Parshat Bo, 5777 the Strangers in Our Midst and in Our Embrace

Parshat Bo, 5777 The Strangers In Our Midst And In Our Embrace We have come to a place in American life where even the most sacred of things is no longer safe and easy. I am talking, of course, about the great institution of the Super Bowl commercial. So toxic and unsafe is our current climate, so concerned are people that their words and messages will be upended, or intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood, so heightened is the tension in our nation right now, that Anheuser-Busch is apparently having serious misgivings about airing a particular ad on Sunday. This ad was planned for a full year, was filmed in October, and happens to open with immigrant founder Adolphus Busch’s unpleasant and unfriendly 1857 arrival to the port in New Orleans. It is not the main thrust of the ad, but because of the current sensitivity around immigrants, company execs are now concerned about upsetting either Conservatives or Liberals, or both. The ad was supposed to just be about this guy’s life, making no statement. It now may be too fraught, to laden, to air. This to me is an example of the fact that Purim has come early this year. The world has gone a bit mad, and so things are topsy-turvy, and nahafochu, and upside down. So much so that I fear we don’t recognize our inverted images. Some examples, from all sides of the aisle. We have some of the country’s strongest proponents of free-speech clamping down, sometimes violently, on free expression, as if disagreeable and even hateful speech is not protected. We have some of the country’s strongest proponents of American exceptionalism, built off the idea that the country’s raw national character and power coaxes greatness and unity from our varied melting pot, letting reasonable fear mushroom into unreasonable panic and thus closing the door to future contributors to that melting pot, future validators of that very American exceptionalism. We have those people in the country usually most suspicious of religious and ideological orthodoxies expressing outrage when other people don’t subscribe to their orthodoxy, and don’t share their exact outrage. And we have some of the loudest people naming that the sky is falling due to some phantom voter fraud scandal themselves registered to vote in multiple states, which itself is neither illegal nor particularly rare, but seems to be the very sin for which they are blaming millions of people. We have people who generally are most concerned about protecting the separation of church and state now loudly calling on this “church”, and other churches, to stand against this state. In this climate, even the meaningless fun of touchdowns, beer, guacamole and silly commercials is suddenly too heavy to just enjoy. Amidst all this I sent an email out on Monday. I didn’t predict the uproar it would cause. I want to share the context of this email, the pshat or clearest meaning I intended for it, the ways it was misunderstood by members of the community, and where I stand on some of these issues, as a rabbi, communal leader, American and Jew. The context. For a year and a half, TBA has had a Refugee TaskForce. I founded it, along with some eager TBA activists, in response to the humanitarian crisis of the Syrian refugees. The iconic and awful picture of the body of the young Syrian boy washed up on the shore spurred millions into action, including me, including us. We have had a refugee Shabbat, where we dedicated learning and listening to both the Jewish ethical and more politically wonky aspects of refugee policy. We have had a series of events that gave attendees deep and personal insight into the crisis, the stories, the narratives. And we have been part of Project Hope, organizing collection and delivery of various items to be donated to new arrivals to our country. I celebrate and honor the work done by the TaskForce, and the inspiring volunteers who have been leading this charge. I won’t list them by name in order not to leave out someone unintentionally. As it turns out, we had worked on the text of an email with updates on Project Hope. It was meant to go out this past Sunday. These date details seem tedious, but I think they are important. Over the weekend, new executive orders were announced significantly changing the refugee and immigration landscape. Members of the taskforce spent last Sunday and Monday scrambling to determine whether we should send out the email as is, or whether it would just seem tone-deaf given the changes in policy. The decision was ultimately to send out, but with some clarifying paragraphs from me. Here is what those paragraphs, vetted and approved by the very taskforce most committed to the refugee crisis, were intended to convey: 1) We remain committed to helping local refugees and immigrants in their acclimation to American life. 2) We understand some in our community have mixed feelings, to say the least, regarding refugee policy, but we nevertheless proudly stand behind our support of Project. 3) We understand that with recent policy changes the email about Project Hope may be either ineffective or insufficient. Ineffective, because with immigration temporarily halted, there simply may not be enough people to whom to distribute the stuff gathered. We were dealing with in-real-time updates from HIAS and JFS and other such organizations, getting conflicting data, and we were not sure it was the right idea to continue to ask for more stuff if there would be no place to bring that stuff because there may be no people to whom to give that stuff. Insufficient, because the new policies might indeed spur the Refugee TaskForce, and the shul as a whole, without unanimity but also with clarity and moral force, to engage the congregation in a much larger or more activist project than gathering tables, chairs, clothes and appliances. But since the policies were so new and we were just beginning to understand them and react to them, we didn’t yet have that next full message to share. So…we said we are still sharing the original email because it reflected our thinking and the situation in the moment we composed it. And had it arrived in people’s