This is Martin Luther King, jr Weekend and it is also what has become the annual Women’s March. It is also the 24th yahrzeit of my father, Donald Frisch. This is going to be a hard sermon. One that actually made me cry as I was writing it. Not because of the yahrzeit, but maybe.
Let’s go on a walk. I want to show you some photos. Including two of my rabbi, Rabbi Everett Gendler. Jews were at the forefront, literally the front lines of the Civil Rights movement. Because Jews understood that if there is persecution of one group, there could be persecution of any group, including Jews. We knew this all too well. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary said about marching with King that he felt his feet were praying.
Simon is not here this morning because he is “praying” the prayer for peace at Elgin’s annual Martin Luther King, jr Prayer Breakfast. That same prayer he leads us in responsively, that ends with the famous quote from Isaiah, that I hear in Martin Luther King’s voice. “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” What you may not know, that translation is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s translation.
It was also Heschel who said at a conference on race and religion who said, “At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me.” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed this voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go. The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.” https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/heschel-religion-and-race-speech-text/
Folks, we are STILL NOT THERE YET. There is still not justice. Not equality. Not voting rights–which is the theme of this year’s breakfast. But there is not memory either. Those very pictures we went to see. Not part of the movie Selma.
I want to talk about just one phrase in this week’s parsha, portion. “There arose in Egypt a ruler who knew not Joseph.” And because he didn’t know Joseph and Joseph’s contributions, he enslaved the Israelites, fearing that this people who had grown mighty in number might make war on the Egyptians.
He knew not Joseph. Much of my adult life, much of my rabbinate can be described as building bridges between peoples who don’t know one another well or at all. Whether it was a class I taught at Tufts on Jewish-Christian Relations or the undergraduate internship I had with American Jewish Committee or the founding of The Merrimack Valley Project or other social justice activities, it has been about making sure that others knew Jews and that we were working for a world that supported the widow, the orphan, the stranger. There is a long history of working for systemic change, of finding my voice and speaking out.
Now my father, he loved the ethics and the history of Judaism. We spent many weekends working on civil rights and attending rallies in Evanston and living out his Jewish values. Not so much the theology. That is a sermon for another time. But having been born in 1933, the same year that Hitler came to power, he was very afraid of being visible as Jews. He was a bundle of contradictions, since he never denied being Jewish and we always had students for the Jewish holidays who had no place else to go. However, he was never happy with my decision to be a rabbi. Too public. Too visible. I would just be the first target.
I had another approach. Even before becoming a rabbi. I have spoken out, spoken up, engaged, build bridges. We wouldn’t fall into the trap of “a new ruler arose who knew not Joseph.” It turns out that there is an actual psychological term for this. “Interpersonal Contact Theory.” In rabbinical school, I had a whole class on Israeli-Palestinian Relations, taught by a Muslim and an Israeli. Much of the reading was on this theory. The academic research was disappointing, I felt. It wasn’t clear whether it works. But many organizations try it, including Seeds of Peace which brings Israeli and Palestinian youth to a summer camp in Maine. It has been featured in many articles and one of the organizations that I have given some tzedakah to.
As part of her research for a PhD in psychology at the Univeristy of Chicago, Juliana Schoeder studied Seeds of Peace. As she reported:
At the beginning and end of camp, the campers reported their feelings toward the other group, as well as some of their political attitudes and attitudes toward the peace process, rating their opinions on a scale of one to seven. From pre-camp to post-camp, we found that Israeli and Palestinian teenagers alike reported feeling more positive toward, close with, similar to and trusting of the other side. On average, for all of these questions, the teenagers moved up almost a full point on the scale from where they started, a statistically significant change. They also reported feeling more optimistic about the likelihood of peace and more committed to working for peace, and they expressed a greater intention to participate in other peace intervention programs. Four different sets of campers have consistently shown the same pattern of outcomes. Critics of such programs suggest that there is a “re-entry problem”: that any positive effect of the encounter will vanish when participants return to normal life. We therefore sent campers a follow-up survey one year after they returned home, asking them again about their attitudes. We found the participants’ attitudes did regress over time, but not enough to eliminate a positive effect. Even a year after the camp had ended, the Israelis and Palestinians who were surveyed still felt more positive about the other group than they did before the camp. https://www.seedsofpeace.org/peace-through-friendship-new-york-times/
There is no question in my mind that we are better together. That building bridges works. We are a small congregation. We can collect canned goods, help at occasional soup kettles, show up at a vigil, host national night out. But if we really want to make a difference. To really love our neighbors as ourselves, to take care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, which our tradition demands, we need to work for systemic change. That’s hard. And we can’t do it alone. We need to build those bridges. Perhaps one of the hardest things I have ever done is my work with the Elgin Police Department around racism. Begun before Ferguson, it is difficult, often heart-wrenching work that I feel I need to be involved in for the long haul.
