Rosh Hashanah 2015/5776 - Day One

            Rosh Hashanah is the day we are remembered in heaven, as God remembers Sarah in today’s Torah Portion. Chayim Nahman Bialik, a 19^th century poet, says, “Before God there are yet other languages than those of words: melody, weeping, and laughter. They are the possession of all who are alive …. They are the manifestations of the very deep levels of our being.” Sarah communicates with God in laughter. She laughs when she overhears that prophesy that she will have a baby, and when Isaac is born she says, “God has brought me laughter.” Hagar and Ishmael communicate in weeping and silent cries. The Torah says that Hagar burst into tears, and follows with “And God heard the cry of the boy,” but we never read that the boy cried as well. Thus, says Rabbi Mendel of Vorki, a Hasidic master, “We learn that God can hear the silent cries of the anguished heart, even when no words are uttered.”

            On the chapter about Rosh Hashanah in his book, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew writes: “On Rosh Hashanah, the gates between heaven and earth are opened, and things that were beyond us suddenly become possible. The deepest questions of our heart begin to find answers. Our deepest fear, that gaping emptiness up ahead of us and back behind us as well, suddenly becomes our ally. Heaven begins to help us.”

            Heaven helps even if we don’t know how to articulate the ask. Heaven hears each voice in the multitudes reciting the Rosh Hashanah. Heaven may be God, the Unnamed Power of the Universe, or your own intuition and instinct. Whatever Heaven is, Heaven hears you in whatever language you are using. Heaven understands your laughter and your weeping, your praying and you singing, your speech and your silent meditations. But when Heaven gives you an answer, are you listening? Are you ready to make the changes necessary to move forward, to adopt a High Holy Day attitude for the whole year?

            In our Torah portion, Sarah behaves pretty shamefully. She makes unfair demands on Abraham and casts out innocent people, nearly condemning a helpless child to death. It is hard to reconcile that this woman we consider our matriarch, a woman who communicates with God in laughter, could be so petty and jealous and afraid of a child. But we also know that it is important to the narrative. We know that God hears the cries of Hagar and Ishmael as well and provides for them. We know that God reassures Abraham that listening to Sarah is the right thing to do and that all of Abraham’s children will be cared for. Can we give ourselves that reassurance? In the absence of direct conversation with God such as the Biblical characters have, can we still open our hearts to hear the messages of forgiveness and reassurances that we are doing the right thing? 

            Lew also said in his Rosh Hashanah chapter, “What would happen if every time we did something we disapproved of, we opened our heart to heaven? What would happen if every time we felt an impulse we didn’t like we acknowledged its Divine origin?” What would happen if we acted with the decisiveness of Sarah, even if we didn’t know that our actions were the right decision? What would happen if we rolled with the punches like Abraham and tried to keep peace with our friends and family and neighbors, no matter what crazy thing they ask of us?

             I’m not advocating we go around giving in to the base instincts of ourselves or others. I am not saying that it is okay to cut people from your life because they seem suspicious to you, nor that you shouldn’t reprimand friends and family who behave harmfully. Of course, use your common sense and act in accordance with your own conscience. But, know that you will mess up sometimes, and that’s okay. Know that you don’t need to deliberate over every option because whatever you end up doing is right for you for that moment. Even when it’s wrong, it will give you an opportunity to learn a lesson, to accept your own humanity, to know how to do better next time. If we are created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, than even our flaws and faults are reflective of God.

            “The real work we have to do at this time of year,” Alan Lew postulates, “is to find compassion no matter what. But we have to find it for ourselves before we can be of much use to others. The real work is to look at who we really are, and to contemplate Who made us that way.” We have to be willing to live with the choices we make, including the ones we wish we’d made differently. We have to be willing to learn from those we wish we made differently and actively work toward making different decisions in the future. We have to be willing to accept that we won’t always do right, but we can always do our best. We have to be willing to be honest with ourselves so that we can hear our own laughter and weeping, singing and prayer, speech and silent meditation.

            And when we are ready to achieve that self-compassion and that self-awareness, may we find ourselves able to behave year round in accordance with our Rosh Hashanah souls. Amen. 

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5776

Say Hello to Tishrei and 5776 with a good old fashioned New Year’s Eve ball dropping. May it be pleasing before you, Adonai our God, and God of our ancestors that we are renewed for a good and sweet year! [count down from 10 and drop a whole apple into a bowl of honey].

