A Song Every Day"

God’s Presence Accompanied Them

Exploring Babylon: Chapter 1.2

Deuteronomy closes with hopes, on the banks of the Jordan and declarations of Israel’s particular relationship to God:

So Israel dwelt in safety
the fountain of Jacob alone…

Happy are you, O Israel!
Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD,
the shield of your help,
and the sword of your triumph!
–Deut 33:28-29

Much later, after Israel had experienced more trial and loss and exile, the idea developed that God was in exile along with the People, as much in need of rescue as the People. In particular, Sukkot prayers include a verse, “Ani va-ho” — sometimes translated as “Yourself and us!” or “Rescue me and the divine name!” — followed by another that begs:

As You rescued the communities You exiled to Babylonia, and Your merciful Presence accompanied them — so save us.

This line of thought, which has been developing for centuries, is mean to teach that “when there is suffering in the world, God is not on the side of the oppressors. Rather God is with the oppressed and suffers with them” (from Or Hadash: A Commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom; download and more at Rabbinical Assembly).

The idea that “God is with the oppressed” is too often, I fear, used as a sort of universal Coup-fourré card, a “safety” to correct any “hazard,” so as to stay on the road.

…For those who never played the old card game Mille Borne, maybe “ace in the hole” or “Get out of jail free” card will make more sense; but I find Coup-fourré — the process whereby one is able to surmount a pitfall and keep rolling along — more apt here….

It is way too easy to let “God is with the oppressed” console the already comfortable while leaving the afflicted with their travails. As we enter the new year, I think it’s time for the comfortable among us to examine our “safety” cards.

Following God’s Example

We must ask ourselves where we are when there is suffering and injustice in the world. It’s not enough to be concerned or write letters or even stand out in the street in protest — although all of those things are important. God went into exile with us, and something similar is required of us, if we are to make any progress on racial and ethnic justice issues.

We must take steps to remove any sense that we are somehow entitled to dwell in safety — as we find Israel at the close of Deuteronomy — when others cannot. If God could join us in exile, we can work to dismantle White Supremacy and other protections that can never be equally shared. Where there is suffering in the world, we cannot simply declare ourselves “on the freedom side.”

We’ve got to follow God’s example, to the extent we are able, and be willing to be vulnerable, explore what it’s really like in Babylon, not just our romantic ideas about it from outside. We have to look carefully at any place where oppression thrives and ask, “how we are complicit?” Really, deeply, honestly ask ourselves and our communities: “Which side are you on, my people, which side are you on?”

And then take action, even if it means compromising our own safety or sense of self.

NOTE: A version of this mini-dvar [word, sermon] was given at Fabrangen and Tikkun Leil Shabbat joint Simchat Torah celebration, 10/11/17.

“Babylon” (Bavel) means many things in Judaism and in U.S. popular culture. Join “A Song Every Day” in Exploring Babylon over the next 40 weeks.

Which Side Are You On?

Background on the song/chant —

Florence Reece (more here) wrote “Which side are you on?” lyrics in 1931 as part of labor organizing effort —

Freedom Singers adapted it for the mid-20th Century Civil Rights movement —

A version of this is still used, as in #BlackBrunch in Oakland (above), but protestors in the Movement for Black Lives also use a combination song and chant, as in this snippet:

Chant: [Example Leader] was a Freedom Fighter
who taught us how to fight
We gonna fight all day and night
until we get it right

Sing: Which side are you on, my people, which side are you on?
We’re on the freedom side!

Map Your Heart Out, part 1

“Pursuing Racial Justice: The Jewish Underpinnings of Anti-Racism Work,” held recently at Adas Israel (DC) and featuring Yavilah McCoy of Visions-Inc and Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block of Bend the Arc, offered many insights and challenges. I plan to share some of what I gained in readable portions over the course of the next few days. I begin — as Pirkei Avot (5:9) tells us sages should do — with “first things first [al rishon rishon].”

