Parshat Bo: David Mosenkis Presents the Monthly Anti-Racism Davar Torah, 2021

צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף 

D’var Torah – Parashat Bo - 5782/2022

First, a quick summary of this momentous parashah.  It opens with the 8^th and 9^th plagues, locusts and darkness. Pharaoh continues to refuse to let the Israelites go and worship God in the wilderness.  God then tells Moses, and Moses tells Pharaoh, that there will be one more plague, the killing of the firstborn. There is then a pause in the drama while God gives instructions for the Passover lamb sacrifice that the Israelites are to offer that evening, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and the commandment for the seven-day holiday of Passover. The Israelites are then instructed to mark their doorposts with blood to indicate their homes should be spared from the last plague. In the middle of the night, God kills all Egyptian firstborns, human and cattle. The Israelites request and receive objects of silver and gold from the Egyptians, as God had told them to. And they leave Egypt, baking unleavened cakes on their way out. Moses repeats the rituals of the Passover holiday for the people to follow when God leads them into the land God promised to their ancestors, along with the redemption of firstborn children and animals.

Looking at this week’s parashah through an anti-racism lens, it is not hard to find teachings that can inform and inspire our present-day quest for racial justice.

First, the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt has been a powerful inspiration for liberation movements over the generations, and has been especially potent for the African American struggle for liberation, first from slavery, and subsequently from continuing oppression. We can find in today’s parashah a precedent for the layers of oppression that Black Americans have faced in their quest for liberation. Moses starts by asking for the Israelites to be able to go and worship God in the wilderness. At first Pharaoh says no, then is persuaded by the plagues to say: OK, worship your God, but here in Egpyt, not in the wilderness. Then he says OK, go to the wilderness but only men, no children. Then he says OK all the people, but no cattle, before he is finally convinced to allow all the people and their animals to leave. Even after the Exodus, Pharaoh changes his mind and tries to recapture the Israelites. 

These reluctant insufficient steps toward liberation are echoed in the Black American liberation experience. The United States’ Pharaoh, the white power structure, eventually and reluctantly ended chattel slavery, but soon replaced it with the practices of Jim Crow: OK, you can be technically “free”, but you can’t vote, can’t receive an education, can’t own property, etc.  Eventually the U.S. Pharaoh said OK, we’ll eliminate explicitly racist laws, but maintain racial segregation and discrimination through practices like redlining and restrictive covenants, and restricting economic opportunity. In the next phase, commonly termed the “New Jim Crow”, Blacks were and continue to be targeted with differential law enforcement, resulting in mass incarceration and ongoing disparities in access to education, economic opportunity, and power.

Secondly, also in today’s parashah is the precedent for reparations for slavery.  It is first commanded in Exodus 11:2-3:

Tell the people to borrow, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold.

The LORD disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people. Moreover, Moses himself was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and among the people.

And then it is carried out in Exodus 12:35-36:

The Israelites had done Moses’ bidding and borrowed from the Egyptians objects of silver and gold, and clothing.

And the LORD had disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people, and they let them have their request; thus they stripped the Egyptians.

The word “borrow” can alternatively be translated as “ask for”. 

The Book of Jubilees (an ancient Hebrew text that did not make it into the Bible) says: “This asking was in order to despoil the Egyptians in return for the bondage in which they had forced them to serve.”

The medieval commentator Sforno says: In Moses' honor the Egyptians gave generously to the Israelites.

It is fascinating how the Plaut Torah commentary, published by the Reform movement in 1981, tersely comments on these verses: “Note also the demands for restitution made by the black revolutionary movement in the United States.”

Thirdly, there are different models of bringing about justice.  How does God bring Pharaoh around to the right point of view?  From the opening verses of today’s parashah:

You may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians . . . How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?

This is a model of total domination and humiliation, which was deemed necessary in the face of Pharaoh’s arrogant and repeated hard-hearted refusal to let the Israelites go. Is there another model for opening people to a just perspective?