            You are walking through the world half asleep. It isn’t just that you don’t know who you are and that you don’t know how or why you got here. It’s worse than that; these questions never even arise. It is as if you are in a dream. Then the walls of the great house that surrounds you crumble and fall. You tumble out onto a strange street, suddenly conscious of your estrangement and your homelessness. A great horn sounds, calling you to remembrance, but all you can remember is how much you have forgotten. Every day for a month, you sit and try to remember who you are and where you are going. By the last week of this month, your need to know these things weighs upon you. Your prayers become urgent.

            Then the great horn sounds in earnest one hundred times. The time of transformations is upon you. The world is once again cracking through the shell of its egg to be born. The gate between heaven and earth creaks open. The Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once again, and your name is written in one of them. But you don’t know which one.

            The ten days that follow are fraught with meaning and dread. They are days when it is perfectly clear every second that you live in the midst of a chain of ineluctable consequence, that everything you do, every prayer you utter, every intention you form, every act of compassion you perform, ripples out from the center of your being into the end of time. Anger and its terrible cost lie naked before you. Grievance gives way to forgiveness. At the same time, you become aware that you also stand are the end of a long chain of consequences. Many things are beyond your control. They are part of a process that was set in motion long ago. You find the idea of this unbearable.

            Then, just when you think you can’t tolerate one moment more, you are called to gather with a multitude in a great hall. A court has convened high up on the altar in the front of the hall. Make way! Make way! The judges of the court proclaim, for everyone must be included in the proceeding. No one, not even the usual outcasts, may be excluded. You are told that you are in possession of a great power, the power of speech, and that you will certainly abuse it – you are already forgiven for having abused it in the past – but in the end it will save you. Fir the next twenty-four hours you rehearse your own death. You wear a shroud and, like a dead person, you neither eat nor drink nor fornicate. You summon the desperate strength of life’s last moments. A great wall of speech is hurled against your heart again and again; a fist beats against the wall of your heart relentlessly until you are broken-hearted and confess to you great crime. You are a human being, guilty of every crime imaginable. Your heart is cracking through its shell to be reborn then a chill grips you. The gate between heaven and earth has suddenly begun to close. The multitude has swollen. It is almost as if the great hall has magically expanded to include an infinity of desperate souls. This is your last chance. Everyone has run out of time. Every heart has broken. The gate clangs shut, the great horn sounds one last time. You feel curiously lighthearted and clean.

            Some days later you find yourself building a house; a curious house, an incomplete house, a house that suggests the idea of a house without actually being one. This house has no roof. There are a few twigs and branches on top, but you can see the stars and feel the wind through them. And the walls of this house don’t go all the way around it either. Yet as you sit in this house eating the bounty of the earth, you feel a deep sense of security and joy. Here in this mere idea of a house, you finally feel as if you are home. The journey is over.

            At precisely this moment, the journey begins again. The curious house is dismantled. The King calls you in for a last intimate meal, and then you set out on your way again. [Alan Lew, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared]

            May this dreamlike reflection of the high holy days carry us through the next ten days as we contemplate the meanings of teshuvah, tzedakah, and tefillah, of repentance and returning, of righteous giving and charitable lovingkindness, and of heartfelt prayer. Moreover, ten days from now, let us not forget these contemplations. May the spirit of the high holy days remain in our hearts and minds all year, that we may really find ourselves ever striving to improve ourselves and our world.

Parashat Nitzavim, "God, the Devil and Bob," and Finding a community that teaches you to speak your own truth

         This is my first Shabbat back at Temple Beth Emeth, where I am returning for a fourth, non-consecutive year as the rabbinic intern. This Shabbat is also the first day back at Hebrew school for the kiddos. 

            I can’t read Parashat Nitzavim without thinking of a scene from a short-lived cartoon that was briefly on air when I was in middle school. It was called God, the Devil, and Bob, and its plot was that a Jerry Garcia-looking God ponders that perhaps humanity has lost its way and it’s time to start over again. He decides to give the world one more chance by giving one man the opportunity to speak to his friends and neighbors and change the course of their lives. And of course, God allows the Devil to choose the man. He chooses Bob Allman, a regular Joe Schmoe with no religious affiliations or humanitarian ambitions (get it? All-man? Because he’s the everyman?). In one of my favorite scenes in the 13-episode series, Bob asks God what it is he’s supposed to do, what would make God happy. God exclaims, “This is not new stuff! It’s written in scrolls, books, stone tablets! What do you want me to do, scribble it on a bar napkin?!” It is such an echo of Moses’s word in this week’s Torah portion: “This is not hidden from you, nor is it far off. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea… The word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.”