Asked how to avoid burnout in social justice work, especially in these trying times, McCoy said “first, you need a practice.” She stressed the importance of a daily practice for centering the self and for awareness. Failing to take time each day to check in with ourselves and understand where we are usually results in whatever we haven’t paused to address spilling out into the work. In addition, both McCoy and Kimelman-Block said, a daily pause/practice offers an opportunity to notice signs of burnout and arrange rest and healing measures.

Some of us rely on the Jewish liturgy for daily practice. Earlier this month, I shared a “heart map” focusing on some of the Jewish prayers most central to me and to my understanding of how prayer helps Judaism to work in the world. (See “Covenant and Liturgy.”)

My map was created in adaptation of one of the projects in Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking by Jill K. Berry. Some readers may be interested in creating their own prayer maps, in some kind of graphic form, in outline, or in prose.

I found the exploration behind my map helpful in understanding which prayers I find essential and why. I recommend the process.

A bit more on cordiform maps here.

More on the texts I chose for my own map coming soon.

Facing Race. We’ve Seen This

The “Facing Race” conference concludes on November 12. For those reading early in the day, there’s still time to participate via LiveStream. For those checking in later, there’s useful information at this conference link.

Calls for Jewish Signatures

“To the millions of immigrants, Muslims, people of color, LGBT people, women, people with disabilities, and everyone who is threatened by the President-Elect and his administration, we want you to know: we are with you…”

“We’ve Seen This Before” — open letter; Jews are encouraged to sign.

No Time for Neutrality — rabbinic/cantorial letter from Truah

A few bits background interest:

“CAIR Calls on President-Elect Trump to Repudiate Attacks on Muslim Women by His Supporters” —press release

The 74 — Make Schools Safe Again

Race Forward statement on the National Election

Blasphemy of Pharaoh’s Overreach: Theology, Context and the Trouble I’ve Seen

“Claiming the center stage, just like Pharaoh and Caesar did in their time, has always been a blasphemous overreach that actually places oneself on the margins of God’s reign,” thus writes Drew G.I. Hart in Trouble I’ve Seen.

This new title focuses on “Changing the Way the Church Sees Racism,” but much of what Hart says needs equal attention in the Jewish thought. (Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Sees Racism. Harrisonberg, VA: Herald Press, 2016.)

Religious Thought and Practice

Hart notes the optional or alternative status of “women’s,” “peace,” or “black” theology:

According to [teacher John Franke] white male theologians have often seen themselves as objective and neutral overseers of Christian tradition. They function as “theological referees” for everyone else, while imagining their position as neutral and unbiased in the center of all the action….Missing is that white men have a social context too.

— p. 163, Trouble I’ve Seen

A parallel situation still applies all too well in much of the Jewish world. As does his analysis of how well-intentioned attempts at diversity and inclusion often fail to create real change. Many of his recommendations for the Church are ones other faith communities should explore as well:

“Share life together.”
Practice solidarity. (See, e.g., Be’chol Lashon, Jewish Multi-Racial Network, and Jews of All Hues, as well as links at “Exodus from Racism”)
“See the world from below,” by changing reading habits, for example. (See “Range of Possibilities” for some suggestions.)
“Subvert racial hierarchy in the [religious infrastructure].”
“Soak in scripture and the Spirit for renewed social imagination.” (Explore “Pharaoh’s Hardened Heart,” e.g. and these resources from Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center.)
“Seek first the kingdom of God.”
Engage in self-examination.

— from p. 176, Trouble I’ve Seen

Current and Historical Re-Examination

Hart’s exploration of “White Jesus” and related Church history may seem irrelevant to those outside the Christian faith. This is important background for every U.S. citizen, however, and worth review for those as yet unfamiliar.

Moreover, Jewish communities would do well to consider whether our members are aware of essential demographics — such as a recent study showing white men with criminal convictions more likely to get positive job-application responses than black men without a record (see p. 145) — and the individual and cumulative effect of everyday racism experienced by the author of Trouble I’ve Seen.