There is a classical midrash in which Pharaoh is spared at the Red Sea, and ends up leading his people in repenting. In the Midrash, Pharoah became king of Nineveh, where, hundreds of years later, Jonah came and brought word from God that in three days Nineveh would be destroyed because of its wickedness. Pharaoh remembered when Moses brought God's word that Egypt was doomed. So this time, he listened and led the people of Nineveh in repentance. The wording in the book of Jonah, “The people of Ninveveh believed in God”, mimics that in Exodus right before the Song of the Sea: “They believed in God”. The people of Nineveh were brought to belief in God by none other than Pharaoh, when he told them of the wonders that occurred in Egypt and the Red Sea. The fact that someone like Pharaoh, who time and again refused to recognize the power of God, could repent and teach a whole city about the truth of God, is a remarkable lesson in the strength of repentance.

I want to invite us to explore how we approach our anti-racism efforts. Do we emulate God’s approach in Egypt of blaming and humbling those who perpetuate racism? Or do we emulate God’s and the king of Nineveh’s approach of inviting people into repentance? While there may be times in the struggle for racial justice that require strong public rebuke, for the work we are doing inside our own GJC community, I invite us to proceed with compassion, love, and respect. 

All of us grew up in a society steeped in racism, whether or not we were aware of it. None of us asked for this, but none of us could avoid messages of white supremacy and Black inferiority from seeping into our conscious and unconscious minds. It was the air that we breathed, and we are not to blame for having those attitudes and thoughts lurking somewhere inside us. As I see it, our challenge is to uncover any unconscious racial bias we harbor, strive not to let it influence our thoughts and actions, and work to dismantle the oppressive systems that centuries of racism have built up.

How can we approach our anti-racism journey as a cooperative venture? As a way to help each other liberate ourselves from the dehumanizing effects of racism? All of us have blind spots, and we need each other to help see them. I believe that is best done with compassion rather than blame, shame, or guilt. With a loving approach, we can support each other to overcome our defensive reactions, and maybe even celebrate anytime an artifact of our racist conditioning comes to light.

The big sign on the GJC lawn near Emlen Street says “Black Lives Matter” on one side.  The other side sometime reads “Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, justice – pursue it.”. Why does this verse from Deuteronomy repeat the word justice?  To teach us to pursue justice in a just way.  I believe the just way to fulfill our goal to be an antiracist community is to approach each other with compassion.

 

Stefan Presser z"l Social Justice Retropsective: 15 Years!

Last night we gathered on Zoom for Havadalah and to hear from four of our leading Tikkun Olam activists: Donald Joseph, David Mosenkis, Tamara Cohen, and Seth Lieberman.

Betsy Teutsch shared this history of the Stefan Presser Memorial Social Justice Shabbat programing.

Stefan’s presence in our minyan intensified along with his illness. He was a husband to Sandy and father of their three young kids [adults, and all present tonight!], in his late 40s, when diagnosed with a brain tumor. His prognosis was not great. He had been a member of Dorshei Derekh for several years, but once ill, he came to Dorshei Derekh most every shabbat, often sharing where he was on this distressing journey. When he had to stop working, and his world became smaller, the times he spent with us became increasingly precious. He radiated love, and we all beamed it back at him. Many of our members regularly went to visit with him as he became more frail.

He died on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in 2005. A few of us organized a program on his 2nd yahrzeit. His dear friend Professor Seth Kreimer spoke on legal issues issues of the day.

My memory is hazy on how we decided to repeat this annually, but I recall meeting up with David Mosenkis at High Point to kick around ideas. Stefan had been the Legal Director of the Pennsylvania ACLU and many Minyan teens interned for him. Inviting them to speak was a way for us all to process both the loss of Stefan, and nurture his legacy. We got to hear what work Ari Spicehandler Brochin, Josh Marcus, Frances Kreimer, and our son Zach Teutsch, were up to. They are all active in social justice work as adults.