            And yet, sometimes even the things in our hearts and minds, the things we seem to instinctively know, still need to be teased out of us. They need to be awoken, refined, or articulated in ways that we can’t do alone. That’s why we have community to help us. Why we have religious school and services to teach us. Why we need teachers and rabbis and families to lead us. To form the right words to the thoughts we knew were already buried inside. We don’t need God to scribble out exact instructions on a napkin, we do need to have some guidance, and it’s important to find a community that really does guide you to live out your own truth.

            It is such a pleasure for me to be back in a community that I think does that for me. It’s so nice to be back in a place where I think I can be a part of that support for the young students we are welcoming back today for first day of Religious school. I am thrilled to be standing among you again today, just as the whole community of Israel stood together in our parasha this week. As we begin a new year together, may it be one of standing together in a holy community, learning and growing together, finding holiness right here among us. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

Parashat Shelach - What our Haftarah has to teach us about sex work

      As you all should know by now, I have had the pleasure and privilege of holding a Global Justice Fellowship with the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) this year. AJWS works on several facets of social, economic, and environmental justice, but this year chose to focus on a campaign to promote the rights of women, girls, and LGBTI folks around the world. One of the organizations that AJWS supports that I had the opportunity to meet during my trip to El Salvador and Nicaragua was called Flor de Piedra, an association for sex workers. As you can imagine, these women have been looked down upon by their communities, not only face discrimination and abuse from local business owners, clients, and find themselves unprotected by the police, they often face the discrimination and abuse from the police.

            In this week’s Haftarah, we meet Rahav, “the prostitute”. Today we say “sex worker” instead of “prostitute” for a few reasons. One reason is simply stigma: when people hear “prostitute,” too often a specific image comes to mind that is derogatory and so we change the language to help move the ideas behind it forward. Another reason, which is sort of two-fold, is an attempt to emphasize that sex work is work and sex workers are whole people with lives outside of their work. There would be no industry if there were no clients and so stigmatizing the providers of this service and limiting their identity to the way they pay their bills is unfair and dehumanizing. But most translations of Joshua chapter 2 will say “Rahav the prostitute.”

            In Women in the Hebrew Bible, Phyllis Bird explores the question of who Rahav really was and why she gets to play a heroine’s role in the fall of Jericho. “Why would the Israelites consort with a prostitute, who is portrayed as a heroine, without apparent censure of her profession or role?” she asks. The stigma of prostitution that continues to this day already existed in the Biblical world, and yet we see none of this in our Haftarah this week. Rahav’s profession is mentioned in passing, and then the focus of the story is on her role in helping the Israelites invade Jericho, in which she takes control of her own situation and makes alliances with strange men to protect herself and her family. Bird suggests that this is no mere accident, and neither are we meant to understand Rahav as some sort of high level cultic prostitute of the ancient Canaanite religion (as some have suggested). Rather, Rahav’s position as a lowly harlot is “essential to the story.” Bird explains how in the story, we learn that in order for her family to be protected through her deal with the Israelite spies, they must come into “her house,” i.e. the house the Israelites come upon is not the family home but clearly her brothel. The brothel, also possibly an inn or tavern as some translators will have you believe, offers a good cover for the strange travelers, and a good place to pick up the seedy information that may help the Israelite spies in their plan to overthrow Jericho. Whether this is historical document or literary technique, it was no accident that the Israelites happened upon the house of a harlot. Further, Bird explains, the whole story hinges on Rahav’s marginal status as a sex worker. It is because she is an outcast to respectable society that the strange men (Israelites) have access to her at all, and it is presumably at least partially because of her outcast status that she is so willing and eager to throw her current society under the bus (though our narrative tells us it is because she has heard of the wonders of our God and knows that God’s people will win either way and just wants to protect herself and her family).