Most importantly, Jews must join our Christian neighbors in examining how we “resemble this remark”:

Too many in the American Church have perpetuated the myth that this land was build on Christian principle rather than on stolen land and stolen labor.

p.145, Trouble I’ve Seen

Hart’s new volume provides important food for thought as we continue to read Exodus this winter and experience it in the upcoming Passover season.

More about “Anablacktivist” Drew G.I. Hart

Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Sees Racism. Harrisonberg, VA: Herald Press, 2016.

What are you reading this Exodus season?

Please share your resources and your thinking.

Life, Liberty, and the Promise of Peace

Readers may have noticed a long silence on this blog. But I have not been entirely silent.

At start of June 2015, I began an additional blog, #SayThisName, to mark those lost to homicide and police action in the District of Columbia. Since then, I have personally typed out and said aloud the names of 95 individuals lost in our city in less than six months. The list includes friends of friends, a domestic murder-suicide a few blocks from my home, and a shooting on the steps of a church across from my work. I glimpsed a few seconds of the latter scene nearly three months ago, and the picture rarely leaves me for long. These are not statistics or abstractions. And this recitation has, it seems, captured a large part of my voice.

I am grateful to Temple Micah (DC), one of my spiritual homes, for their practice — several months old now — of listing the names of those lost to violence in the city as we rise to recite Mourners Kaddish. It is clearly having an effect on many in the congregation, including our new rabbi, Susan Landau, who is also new to DC. While guns are not behind every death in our town, they play a big role. And Rabbi Landau is joining with others nationally to address this problem.

Rabbi Landau spoke powerfully at the interfaith “United to Stop Gun Violence,” November 3, at the National Cathedral.

Project End Gun Violence activists with Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT 5th, Newtown-Sandy Hook) at the Cathedral 11/3/15

Rabbi Landau’s remarks begin at 23:00 above.
Imam Talib Shareef of DC’s Masjid Muhammad speaks at 28:00.
Film includes other local and national activists, prayers, and song.

Many national groups working on gun violence from one angle or another participated in the November 3 event. Some of the resources shared there appear on this page.

See also this blog with resources on childhood trauma, a big part of the situation.

Additional related sources: “Stragglers on the Road Away from Bondage” and “Honoring a Teacher,” and “Meditations on Morning Blessings.”

Prayer Draft

To support National Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath, which is coming up December 10-14, 2015, I am crafting a prayer to be part of Temple Micah (DC) services on that weekend.

It is based on the prayer “for our country” in Mishkan T’filah, the most recent prayerbook of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. (Mishkan T’filah, NY: CCAR, 2007. This prayer is on p.258 here.)

[this blog originally shared a draft for comments]

Here is an updated version for considering, sharing, and, most importantly, for praying!

Prayer Amid Gun Violence Prayer Amid Gun Violence

Prayers, Advocacy, and #RippleEffect

Continuing the discussion, at “If a corpse be found…”, about the need for new approaches to meeting our communal responsibilities.

Some possible responses to the trauma and tragedy of multiple murders, particularly in Washington, DC —

Prayer

Residents in some of the most affected neighborhoods of the District are asking for prayers, calling on everyone in and around the city to #Pray4DC, as one united town. If you know others who engage in intercessory prayer, please pass along this prayer concern. And, however you approach such requests yourself, please keep the need for “one DC” in mind.

Also, if you know members or clergy in other congregations who might be willing to prayerfully acknowledge DC’s losses to homicide — as Temple Micah has begun to do — please ask them to sign up for #SayThisName.

Learn and Advocate

Learn a little about child trauma and how it affects learning and then advocate for trauma-sensitive schools – particularly in Washington, DC. The District also needs trauma-response units to help young people on the scene cope with the violence they too often face.

You will find more background and links to several pertinent resources in this recent feature report from the Education Town Hall.)