inboxes the previous Thursday it would have needed no qualifier or context. And we asked the community to sit tight a bit and allow us to formulate our thoughts until we had a more particular response to the recent policy changes. That is what the email intended to convey. I take responsibility for any language that obfuscated that message. We could have wordsmithed it better, and I regret that we didn’t. And the reason we didn’t is that we all felt under the gun to get something out there, because patience seems to be on decline these days. We want instant and refined reactions on issues most important to us. And so those who tarry in order to refine better can be called out for insouciance or indifference, or things much worse. Now I hope I have made clear what the email intended to say. Here is how it was interpreted by many, given the emails that flooded my inbox this week. The email meant we were, and I was, apologizing for collecting things for refugees. It meant that the new policy might make us stop our refugee advocacy and support. And it meant that I was morally vacuous, kowtowing to board members or financial donors who might support the recent policy changes, and that I thus showed cowardice rather than courage. That is paraphrased from some of the nicer emails I received this week, and from some public Facebook-shaming aimed at me and the shul. Why am I sharing this? Why do the details matter? Both because I want to clarify where I personally stand on some of these issues. And because I want to expand it into a larger conversation about good will, and communal discourse, and the difference between wanting moral leadership on the one hand, and insisting on the other hand that one’s religious leaders agree completely and immediately on issues that some will claim are moral and thus transcend politics, and which others will reasonably claim are very much subject to political nuance and debate. If we are going to share and build and enjoy and learn from, and invest in, community together over the next four years, eight years, and beyond, we have to be able to name and talk about some of these things. Even if they are uncomfortable. So let me say, again, for full clarity. I am proud of our refugee work at TBA. More will be coming. I signed and will continue to sign rabbinic letters organized by HIAS regarding support of refugees. The recent executive orders trouble me, to say the least. I understand the fears that motivate people to want our borders to be more secure than they are. No country willy-nilly flings its doors open to anyone who wants in. There are reasonable fears regarding how the wrong immigration policy could enable terrorism, as some recent events in Europe have sadly shown. We have to take it seriously. Deal with it in some way meaningful way. But we cannot let it paralyze us. Or permit it to amputate our principles. We must resist the descent from fear to panic. And I think that both the best of the Jewish tradition and the best of the American tradition stand against firmly-closed doors, and stand against religious litmus tests for entry. Though I have no problem naming, from the bimah, and from my heart, the radical expression of militant jihadism as one of the world’s current greatest threats to peace and security, I reject outright the categorization of all Muslims as reflecting such an ideology. And I have and will continue to go on record that if the theoretical Muslim Registry ever takes hold in our country, I will sign it myself as an act of resistance. I say this from the bimah, with no apology. And I believe Jewish wisdom, texts and morality stand behind me. The very narrative we read this morning, and which will be remembered dozens of times within the text of the Torah, reinforces our obligation to identify with, advocate for, embrace and love the ger, the stranger. I am moved by my teacher Micah Goodman’s insight that the Torah’s internal memory of the Exodus narrative is not that because of our experience in Egypt we have to make sure we are never again oppressed. That, too, is worth aspiring to. But within the Torah our experience as gerim is harnessed to make sure we are never the oppressors. That we identify with the ger. That we go past our comfort zones, and our basest instincts, and perhaps even our fears, to open arms and embrace. I will say these words, and have this debate, with anyone in our community or beyond. I will share with them as I do with you today that this is this rabbi’s beliefs and applications of these verses and ideas as it relates to this moment in human history, and the American story. But here is what I refuse to do. I will not condemn those who see this differently. I will not assume that those who disagree with me, even on this issue, and who marshal the Torah’s teachings in a different direction than I do, are stupid. Or obtuse. Or obscene. Or immoral. I will not accuse my teachers and mentors who do not see this issue exactly as I do, of lacking moral courage. I will force myself to see the nuance of the situations that may at first glance seem simple. I will express my deep concern about individual countries, demonstrably because of their Muslim population, named as entirely forbidden regarding their refugees being granted access to our borders, and I will also call out some of those very countries who will not allow a single Jew to enter, and call out those who call out the former religious and moral outrage and not the latter. I will continue to listen, to you and others. And I will try to figure out how to balance the widely different needs and expectations of this extraordinary kahal. What I am about to say is not hyperbole. Some of you are begging me to unify the congregation, and ensure it is a safe space for all. And some of you are demanding of me to take strong stands, even if it divides the congregation, because that and only that is moral leadership. Some of you are thanking me for emails and posts. And some of you are yelling at me, “How dare you not post! Or how dare you post what you did post?” Some of you are saying you need prayer and communal gathering to reflect and be about your highest ethical calls, for if so what else is