By 2010 our planning group included Donald Joseph. In Stefan’s memory we  planned an annual program on a specific social justice topic in the late fall/early winter. While the GJC community was always invited, it has primarily been an internal Dorshei Derekh event.

Our formula was to choose an issue we wanted to learn more about, invite an expert activist to speak, and pair them with someone with substantial Jewish insight on the topic. Adding a lunch or, as we called it, lunchy kiddush, encouraged people to stick around. This was our approach for the ensuing decade, pulled off on a shoestring, funded by our minyan treasury.

In the ‘0s, Germantown Jewish Centre’s social justice portfolio resided in the Social Action Committee. This committee was tasked with the annual MLK program done in conjunction with local churches, through the Neighbourhood Interfaith Movement. They also planned the annual Granger Shabbat focusing on local social justice issues. Additionally, the committee focused on direct service, organizing volunteers for tutoring and Story Times at our neighborhood’s Henry and Houston Schools. GJC’s program for housing and feeding homeless families, the Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, began in 1996, a complex undertaking with its own team of in-house volunteers. It became a major focus of direct service GJC mitzvah activity.

What was missing at GJC was a way for members with a passion around a particular cause to organize and build support for shared activism. We have always had many members involved in a myriad of issues. In our minyan Stefan brought his ACLU background; Mike Masch z”l was our pipeline to city politics, as well as to Harrisburg and Pennsylvania state government policy and budget. It’s not every minyan that offers a misheberach when the State Budget passes!

Many of our Stefan Presser program topics were proposed by Dorshei Derekh members wanting a platform for causes in which they were  already immersed. Malkah Binah Klein became our committee chair, and brought some specific programs, including the one on Gun Violence and another on Returning Citizens. On some level, we used this Social Justice annual program as an incubator; quite a few of the topics grew into synagogue-wide concerns. 

In 2016 the GJC Social Action Committee was restructured as the Tikkun Olam Coordinating Team. One of those working to bring about this change is our own Abby Weinberg. The mission is now very different, supporting members to advocate and organize for the causes they care about, and running programs where congregants can get involved. Tikkun Olam means Repairing the World; clearly we have continued providing direct services to but have expanded to working for systemic changes.

And we will be hearing Donald Joseph’s update on the Pennsylvania School Funding Trial, the culmination of decades of work by the Public Interest Law Center.

David Mosenkis will be talking in a few minutes about the synagogue’s deepening commitment to POWER, a state-wide multi-faith multi-racial movement advocating for systemic change in a number of arenas.

We will be hearing from Seth Lieberman, the chair of the synagogue-wide Refugee Committee. 

We will be hearing from Tamara Cohen, on the minyan’s antiracism task force, along with hearing about the synagogue’s.

These are all topics that we featured at specific Social Justice shabbatot, and are now woven into our synagogue’s work.

Personal activism and community organizing have taken off exponentially since the beginning of our Presser Shabbatot in 2008. The language around this work has changed. We have moved from Social Action to Social Justice to Tikkun Olam. We are now more nuanced about justice: we speak of racial justice, environmental and climate justice, reproductive justice, education justice, disability justice, and gender justice. Kol Tzedek, the Reconstructionist Congregation in West Philly where many GJC Gen Xers are active, including Josh Marcus, named itself Kol Tzedek, A Voice for Justice - right there, front and center. There are many similar synagogues around the country that have sprung up with a primary focus on Tikkun Olam.

Obviously, the 4 years of the previous administration raised the pursuit of social justice to a crisis level. And 2 years of a pandemic have reset most everything.

The Jewish community has generated ever more justice-oriented organizations. Keeping track of all of them is challenging!

Tonight we are reflecting on how social justice/Tikkun Olam moved from the periphery of Dorshei Derekh - something some of our members were devoted to - to becoming a central focus of our community.  And how Dorshei’s Derekh commitment to these values connects to GJC, our larger home.