For DC residents, please note particularly, that the DC Council held a roundtable on this topic in June and should be poised to act.

Playing for Change

This one involves the Grateful Dead — some Temple Micah (DC) people know I hate to let a summer pass without somehow bringing in the Dead. And those who follow such things know this summer is the Dead’s 50th anniversary….

Ripple Effect Campaign

As we began the Standing Prayer, I mentioned the idea of ripples of pain moving outward from a bomb or a bullet and how kindness and prayer can also have a ripple effect. (See “Prayer in the Midst of Bullets and Bombs“)

The #RippleEffect Campaign — named for the Grateful Dead son, “Ripple” — simply involves engaging in acts of kindness or telling about a how an act of kindness affected you… and then encouraging others to do so as well, creating a kindness ripple.

Part of the effort involves social media, for those interested. But it’s certainly not required for the spreading of kindness, or for doing so with the intention of helping to heal all that is broken in DC and beyond.

Playing for Change Day

A second goal of the Ripple Effect Campaign is to raise awareness and funds for a project called “Playing for Change” that teaches music and dance to young people around the world, including in the U.S. Playing for Change (PFC) helps youth use music for everything from improving education to resolving conflicts, preserving cultural heritage, and building community, locally, and connections worldwide.

PFC Day — with activities in 61 countries last year — is an annual effort, scheduled this year during the Days of Awe.

Organizers say

This day of music, peace, and change keeps instruments, music instruction, and inspiration flowing to children around the world, … and contributes to positive vibration that connects and inspires us all.

Justice, Justice you shall pursue

The related dvar Torah, “If a corpse be found…”, continues the discussion of ripples — ones of pain, outward from bullets and bombs, and ones of healing.

Is anyone else interested in pursuing a Playing for Change activity in DC and/or the Jewish world?

Seek the Peace of the City

Houses of worship across the United States are separated by many things: culture, religious denomination, style of prayer, theology and language. We’re also separated by demographics and location, even in the same town.

I believe it was DC’s former police chief Isaac Fulwood who noted that 10 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour of life in the city. Of course, many things have changed since Fulwood’s tenure in the late 80s — and Jews, as well as some other religious communities, don’t hold their biggest weekly worship on Sunday. But his basic point remains.

The relative segregation of our lives and our worship communities means that, in cities like the District of Columbia, some communities mourn violent deaths with terrible regularity while others, in the same city, remain largely unaffected.

It has been one of my deepest prayers that we can find ways, in our various worship communities, to ensure that our worship reflects the welfare of our own city, specifically, while never losing cite of our wider place as citizens of the world. One place we must start, I continue to believe, is for every house of worship in the city to acknowledge the violent losses of its citizens, even if those lost and their primary mourners are not members of the congregation.

#SayThisName

In this past week, the District of Columbia has been bereaved of the following individuals through homicide:

June 26 1200 block of Raum Street, Northeast
23-year-old Kevin Cortez Johnson, of Southeast, Washington.
June 28 1600 block of E Street, Northeast
33 year-old Darrell Michael Grays of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 29 Unit block of Galveston Place, Southwest
25 year-old Rodney Delonte Davis, of Manassas, Virginia.

We are still in the 30-day period of mourning for these individuals, lost to homicide:

