by Rabbi Adam Zeff
In December, I, along with a group of GJC members and other members of the Jewish community, began joining a protest on the first Monday of each month at the offices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in downtown Philadelphia. We gather with signs decrying how the federal government is treating immigrants, and we speak about how Jewish values and the values of this country contrast with the actions that are being carried out against children, parents, families, and individuals that disrupt and sometimes even destroy their lives. We are protesting as Americans, citizens disturbed by what our own government is doing. But we are also protesting as Jews. Why? What does Judaism have to do with it?
For almost all of Jewish history, Jews have lived under the rule of others. NonJewish pharaohs, kings, rulers, and governors have exercised enormous control over how the Jewish people have lived in nearly every age. Despite that control, Judaism developed as a religion, people, ideology, and culture that was at core positioning itself in opposition to the governing or ruling class under which it lived. In Egypt, according to the Torah, God transmitted to Moses and to the people values of dignity, mutual respect, compassion, and equality that stood in stark contrast to pharaonic authoritarianism. In Rome, the ancient rabbis developed ideas of what it meant to be human and what we owed to each other that pushed back against the prevailing Roman focus on strength and might. In Medieval Europe, the medieval rabbis fought mightily against their own dehumanization as well as the dehumanization of other marginalized groups, even when their power was at a very low ebb. In modern America, Jews have been at the forefront of using the Torah’s values to critique the inequality and, sometimes, the cruelty of American society and government, both as it applies to the Jewish people and as it applies to others who are often far more disadvantaged than we are. Like the ancient prophets calling out kings and princes for not ruling according to God’s way, Jews have consistently spoken up against those in power when necessary to push forward the values that our tradition insists should be core to human life.
While we are happy to embrace the parts of American life that do live up to the high values of Torah, we are pushed by our tradition to call out even the most powerful forces in our society when they fail to live up to what we think is right. We do this not only to make the society in which we live more just, but also to preserve our own values in the face of those who would deny them. So we lift our voices in protest to help others, and we also speak out to reinforce our own identity as witnesses to the path of God in the world, a “light to the nations,” trying to provide the illumination we all need to turn in a more just direction.
When we gather together in front of that ICE office, we pray for those who are being hurt right now by officers of our own government, the children who fear to go to school, the adults who are too scared to go to work, the parents who have been deported and torn away from their children. We acknowledge and feel their pain and cry out against it. We also pray for those very officers who are carrying out these cruel policies, calling out for their hearts to soften and for them to turn from harshness and treat those they encounter with respect and compassion. We acknowledge their agency and hope for change within them and within the system in which they work. We also pray for ourselves, that our hearts may be strengthened to continue to raise our voices, to keep showing up as Jews have shown up for centuries to call those in power to account and to do our part to bring light and change when the world turns in the wrong direction. May we feel the power of our tradition supporting us in this work, and may justice roll across this land and the world like a mighty stream.