            Bird pauses here to describe the “low status and despised state” of the prostitute, saying how neither “unfortunate circumstance [n]or personal fault … would elicit much sympathy or charity from an ancient audience,” and here I would like to pause to say that unfortunate circumstances and personal autonomy (for “fault” has such a negative meaning) are not mutually exclusive. Often, in sex-positive feminism, while we seek to end human trafficking and raise up the autonomy and rights of sex workers, we forget to acknowledge the potential link. While some women absolutely go into sex work with full autonomy, most of the women we met at Flor de Piedra were forced into it at a young age. Now, as adult women with children, they find that it is the only job that affords them the flexible hours and decent pay to help keep their homes afloat. In some cases, they actively seek out other work but find no one will hire them because of their history in sex work. They come together at Flor de Piedra to seek support, to learn their rights, to fight for more, to learn where they can find proper health care without stigmatization, to reach out to and educate others. The focus for the work now is on building and understanding autonomy, but we would be remiss to think that trafficked women and the empowered women who self-identify as “sex workers” are necessarily different.

            Rahav was a heroine, and so are many of the women we overlook every day. Just as the Israelites repaid Rahav’s kindness and bravery by sparing her and her whole family when they conquered Jericho, so too should we today honor the humanity in those society has looked down upon by promoting the right to safety, healthcare, and protection from harm for sex workers worldwide. Whatever your thoughts on the morality or legality of the work, the truth is a person’s profession should have no effect on how they are treated. Every human deserves the same access to healthcare and police protection, the same right to be treated with basic respect. For more information, check out AJWS’s resources here: https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ajws_sex_worker_rights_policy_brief.pdf or feel free to ask me more about Flor de Piedra! May we all look toward a future in which every person’s life is valued for its inherent worth, and no longer judge others by the work they engage in. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

           

Parashat Shemini and AJWS

During my January semester break, I spent a little over a week traveling through El Salvador and Nicaragua with American Jewish World Service, as part of my Global Justice Fellowship for Rabbinic and Graduate Students. We met with several grassroots non-profit, non-governmental organizations that AJWS partners with in the collective global effort to promote human rights and equality everywhere. Our fellowship is particularly focused on AJWS’s “We Believe” campaign, fighting for the rights of women, girls, and LGBTI folks around the world, so all the groups we met with work in those particular demographics. We met with some amazing, empowered, inspiring people: the women of Flor de Piedra, a sex workers’ rights organization in El Salvador; COMCAVIS Trans and ANIT, trans* women’s rights groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua, respectively; FESPAD, a “strategic ally” in El Salvador (that is, not grassroots, but a large-scale non-profit organization that works as a parent to smaller groups like COMCAVIS, representing their needs to international governmental bodies); Estrellas del Gulfo, an LGBTI group in rural El Salvador; Groupo Safo, a group that organizes particularly for lesbians in Nicaragua, but works with other local LGBTI groups; and Gaviota, an organization that advocates for the rights and safety of indigenous women in the autonomous region of Nicaragua.

The thing that most struck me throughout our travels was the warm welcomes we received. Particularly in El Salvador, every group greeted us with a welcome to “our home”. There was a sense of love and solidarity in the connections we were making that was so heartwarming. These groups are fighting for their rights, in some cases fighting for their lives. They are doing incredibly important work on the ground to improve their own lives and communities, to change laws in their own countries, and to gain access to the basic healthcare and safety that we all take for granted. Yet, they welcomed us, outsiders who do not have to share in their personal struggles, as partners. They embraced us, not as beneficiaries or interlopers, but as equals in the fight for freedom of all people.

In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites in the desert are ready to make their first sacrifices in the Mishkan, to officially give home to the Shechinah among them. After Aaron completes the offering, he blesses the people with the priestly blessing and descends from the altar to stand among them. After all this is said and done, the “glory of God appeared to all the people.” When the organizations we met with in Nicaragua and El Salvador greeted us into their spaces as though it were ours as well, I felt the Shechinah among us. Speaking with them felt like receiving the priestly blessing: that God may bless and keep us all, that God will shine God’s face upon us, and that God will lift God’s face toward us, and give us peace. The work that these groups do feels like a modern re-building of the Mishkan. They are building spaces, both physically and emotionally, in which the Shechinah will reside among them. It is incredibly exciting and inspiring to be welcomed in, and I can understand the desire to rush forth and jump right in, to participate, in the way that Nadav and Avihu do in the next part of the parasha. But one lesson we can learn from their tragic deaths, is that over-zealousness can interfere with our rational thinking. So we maintain calm and remember our place, as an allies to these groups and not their “white savior.” AJWS promotes solidarity and support, not a paternalistic approach of taking over and overstepping our bounds. While it is important to remember that none are free until all are free, it is also important to remember that some are considerably less free, and they must be allowed to set the direction of their own liberation while the rest of us listen and assist.