June 8 5100 block of Southern Avenue
21-year-old Qur’an Reginald Vines of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 10 (after June 3 injuries) Gallaudet and Kendall Streets, Northeast
57 year-old Anthony Ray Melvin of Clinton, Maryland.
June 13 3200 block of 23rd Street Southeast
54 year-old Kenneth Fogle of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 13 2300 block of 15th Street, Northeast
44 year-old Donald Franklin Bush of Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
June 14, 5200 block of Central Avenue, Southeast
26-year old James Brown of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 17 1300 block of Orren Street, Northeast
25 year-old Larry Michael Lockhart of Northeast, DC.
June 17 3300 block of D Street, Southeast
28 year-old Antonio Lee Bryant of Southeast, DC.
June 18 800 block of 51st Street, Southeast
42 year-old Brian Sickles of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 18 1300 block of 5th Street, Northwest
26 year-old Patrick Shaw of no fixed address.
June 19 3600 block of Calvert, Northwest
53 year-old Joel Johnson of no fixed address.
June 20 (after June 16 injury)
16 year-old Malik Mercer of Clinton, MD (former 10th grader at Ballou SHS in SE).
June 23 (after June 21 injury) 2200 block of H Street, Northeast
26-year-old Arvel Lee Stewart of Northeast, Washington, DC.
June 23 1200 block of Holbrook Terrace, Northeast
19 year-old Heineken McNeil of Southeast, Washington, DC.
June 24 at the Tidal Basin
20 year-old Deante Tinnen of Southeast, DC.
June 25 16th & Galen Streets, Southeast
21 year-old Stephon Marquis Perkins of Maryland.

Continue reading Seek the Peace of the City

Empathy: Withdrawing Ego (Beyond 28)

“withdrawing the ego to make room for another”

A key element in cross-racial, and every other kind of, understanding is the focus of this week’s omer journey.

“Hod” [literally: “glory”] is understood as representing empathy in the system of thought that relates an attribute/energy of God with each week of the omer. For example, The Holistic Haggadah offers this explanation:

Hod is the attribute of empathy, of withdrawing the ego to make room for another. Aaron was the High Priest, the one that stepped out of the way to let the Divine blessing flow through to the people. He was the peace-maker, the mediator, the mouthpiece for his brother Moses….Hannah, the mother of Samuel, prayed for a child and then withdrew her own desires by giving the boy up to the High Priest for Divine Service.

So how is your Divine service? How well do you listen to others? Do you know when to follow rather than lead?
— Michael L. Kagan, The Holistic Haggadah (Jerusalem: Urim, 2004)

We counted 28 on the evening of May 1. Tonight, we count….

Continue reading Empathy: Withdrawing Ego (Beyond 28)

Stumbling Blocks Before Us All

“Do not put a stumbling-block before the blind.” This commandment prohibits anything that “gives the means, or prepares the way for wrong,” according to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (see Carmi Wisemon’s essay at My Jewish Learning).

There are so many ways in which language can “give the means, or prepare the way for wrong.” And changes to our usage can mean big differences in the way we think and act.

Many of us have seen changes in our lifetime in some of the harmful ways language was employed in early decades. For example, we no longer use “he” to stand for “one” (of any gender) and rarely see locutions like “lady-doctor.” This has helped to address some forms of sexism. But there are many ways in which our language continues to place stumbling blocks in front of us all, including in acceptance of varieties in gender expression. And this is no mere “semantics” issue. How language views certain groups of people translates into rights, respect, and basic safety issues.

The questions raised in yesterday’s post are primarily ones of language: When does language include people and when does it elide over difference? Usage can contribute to acceptance or promote danger for various groups.

Are we experiencing an “uprising” in Baltimore, finally after decades of oppression, or are some random “thugs” rioting? (Just one piece to consider)

Was the Boston Tea Party about revolution or property damage?

Vocabulary in such cases is everything and can mean, ultimately, a difference between life and death.

[Back in 2015, when this blog was running a series counting the Omer, this post closed with the previous night’s count and exact blessing for the date of the post; in an attempt to avoid confusion, the exact info is removed, but the general sentiments about using the Omer to learn and address oppression remains.]

Continue reading Stumbling Blocks Before Us All

Prayers on the Makeshift (Beyond 23)

In his masterpiece of prose poetry, Chicago: City on the Make, Nelson Algren wrote:

…All the creeds that persecution harassed out of Europe find sanctuary on this [Chicago] ground, where no racial prejudice is permitted to stand up.

We insist that it go at a fast crawl, the long way around.