We cannot claim that our Stefan Presser Social Justice programs brought this about, but we immodestly perhaps, do think they have helped to galvanize Dorshei Derekh, and motivated many of us to get more involved in initiatives we learned about at these programs. Indeed, we are better together. Pursuing justice is more effective, and more satisfying, when it’s a shared effort.

    - Betsy Teutsch, January 29, 2022

Dorshei Derekh Core Values

Our minyan has been continuing evolving over these past 35 years.

Shkoy'ach - kudos - to Rabbi Tamara Cohen for composing a contemporary statement of what matters to us and who we are now:

Ñ Core Dorshei Derekh ValuesÐ

·         Lay leadership

·         Vibrant participatory services

·         Critical and creative engagement with Torah and liturgy

·         Theological diversity

·         Mutual aid/caring for one another

·         Feminist innovation

·         LGBTQ inclusion

·         Anti-racist learning and practice

·         Intergenerational community

·         Inclusion of those who have been historically marginalized in Jewish communities.

Rabbi Tamara Cohen Rosh Hashanah 2015: The Binding of Isaac and Black Lives Matter

Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5766

Rabbi Tamara Cohen

This Dvar Torah was born a few times over this year.

I think the first place it was born was in the powerful experience of giving birth to a beautiful baby, who among many other things is a white Jewish boy with blond hair and blue eyes in a moment when the Black Lives Matter movement was reaching a new level, in a moment when the stories of parents mourning the deaths of their children of color due to police violence were all around me. We took Kliel to a Hanukkah Black Lives Matter protest for his first outing. He was barely a month old. Why? In part because I wanted to be there and in part because I was struggling with how to allow myself the joy of this new baby knowing that all around America and Philadelphia and even Mt Airy other parents were also celebrating new babies, babies with all different colors of eyes and skin and hair, and that all of us lovestruck parents, wanting to do everything for our children, feeling acutely aware of their vulnerability, also had different relationships to the vulnerability of our kids because of the systemic racism in the America in which these babies were being born.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night to nurse and realizing that this waking in the night was core my current spiritual work. It was a way to teach my baby's little body and deepest self: yes, it's true, there is nothing I won't do to care for you. You are safe in this world and can take root. You are loved and cared for. Each time you cry out, or murmur, or show me your need, I will respond. And then it occurred to me that the difference between my parental instinctual hearing and spiritual instinctual hearing was this: I wanted to be and to raise my children to be, people who wake in the night when they hear not only the cries of their own babies but the cries of every and any baby.  The kind of people who can respond with love and surrender each time they hear a cry of human being in need, even in the dark of night, even when we would rather sleep.

Another moment when this D’var was born was on a phone call with my friend Y. after Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell. Y. was saying something like “What’s going on? What’s going on? This is America.” And there was an urgency in her voice, a terror. I had read a headline or two about the case but I hadn't yet taken the time to read more. I was busy, planned to get to it soon. But something in my friend’s voice, something said to me in a starkness, painful and real, that the difference between being a good white friend and ally and being a black mother in that moment was the difference between my upset at the story and her terror. And I saw it clearly. I saw her daughter, 17, headed to Princeton after graduating as the only black Jewish girl from her yeshiva high school. I saw her suddenly, briefly through her mother’s eyes. I saw the terror of having to release one’s child, one’s black child, to an unknown world, the terror of having to allow one’s baby to drive on a street through Princeton. Anywhere really. And I felt shaken awake in a new way to the difference in my reality and in the reality of my dear friend, both of us Jewish mothers who love our kids and would do anything to protect them, one of us white and one of us black.

            I tasted for a moment the physical terror in her voice. And then I went into my house to have dinner with my family and she went into her house to have dinner with hers. But before we got off the phone I made a promise to her, yes, we would do something, no I wouldn't forget the moment, no I wouldn't let this fear and anger and horror all sit solely on her shoulders.