it for? And so you want Shabbat services and rabbis’ sermons, particularly now, to be about the issues of the day. You want, to paraphrase Heschel, your feet and body and ears to be praying as you experience shul life as activism itself. And some of you come to shul for reprieve. For a temporary 2-3-hour oasis from the noise. And the Facebook. And the politics. And the pain. You come to shul to pray. To enter your innermost spiritual place and find comfort and surety without cacophony. But with friends, familiar prayers, and a bowl of cholent. Are some of you right and some of you dead wrong in what you want from shul life? From Shabbat services? From your rabbis? As I said in my sermon a few weeks ago, I continue to try to be a rabbi to you all. To you who feel “other”ed or outed or unsafe because of what you believe, or what people think you believe, or what people accuse you of believing. And to those of you who really, in your hearts, do not want to admit that there are people in your midst, in your shul, who claim to be moral people and yet who disagree so totally with you on an issue you see as so fundamental. Part of my job is to help those very camps see one another, pray together, disagree with respect, and build community. All while taking the Jewish ethical stances I believe the tradition compels me to take, even if many of you disagree with those stances, and even if many of you wish I took those very stances one step further. On these meta and macro points, too, I am inspired by our tradition’s wisdom, including some that emerge from this week’s parsha. First is a teaching by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the great Hasidic master. He notices that the parsha begins with God sending Moshe to Pharaoh, once again, The Kotzker shares, compellingly, that the phrase . באאלפרעה to plea his case. The words are Come to . באאלפרעה Go to Pharaoh. Instead, God says to Moshe . לךאךפרעה should have been Pharaoh. Why? Why say “come” when it would have made sense to say “go.” His answer is so beautiful. He says sometimes when our instinct is to say “go,” to dismiss, to send away, we need to say “come.” To embrace. That is God’s way. God didn’t thrust Moshe away from him. He said, “Moshe…come to Pharaoh, and I will be there.” My friends, we must have form match content here. Particularly as we talk about embracing the stranger, and comforting the other, and refusing to send people away…we have to not send people away! It is a rabbinic kol sheken, an argument a fortiori. If we are posting, and marching and that we should love the stranger out there, we must, must , ואהבתםאת הגר protesting as we act out do it in a way that does not make a stranger out of the people closest to us, in here. We must apply the Kotzker’s wisdom and say I might disagree with you. Strenuously. But I don’t dismiss you. I don’t make you stranger/ger, to me, particularly as I defend my own stances on how we treat the ger. I know some of you are afraid. And I know that some of you are afraid for very different reasons. And I share some of both types of those fears. And as your rabbi, I also am afraid of what those differing fears are already doing to the fabric of our community. I love our community. And know that it can continue to be a source of the good and the right, and a source of shared embrace and purpose, and a source of refuge both for its members who want spiritual uplift and for the true gerim among us. And I recommit this morning both to the external spiritual activism that my Jewish and rabbinic conscience calls me to do, knowing that for some of you it will be too much and for some little. And I simultaneously recommit to the internal spiritual activism that my Jewish and rabbinic conscience calls me to do to create sanctity in this room, and in this community, and have it be a space of and for real, impassioned, virtue-based, but also dignified and respectful and loving dialogue. I will end today with a hope and a text. I hope that the waters calm a bit. And I hope that even if they don’t there will continue to be need and interest from this community for me and my colleagues to come to this bimah and share sweet words of Torah without necessarily applying them, each time, to this week’s particular outrage, and without their having to live up to a particular litmus test of individual members’ moral prisms in order to be considered worthy. Part of reacting to a changing world is to be sufficiently alert to its most troublesome changes, and to do something about it. And part of reacting to a changing world is to hold on to and even celebrate the parts that need not change, that can be buoys in stormy seas. This bimah may sometimes be used for sermons like these, reacting to the maelstrom out there. And this bimah will continue to be used for other Torah, about our lives, and relationships, and commitments to one another. I hope you’ll continue to come and listen and disagree, and be together, with me. And here is the text. It comes from one of the great Biblical scholars of the 20th Century, Professor Yochanan Muffs, whose teaching career at JTS spanned my education and my in-laws’, and beyond. He writes with clarity and courage regarding the great risks we take when we truly meet another. “Any meeting of personalities requires great bravery. One who attempts to communicate with another endangers his own life, for to do this he must reveal what is in his heart. Such an act is potentially dangerous because one does not know ahead of time if he will find a receptive ear. There is always the possibility that the ear of the listener will be impervious. Any real communication, then, is a dangerous leap. But if one never screws up the courage to jump, he will wither away in silent isolation. There are two choices: to love or to die…” Let us not die. Let us take the risk of meeting one another. Let us invite more than we dismiss. Let us recognize the strangers beyond, and the strangers within. The gerim we embrace, and the gerim we inadvertently create. Let us face this moment with moral courage, communal cohesion, respectful dialogue and disagreement, receptive ears and hearts. Let us not die. Let us love. Shabbat Shalom