After the deaths of Nadiv and Avihu, the Torah says Aaron “vayidom” – traditionally translated as “was silent.” But Rabbi Shai Held, one of the human rights hero rabbis arrested at JFREJ’s Black Lives Matter march back in December, offers a different drash for this. He cites Bible scholar Baruch Levine in explaining that sometimes the root word for dalet-mem-mem means “to moan” or “mourn” rather than “to be silent”. Sometimes, when we hear the news of oppression that does not directly affect us, we hear silence and we are silent. Sometimes we have no reaction at all, and this is truly a shame. But sometimes when we hear the moaning of oppression, we moan too. We hear the cries of oppression, and we remember the commandment to pursue justice, and we bear witness to their pain, and we do our best to understand it, even though we never really can. Only then can we really approach it to learn how to help.

Although the trip was short and we have been back for a few months now, the work continues. The fellowship is not over, and the trip was not a self-contained experience. Leading up to our international voyage, as well as throughout the week we were on the ground, we learned about the issues, the We Believe campaign, AJWS’s partners on the ground, and about transnational solidarity. In the remaining half of the fellowship, we have more to learn about organizing and educating our communities about the issues, and how to use what we learned and experienced in Central America to help inspire change here in our own country and communities. On February 22^nd, we were trained in the Wellstone model of activist organizing, which was exciting. In college, I fancied myself a social activist, and in the last year I’ve been yearning to get back into that work. I’ve been participating in protests and marches in the city this year and I’ve been sharing information on social media, seeking to educate myself and others, but I have felt a lack of the tools necessary to help with any planning or organizing. I was thrilled to be taught how to better connect with people, build justice-oriented relationships, and work toward a brighter tomorrow with and for my community, to participate in this modern and metaphoric Mishkan building, a world where we can all feel the presence of holiness. In about a month, we will be participating in AJWS’s Policy Summit, which includes lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Slowly but surely, I am finding my social activist voice and allowing people to see who I am and what is important to me even when it is scary. It has been liberating and empowering, and I am immensely grateful for this fellowship for helping me in this endeavor, both in learning and experience, as well as in finding more like-minded people to surround myself with. If you are also interested in the work AJWS does, I’d be thrilled to speak with you at Kiddush about how you can get involved! 

Something that I would die for, something that I could live for too

As you might know, I’ve just returned from the international component of my Global Justice Fellowship with American Jewish World service. I say “just”, even though now it’s been a few weeks, which is more time than I actually spent in Nicaragua and El Salvador with my cohort, because although that is more than enough time to readjust to normal life, it has not been quite enough time to explain to others all that I learned there. There were so many key moments of understanding, learning, remembering, and recentering of my values. For the last three years, I’ve been very focused on my studies and on youth programming. To many around me, my bleeding liberal heart and my desire to incorporate Tikkun Olam teachings into my youth programming was still a strong identifier of my burgeoning rabbinate, but to me, my politics and love for social activism took the backseat. For a variety of reasons, I have committed myself this year to putting the important Jewish values of human rights and social justice back in the front seat, and this fellowship has been a very important part of that goal. As such, one of the key moments of my time in El Salvador was visiting the home and church of Oscar Romero, El Salvador’s hero priest, and soon to be saint.

Father Romero was the archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 to 1980. He was outspoken against poverty, class disparity, torture, and a number of other human rights abuses he saw happening in his country. He wasn’t afraid to write to President Jimmy Carter and tell the U.S. to stop funding the corrupt military junta that had recently taken over El Salvador. He knew his politics were unpopular with the government, and that he was making himself a target for assassination, but he knew what was right and he spoke out for his people. In 1980, in the early years of El Salvador’s civil war, Father Romero was shot and killed during evening Mass. At his home, now a museum, we were able to hear a recording of his last sermon, in which he acknowledged he was likely to be killed in the near future. He seemed comfortable with the idea of being martyred, while at the same time, urging El Salvadorians, particularly those fighting in the organized military, to rethink their actions and choose peace and holiness instead killing and oppressing. Right up to the very end, he was not afraid to call out those perpetuating human rights violations, and was willing to die if it meant giving voice to the voiceless.