            The third place this dvar Torah was born was in my reading of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s amazingly beautiful, powerful and heart-wrenching book Between the World and Me, which I read this summer, thanks to the fact that the GJC Racism group decided it would be a good thing to do together. For those of you who have not yet read this book, and I strongly commend you to read it, what you need to know for now is that the book is written by a black father to his fifteen year old black son. The book tells the story of how Ta-Nehisi, in his words, has made the struggle to live free in his black body in America the central meaning making struggle of his life. He writes about his childhood on the harsh streets of inner city Baltimore, his struggles with school, his period of valorizing and learning from Black Power and Malcom X, his awakenings at Howard University to the deeper complexities of race and racism and blackness, and about becoming parent. He shares the story of the loss of a peer to police violence and of his intense visit with the mother of this murdered son, a professor and dean, who had raised her son in the suburbs, sent him to private schools and given him so much, none of which protected him from being murdered by a police officer in the prime of his life.

            These three experiences led me to feel compelled, if still somewhat anxious about, giving this dvar torah. So here’s the essence of what I want to say:

            For me, this year, the Binding of Isaac is a story different from any other year I have read it. This year it is a story about an Abraham who loves his son but who is so terrified by the realization that he could be taken away from him that he almost kills him himself.

            This year for me, Abraham is a black father. And Isaac is his beloved son. And what happens in the story is that Abraham, through binding his son on the altar, passes on to his son the terrifying truth that his body could be taken from him at any moment.

            Isaac and Abraham are both afraid. Fear is something they live with and know. Indeed fear becomes part of Isaac's name (as Gideon Ephrat points out in a blog post on the use of the phrase Pachad Yitzchak after the Akeida).

            I want to briefly read you a few quotes from Between the World and Me that may help you see how I have arrived at this reading of Akeidat Yitzchak.

Coates writes: “Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made.” He continues, “That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother’s hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of “race,” imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods.” - p. 82

            So, what happens when we read these two texts, Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Genesis 22 together? A few things happen.

            One of the most difficult and important things that Ta-Nehisi Coates asks his son and his readers to do is to accept a radically different and more violent narrative of America than the one we generally believe in. He asks us, as does the Black Lives Matter movement more broadly, to recognize that what has gone on this year have not been the acts of some bad cops, but instead a reflection of and carrying out of a policy of systemic racism consistent with the basic tenets of the American Dream in which the of safety and prosperity of people who get to claim the identity of “white” get that through the plunder, ownership, and terrorizing of Black bodies.

            I hear in this two calls to us as a community of primarily white Jews.

            The first is that we recognize how much we have benefited from the process of mostly losing, at least in the United States, the marker of having Jewish bodies, and of being accepted as having white bodies. But we can’t stop there. We must also take the step of deciding to stop believing in the whiteness of our bodies, while still fully acknowledging white privilege, and of no longer acquiescing to the system that gives us advantages because of our supposed whiteness on the backs of those whose skin is black.

            Another equally hard and important move that I invite us to make is for us to be willing to look at the Torah and at Israelite civilization with the same hard scrutiny with which Coates looks at America, and also, through the course of the book, at blackness.

            He writes, "The writer, and that was what I was becoming, must be wary of every Dream and every nation, even his own nation. Perhaps his own nation more than any other, precisely because it was his own” (p.53) and also, "Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it."

            I think its important for us as Jews to be ready to admit that indeed our beloved Torah is not exempt as a story in which some great power is elevated through the violent exploitation of other human bodies. Despite the power of the Exodus narrative, in the Torah, in the end, Israelites bodies are the chosen bodies. It is the bodies of the inhabitants of the land of Canaan who are plundered and destroyed in order to pave the way for our Dream, for the conquest of the Promised Land. This is a very troubling way to look at the Torah, just as Coates presents us with a very difficult read of America. But the fact that it makes us uncomfortable doesn't make it not true.

            And if we can tell the truth, tell the truth about America, and tell the truth about the Bible, and tell a more whole truth about our changing and evolving position as American Jews in the civil rights struggle, not just about Heschel in Selma, and Andrew Goodman, and the stories we are proud of, we will be moving closer to being able to make necessary radical change.