The Negro is not seriously confronted here with a stand-up and head-on hatred, but with something psychologically worse: a soft and protean awareness of white superiority everywhere, in everything, the more infuriating because it is as polite as it is impalpable. Nobody even thought such a thing, my dear.
— in “Love is for Barflies,”
p.45 60th Anniversary Edition (Chicago: Univ. of Chgo Press, 1951)

Algren’s brilliant expression — “No racial prejudice is permitted to stand up. We insist that it go at a fast crawl, the long way around.” — remains all too apt, across much of the U.S.

Does the persistence of this reality have implications for our prayers?

(This post was edited and amended after initial publication.)

Algren’s Chicago, 1951 and 1961

In 1951, Algren quotes Big Bill Broonzy’s “Black, Brown, and White” — “If you’re white, awright…if you’re black, step back” — and continues, telling Black Chicagoans to expect higher rents, and warning:

from Wikipedia page — from Wikipedia;
cover photo from 1951 edition

And no one will ever name the restaurants you mustn’t eat in nor the bars you mustn’t drink at….Make your own little list. Of the streets you mustn’t live on, the hotels where you can’t register, the office you can’t work in and the unions you can never join.
— ibid, p.46

Major Chicago reviewers at the time said the work exhibited a “distorted, partial, unenviable slant” and demanded “revocation of the author’s poetic license.” But ten years later Algren only marveled at others’ failure to recognize what he saw, in 1951 and 1961. In the 1961, he wrote:

One cannot help but wonder what the reaction might have been had the book cut in closer to what the lives of multitudes are really like on the city’s South and West sides. This book didn’t begin to tell that story a decade ago; and the story is fully as terrible today as then.
— ibid, pp.95-97
(Google Books offers a substantial preview)

Bilhah and Zilpah, Text and Prayer

At the start of the week (see “Beyond 21“), we began to explore the idea of including Bilhah and Zilpah, the concubines of Jacob and mothers of four of the twelve tribes, in the opening blessing of the Standing Prayer.

Most prayer books used in non-orthodox congregations have included the four Matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah) along with the three Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) in the blessing that calls on God who “remembers the love of our fathers (and mothers),” at least as an option, for many years. But most prayer books do not include the maids at this point:

Does listing all six mothers foster a sense of inclusion?
Or does it serve to gloss over difference, given that backgrounds of Bilhah and Zilpah are not addressed in the biblical text?
Does including Bilhah and Zilpah in the blessing raise their status and our awareness of their contributions?
Or does it make their inferior legal and social status invisible?
Is adding Bilhah and Zilpah an act against allowing prejudice to stand?
Or is it asking it to “go at a fast crawl, the long way around”?

A few thoughts to further consideration —

Orthodox prayer books do not include any of the mothers in the Amidah, retaining ancient language and often noting that the phrase “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob” is biblical (Ex. 3:6) and so not to be amended. Chabad notes, in addition, that Bilhah and Zilpah had souls “not as lofty as the Matriarchs” and act as “agents of Rachel and Leah” when they bear children.

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST) is a NY community that “attracts and welcomes gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, ‎queer and straight individuals and families who share common values. Their Siddur B’chol L’vav’cha, With All Your Heart, includes Bilhah and Zilpah, “recognizing all of our mothers, not just the ‘legally married ones.'”

The Movement for Reform Judaism (UK) points out that the addition has been controversial, adding a note from a classical source:

A powerful rabbinic midrash asks the question why the children of Israel had to endure slavery in Egypt. It answers that the sons of Rachel and Leah dismissed the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah on the grounds that they were the children of slaves and of less worth. By experiencing slavery in Egypt all the descendants of Jacob were made equal in this regard.
“Prayer Book in the Making”
[cited page from Movement for Reform Judaism now (2020) missing]

What, if anything, does including Bilhah and Zilpah say about our understanding of oppression and how to move beyond it?

More to come.

We counted 23 on the evening of April 26. Tonight, we count….

Continue reading Prayers on the Makeshift (Beyond 23)