Now, Jews generally don’t believe in martyrdom. Judaism teaches that pekuach nefesh, protecting the sanctity of life, is more important that almost anything else. There are a few notable exceptions, though, and allowing yourself to be slain to save others is one of them. Although in Romero’s case, he didn’t exactly give himself up to directly save another soul, he did knowingly get himself killed for the sake of trying to stop the killings of others, and I think his martyrdom is something we as Jews can appreciate. Learning about Father Romero and being in his house reminded me of one of my earliest role models as I began to think about a future in the rabbinate: Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a preacher, he was able to be the charismatic leader for a movement that changed America. Right now there is a lot of discussion, both in response to the current Black Lives Matter movement and in response to the movie “Selma”, about all the other people instrumental in the civil rights movement, people that history has washed out of the picture, people whose names are completely unknown to most of modern America (or at least white America). All of those nameless others who marched and fought and were arrested and beaten and hosed, they are all invaluably important, too. But one of the things that made Rev. King so iconic, so memorable, was that he was already a community leader. He had a pulpit to speak from, and he spoke honestly and unafraid about what was holy and right and good for his people. That’s the kind of rabbi and community leader I would like to be.

However, it is not the leader alone that makes a movement. When Father Romero was killed, the fight against human rights abuses in El Salvador did not cease, and in fact the civil war continued for over a decade as the disenfranchised poor continued to vie for control. When Dr. King was killed, the civil rights movement did not cease, and in fact continues to this day, without the need for another charismatic preacher to lead. In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Yitro, Moses’s father-in-law warns Moses of the dangers of carrying the burden of the community by himself. He reminds Moses that God is truly with us when we work together and delegate. And as the Ten Commandments are given, we see that Mitzvot bein adam lamakom (commandments between man and God) and Mitzvot bein adam l’chaveiro (commandments between man and his fellow), are not evenly split, but that there are more for the latter. That is, while the Mitzvot bein adam lamakom are given first and given with more explanation, showing they are for sure important, there are more commandments for how people should interact with each other, showing they are more important. It is important for a spiritual leader to lead you in prayer and help you connect with God, but it is more important for a community leader to lead by asking for your help in making the world better and allowing you to connect with your fellow.

As I continue to unpack emotionally from my trip, it is important for me to figure out how to use the information I learned there and impart it to all of you. You may not burgeoning rabbis or social activists. You may not believe in martyrdom or have any desire to put yourself at risk for any particular cause. But I believe everyone has values and a genuine desire to connect with a community that shares those values. If you’re not a Father Romero, a Dr. King, or a Moses, you can still be a Yitro, an Israelite receiving the Ten Commandments, a nameless fighter just trying to make his or her own community a little healthier, happier and safer. You can always help share the burden of your fellow, just by lending a helping hand or a listening ear. May you each find your own route toward making your community, your country, or the world a better place.

A reflection on my trip with AJWS

I've been trying to get around to writing something about my trip for a while now, and it's been difficult. There is a lot to say, and it's hard to know what's worth saying, or how to frame it. Should I just type up all my notes about the organizations we met with? Should I just write a short reflection on the trip, just the sorts of things I've been saying when people ask how it was? Write a d'var Torah that includes information and emotions from the experience? In the coming weeks, I will be presenting a lunch program at school, giving a sermon at WJC, and publishing an article for WJC's newsletter. For each of these experiences, I may speak about my trip a little differently. What follows here is more or less the submission for The Review (the synagogue newsletter). In the week's to come, I might post more about the trip as I prepare for my other presentations about it and the follow up with the fellowship.

During my January semester break, I spent a little over a week traveling through El Salvador and Nicaragua with AJWS. We met with several grassroots non-profit, non-governmental organizations that AJWS partners with in the collective global effort to promote human rights and equality everywhere. Our fellowship is particularly focused on AJWS’s “We Believe” campaign, fighting for the rights of women, girls, and LGBTI folks around the world, so all the groups we met with work in those particular demographics. We met with some amazing, empowered, inspiring people: the women of Flor de Piedra, a sex workers’ rights organization in El Salvador; COMCAVIS Trans and ANIT, trans* women’s rights groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua, respectively; FESPAD, a “strategic ally” in El Salvador (that is, not grassroots, but a large-scale non-profit organization that works as a parent to smaller groups like COMCAVIS, representing their needs to international governmental bodies); Estrellas del Gulfo Groupo Safo, a group that organizes particularly for lesbians, but works with other local LGBTI groups; and Gaviota, an organization that advocates for the rights and safety of indigenous women in the autonomous indigenous region of Nicaragua.

