Tefillat Ha’Derekh from Montgomery Alabama 

Written by Rabbi Nina H. Mandel during the T’ruah delegation to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, January 26-28, 2020

Bo
Bo el Par’oh
Come after the oppressor
Join the trouble
Muster your strength
Gird your loins

Mobilize your anger
Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt
Watch for bias
Cry out for truth
Soften your hardened heart
Embrace your neighbor
Persist, persist, persist

Ad matai? Until when?
Until there is no longer fear of justice;
Race is no longer predictive of wrongful conviction;
Poverty is no longer criminalized;
Children no longer receive life sentences.
Recommit, recommit, recommit
Until the institutions built by oppression are dismantled;
White supremacists no longer fuel antisemitism and racism;
Our diversity is embraced, not feared.
Until, until, until

May our eyes and hearts remain open as they are today,
Fired by the sights and stories of injustice.
And may this holy community continue to be a source of support and wisdom,
As we kumu, tze’u
Get up and go out to face the oppressor.
Bo.

Looking back on the 20 years since 9/11, what is the most important human rights lesson you draw from the American response to those attacks?

Becky Jaye, Rabbinical Student

“(11) Because God has disarmed and humbled me, they have thrown off restraint in my presence. (12) Mere striplings assail me at my right hand; they put me to flight; they build their roads for my ruin. (13) They tear up my path; they promote my fall, although it does them no good. (14) They come as through a wide breach; they roll in like raging billows. (15) Terror tumbles upon me; it sweeps away my honor like the wind; my dignity vanishes like a cloud.”  -- Job 30:11-15

   

On September 11, 2001, I was with my seventh-grade gym class in a Coney Island public school. 

It is an understatement to say that the world-entire changed that day. Witnessing my friends suddenly become orphans was a stark reminder of the ephemeral nature of life, making me feel small in the vast universe. 

This feeling of smallness reverberates strikingly in the Book of Job. As readers watching Job’s mounting tragedy, we also face our own powerlessness. 

Not two months after 9/11, the Patriot Act was passed, limiting individual Americans’ right to privacy in an endeavor to fight the “War on Terror.” Among its goals, the Patriot Act allowed law enforcement to widen its surveillance to monitor suspected terrorism. 

As a twelve-year old, I remember the distinct feeling of safety, knowing that there was at least some way -- any way -- that would prevent another attack. 

Looking at the last twenty years, I cannot help but feel how Job’s cry has an eerie resonance today. As a summer intern for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, I have learned of the precise intensity with which government law enforcement agencies such as ICE disproportionately surveill communities of color. Our history is littered with examples of how systems to surveill communities of color--like the FBI and Dr. King--have been “roads that have led to their ruin,” humbling whole communities by stripping them of their constitutional protections. 9/11 just allowed these age-old systems to assume new forms, and our growing reliance on technology has only accelerated the trend.

As Job continues his lament with “terror,”  I realize that perhaps the most important human rights lesson is how the terror we feel impacts us. In my most formative years, I didn’t speak up against xenophobic policies because I was prioritizing my own safety. In the comfort of my complacency and my submission to fear, I not only aided in the diminishing of others’ human dignity, but I damaged my own dignity as well. 

Hosea 14:9 states, “One who is wise will consider these words, One who is prudent will take note of them. For the paths of the ETERNAL are smooth; the righteous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them.” Too long have we traveled roads that ensure only the racially and economically privileged reach the most desired destinations. Most times, we have been unaware that we even do so. On this anniversary, I wish to return to the day before, to begin again, to smooth those roads that may honor the righteousness of each human able to travel them. 

Becky Jaye will be ordained a rabbi by HUC-JIR in New York in 2022. Her internship at S.T.O.P. is part of her participation in T’ruah’s Rabbinical/Cantorial Student Summer Fellowship in Human Rights Leadership.

OPENING SONG:

Hinay ma tov umah na’im shevet achim gam yachad.

How good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity. (Psalm 133)

KADESH: SANCTIFYING OUR GATHERING

A central symbol of the Passover seder—literally an “order”— is four cups of wine or grape juice, representing different stages of the seder. We move from gathering to hearing other people’s stories, then to sharing our own exodus narratives, and finally to song. Let us fill the first cup, the cup of gathering, and consider why we are here.

Refugees are people who escape war, violence, or persecution in their home countries and seek protection in other countries.

Their persecution may be based on race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Nearly all Jews have ancestors who have been refugees. The Passover story tells of Jewish refugees who escaped slavery and threats against their lives in Egypt and sought protection in the land of Israel.

Since 2007, Israeli activists, progressive Jewish organizations, and African refugee and asylum seeker communities have united to hold a communal “Refugee Seder” in Israel each year. The participants celebrate a renewed commitment to working together for freedom. At this seder here today, we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel who pursue freedom.

We say the blessing and drink the cup of gathering.

Blessed is the creator of the fruit of the vine.

The seven weeks of the Omer, between Pesach and Shavuot, are traditionally (though somewhat mysteriously) a time of partial mourning. Rabbi Shai Held offers this explanation:

The Exodus may be a paradigm for how Jewish history is supposed (indeed, destined) to look, but for now — tragically, inexplicably — history makes a mockery of this paradigm. Rome is triumphant; a renewed Exodus remains but a dim hope.

And so we mourn. We mourn because our experience falls so unbearably short of the redemption we have been promised and assured will come. There is a stunning degree of audacity — and honesty — in starting to grieve as Pesach begins, because, in fundamental respects, Pesach resides in the future rather than the present. And yet grief does not have the final — or even the loudest — word, because we affirm that the God who redeemed us will, despite all evidence to the contrary, redeem us “a second time.” (In The Heart of Torah, Volume 2, p. 75)

Racism is implicitly and explicitly embedded in American society’s structure and culture. It is a pervasive virus that seeps into all aspects of our lives, including our Jewish community. It’s what motivated a mob of Chasidic Jews to harass me in front of my home for carrying a Torah scroll because it was too far fetched for a black man carrying a Torah to be a fellow Jew. It’s what continues to marginalize Jewish people of color, making even holy Jewish spaces like synagogues intolerable for many.

Every year we recall the Israelite experience of oppression, redemption and the recurring commandment to care for those in society that remain oppressed, such as the stranger, the orphan and the widow. These memories and values are key to embodying anti-racism through concrete acts of care and shifting access to power, which is critical to actualizing our true multi-racial community in its fullest glory.

-- Yehudah Webster, Community Organizer, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)