            Let’s return to Isaac, bound and trembling with the knife raised above him. On the one hand I am seeing him and asking you to see him as an American boy with a black body. I am doing this because black bodies are the bodies in America today that hold the position of Yitzchak, the position of fear, of lack of freedom, of being struck, bound between the promise of a grand and fruitful future and the very real possibility of immanent unexplained and incomprehensible death.

            But at the same time that I want us to hold the image of Yitzchak as a black child, I also want to hold him as every child.

            The binding of Isaac is a story that reveals that actually we all have bodies. And that actually every one of our bodies is vulnerable. Every one of our bodies would cry out "I can't breathe" if it was put into a chokehold and we had asthma. Every one of our bodies would be destroyed if it was bound and driven around in the back of a police van.

            Isaac is our reminder that really race is a construct that creates an unnatural line between those bodies that are vulnerable and destructible and those that are strong and invincible.

            Our narrative does not end with Yishmael cast out and Yitzchak  protected as the chosen one. Yitzchak ends up vulnerable in today’s Torah reading just as Yishmael did in yesterday’s. Isaac's body lies there bound and afraid, just as Yishmael sat in the desert thirsty and in danger of dying. Both of them together remind all us that all of our bodies could be taken from us for reasons we don't understand and will never understand. Each is dependent on an angel shifting their parent’s vision in order to enable their survival.

            So on the one hand I am saying that some bodies are more vulnerable than others and on the other hand I am saying that all bodies are equally vulnerable. Yes.

            Racism and the American Dream's dependence on it makes it true that black bodies are far more vulnerable in America than white bodies. But this is not an inherent truth. This is the result of a system built to protect and construct white bodies and to control and destroy black bodies, families, and communities.

            When we recognize that whiteness is a construct, that blackness is a construct, that race is a construct, we take one important step. We then need to take another. We need to take the step of saying that we want to exchange of our sense of distance from the reality of the vulnerability of the body for a society in which all bodies are equally vulnerable and equally free.

            We don't yet live in that society. The Torah doesn't live in that reality either. But Isaac's bound body and the rabbis choice to force us to look at it every year is perhaps a way in to that worldview.

            That's where we want to go. To the worldview where the color of Isaac's skin doesn't make him more or less likely to be bound or unbound, where the color of his skin doesn't make him more or less likely to live with a constant underlying sense of fear.

            As Jews we often read this story in a way that focuses us more on the intellectual, spiritual, philosophical questions raised by the Akeida. I have felt compelled this year to stay with the body. With the embodied terror of Isaac and of Abraham. And beyond them of Hagar and Yishmael. And even Sarah.

            I have felt compelled to stay with the deep experience of bodily fear that is not right now equally shared in this country. But which perhaps we can begin to more deeply understand through our bodies than through our minds.

            Racism can only partially be unlearned through the mind. The racist’s fear, the fear that the supposedly white body carries of the black body is also a bodily fear. And so perhaps we can get more to the root of racism if we go to this body place. And perhaps this year that is where Isaac is inviting us to go.

            At least it is where his body invited me to go this year. His body and a mother’s terror, and the crazy sad fact of Sandra Bland's death, and all the lives taken this year because of police violence and the powerful gift of Ta-nehesi Coates’s words to his fifteen year old son — his act of father to son truth telling that somehow calls out to me across time and space as an answer to Abraham's deafening silence during his three day walk with his son.

            Towards the end of the book, Coates addresses his son: ”Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it. The fact is that despite their dreams, their lives are also not inviolable. When their own vulnerability becomes real—when the police decide that tactics intended for the ghetto should enjoy wider usage, when their armed society shoots down their children, when nature sends hurricanes against their cities—they are shocked in a way that those of us who were born and bred to understand cause and effect can never be. And I would not have you live like them. You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of living in ignorance of this essential fact... I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.” (pp.107-8)

            May we keep learning, may we keep struggling, may we raise our next generation — all of them, to be conscious citizens of this terrible and beautiful world. May the shofar keep blasting and shaking all of us awake.