I didn't exactly have expectations for this international adventure to El Salvador and Nicaragua; I knew that I didn't know enough to make projections about what the countries would be like. I think what shocks me most about my experience of this travel is how much it actually did feel similar to my some of previous travel experiences. When I traveled to Lithuania in 2010, I thought that was a poor country. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t really that poor, that I still hadn’t traveled to a developing nation or to the “Global South,” but by my New York-centric American standards, the city of Vilnius is not exactly a thriving city, and it feels haunted by the ghosts of my ancestors. Travelling to El Salvador and Nicaragua, I was surprised by how luxurious it felt at some points – there was almost always wifi and plenty of food and bottled water (we were not to drink the tap water, though it seemed the local people were able to tolerate it). The people did not seem like how I pictured the people of the “developing world,” even as much as I had tried not to picture them at all. Even as the people we met with told us of their struggles, they still seemed filled with hope for a better future. They seemed relatively healthy; even those living with HIV seemed to have the access to the treatments they needed to maintain their normal lives, at least through the successes of the groups advocating for them. When Rene, our tour guide through Nicaragua, told us about how the people, particularly in Managua (the capital), talk about how things used to be, how the country used to have money, the city used to have a downtown, it was reminiscent of my feelings wandering around Vilnius, which used to have a vibrant Jewish community. This surprise taught me that no matter how much I try to deny my own projections and presuppositions about places I know I can’t presume anything about, there are still images that sneak into my mind from somewhere. Of course, this surprise also taught me the obvious, that which I didn’t think I needed to learn and the reason I tried so hard not to make those presuppositions in the first place, and that is that people are really quite similar all over. They’ll make a life with what they have, build communities with who they have, and look forward to new or renewed life with a brighter tomorrow. It’s a worthwhile reminder for everyone, but particularly for those interested in AJWS’s model of partnership. We seek to be in solidarity with the groups we meet with, to learn from them, to learn what we can do to help them achieve their own goals with their own methods. We do not want to be paternalistic or assume to know what’s best for them.

We are back now, but the fellowship is not over, and the trip was not a self-contained experience. Leading up to our international voyage, as well as throughout the week we were on the ground, we learned about the issues, We Believe, AJWS’s partners on the ground, and about transnational solidarity. In the remaining half of the fellowship, we will learn to better organize and educate our communities about the issues, and we will be participating in AJWS’s National Policy Summit in DC. One of the things I am most looking forward to is the Wellstone Activist Organizing training. In college, I fancied myself a social activist, and in the last year I’ve been yearning to get back into it. I’ve been participating in protests and marches in the city in the last couple months and I’ve been sharing information on social media, but I have felt a lack of the tools necessary to help with any planning or organizing. I know this particular movement doesn’t really need me, isn’t exactly waiting around for another white girl to feel empowered to take the mic, but I think the training will help me learn how to be a better, more useful ally and use my white privilege to speak truth to power, as well as of course the intended use of the training, and that is to help me be a better organizer around the We Believe campaign. I will know I have successfully gained the organizing tools when I have the opportunity to put them to use. 

Currently, I am not really doing much organizing, and that is my challenge. In my last three years in New York and as a rabbinical student, I have not participated much in social justice work for a variety of reasons. Last spring, I remembered how important it was to me, and realized how much I had been stifling myself in just trying to keep to my designated school work and internship duties at places where social justice were not priorities. My decision to sign up for this fellowship this year was partly a fulfillment of a long-time desire to work with AJWS, but also was timed as such because of a need to re-center myself on social justice Torah. Already, through the webinars, chavruta learnings and international travel, I have gotten so much out of this, and I anticipate so much more through the Wellstone training and the policy summit. Slowly but surely, I am finding my social activist voice and allowing people to see who I am and what is important to me even when it is scary. It has been liberating and empowering, and I am immensely grateful for this fellowship for helping me in this endeavor, both in learning and experience, as well as in finding more like-minded people to surround myself with.