This weekend also marks the fourth year of the Women’s March. There is not one in Elgin today. I was a proud organizer of the first two Elgin Standing Together. We started that first one at a Women on the Brink meeting and I was a behind the scenes organizer. It was fabulous. And today’s portion was the same one that cold, blustery day. Today’s portion also talks about Shifra and Puah. They have a bit part in Torah. They were the midwives that defied Pharaoh’s order. It was an act of civil disobedience. When asked why the baby boys still lived, they said that the Israelite women were so vigorous, they gave birth before the midwives could even arrive.
So that cold afternoon—because Elgin Standing Together was an afternoon event to accommodate my Shabbat observance. I was not scheduled to speak, but was so taken with Shifrah and Puah that morning, I took the mike out of the mayor’s hand and did a very short d’var Torah. It was powerful. It felt like I was living out Psalm 30, a Psalm for the Dedication of the Temple:
What profit if I am silenced. What benefit if I go to my grave in the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it proclaim Your truth and faithfulness?
Last year we decided not to do another Elgin Standing Together. The principle organizers were tired. The event would conflict with Martin Luther King, jr Weekend. And there were increasing charges of anti-semitism at the highest ranks of the Women’s March. Too much for me to take the full lead. This year, no one in Elgin even asked, although there is one today in Geneva and in Woodstock as well as Chicago. The underlying issues are still very real. There are still systemic changes that need to happen. As a woman, as a rabbi and especially as a women’s rabbi, I continue to speak out about women’s health care, women’s pay, domestic violence and rape, just not with the Women’s March.
There is another term that is important in the discussion. Intersectionality. Coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw to explain the discrimination of African-American women. Based on a case in 1976 between Emma DeGraffenreid and several other black women and General Motors, “arguing that the company segregated its workforce by race and gender: Blacks did one set of jobs and whites did another. According to the plaintiffs’ experiences, women were welcome to apply for some jobs, while only men were suitable for others. This was of course a problem in and of itself, but for black women the consequences were compounded. You see, the black jobs were men’s jobs, and the women’s jobs were only for whites. Thus, while a black applicant might get hired to work on the floor of the factory if he were male; if she were a black female she would not be considered. Similarly, a woman might be hired as a secretary if she were white, but wouldn’t have a chance at that job if she were black. Neither the black jobs nor the women’s jobs were appropriate for black women, since they were neither male nor white. Wasn’t this clearly discrimination, even if some blacks and some women were hired?”Sadly, the court dismissed the DeGraffenreid’s claims, asserting that black women are unable to combine their race and gender claims into one.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/emiliearies/2017/08/30/the-imperative-of-intersectional-feminism/#661ed2271914
We see the difficulties of intersectionality play out today. With the Women’s March. With the Dyke March in Chicago when the Jewish group carrying a rainbow flag with a Star of David were asked to leave because that flag, similar to an Israeli flag might be triggering to Palestinians. In policing where multi-racial Jews are afraid of police brutality and yet synagogues are hiring more and more police officers.
My approach remains the same. We see others returning to it. When we see booths set up in New York by the Orthodox community, “Meet a Jew, Make a Friend” in neighborhoods like East Harlem.” I believe that we are safer here in Elgin because we have been visible. Because people have met other Jews. I believe we will not return to a time where “a ruler arose who knew not Joseph.” I believe we need to continue to speak out, just like Shifrah and Puah. Then as King and Heschel taught, “Justice will roll down like water, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
Update:
Sunday was Torah School, just like always. We are in the middle of a kindness campaign. After making havdalah with the kids, I asked what they knew about Martin Luther King. I took them to see the pictures on the bulletin board of the rabbis, including Heschel and Gendler who marched with King. Then we made posters with verses from Torah about lovingkindness and we had our own indoor march so we could pray with our feet. It was one of the most meaningful King celebrations I have ever participated in.