"While we take the time to heal and mourn, we must also act to stop the plague of gun violence." Read more.
"Since the dark morning after the election...I have understood that my role is also a spiritual one." Read more.
WHY THE IMMIGRANT RED CARD IS FRONT AND CENTER AT THIS JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER by Rabbi Joanna Samuels
This past November, the day after the national election, and 15 years after I was ordained, I woke up to the fact that I am a rabbi. It was not as though I had forgotten, but it had not been a prominent aspect of my day-to-day work experience in some time. As the Executive Director of a large, multicultural, socio-economically diverse community center, my days are filled with program management, fundraising, and understanding government funding, A good day is spent supporting staff, setting vision, and holding the aspirations of connectedness across race, class, and religion. A more usual day is spent navigating an unexpected visit from the Department of Buildings.
But since the dark morning after the election, when I set up a coffee pot in our busy lobby and put a sign up that said “free coffee, free hugs”.I have understood that my role is also a spiritual one and that the Center’s job is a spiritual one, as well. Our collective work has become, in these months, the work of the best kinds of houses of worship: to comfort the frightened, to hold a narrative of hope, and to affirm the truth — persistently — that love, justice and human connection are the only way forward.
The coffee pot and the hugs were the opening gambit in making our center’s lobby, and by extension, our whole building, a place that ministered to spiritual needs. Coffee and hugs were followed by, on January 20th, the unveiling of a large mural titled “We the People” that included the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Chinese. On the Monday after inauguration, we invited our entire community to sign it in a powerful public ritual.
Our current exhibit features the Red Card, a public information project created by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center to inform people of their constitutional rights, regardless of immigration status. We worked with curator Rachel Libeskind to transform the Red Card (small index-card sized leaflets) into large fabric flags in 5 languages, which now hang in the entryway of our community center. In addition to the flags, we have the Red Cards themselves for people to take, as well as a wall of additional information about what steps people can take given the immediate threat to DACA.Our aim is to inform, certainly. But it is also to affirm.
We want to affirm that our center is a place where our community can be safe. We serve a large number of recent immigrants, who have felt particularly vulnerable in the face of hateful and divisive political rhetoric.We want to affirm that we, an organization founded by Jewish immigrants, stand together with those whose immigrant story is more recent, and whose foothold in this country feels less secure.
Finally, we want to affirm that this multi-faith multi-cultural community center that takes care of the body and the mind, also, with great love, can take care of the soul.
In a contemporary version of the central confessional prayer of Yom Kippur, we ask God’s forgiveness for the sin of averting our eyes. Sometimes when we avert our eyes it is due to the shame of ignoring someone or something when we ought to be intervening. Other times, it is when our own fear or shame makes it too frightening to allow ourselves to be noticed. People who are seeing the Red Card at the Manny Cantor Center are both types of those people. They are people who need to be reminded that anti-immigrant rhetoric means that countless human beings are living in terror. These people need to be reminded to speak out and to act.But the other, beloved souls who enter our sacred lobby every day, so afraid of lifting their eyes to meet this broken world, lest they be noticed, or found out, or deported, I hope they too are taking in the Red Card. I hope they are learning that they have rights. I hope they are seeing that they have allies. I hope they are, even for a moment, reminded that we are in this together, and we are all deserving of dignity, love, and justice.
If you are interested in displaying The Red Card in your community, please contact us at info@mannycantor.org.
Rabbi Joanna Samuels serves as the Executive Director of Educational Alliance’s Manny Cantor Center.
Immigration Red Card, Jewish Social Justice, Manny Cantor Center, Rabbi Joanna Samuels, Red Card, Yom Kippur
"Our nation is in need of a New Year. Not just a new day on the calendar but a New Year." Read more.
REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER’S ROSH HASHANAH SERMON: IT’S TIME FOR A NEW YEAR AND A NEW AMERICA. by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
It is a time for a New Year and a New America!
This was Rev. Dr. William Barber’s stirring message to the Jewish congregants on the first day of Rosh Hashanah on Thursday September 21st, at IKAR in Los Angeles.
Dr. Barber is Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina and a leading voice and organizer of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. He came to the Jewish congregation at the invitation of Rabbi Sharon Brous who is the founder and Senior Rabbi at IKAR. Rev. Barber and Rabbi Brous became friends through the Senior Fellows program at Auburn.
In describing Dr. Barber, Rabbi Brous wrote:
“Dr Barber is a tremendous source of inspiration for me as a rabbi and an American. His voice is a clarion call in tumultuous times, a bright light of moral clarity and prophetic wisdom. We were thrilled and honored to have him address our community. There were about 2,000 American Jews there, spiritually awake and eager to help bend the arc of the moral universe toward love and justice.”
And then she followed up:
“It honestly was one of the best days of my life.”
Dr. Barber spoke just after Mayor Garcetti, a member of the IKAR community, and just before Rabbi Brous’ sermon and the shofar service, which is appropriate because Dr. Barber ended his remarks saying
“I have come here to hear the blowing of the shofar and to call us all to become shofars for a new year and a new reality until we are one nation under God for liberty and justice for all. God bless you.”
Watch the full video of Dr. Barber at IKAR and read the transcript below.Transcription of Dr. Barber’s reflection at IKAR in Los Angeles:
It is an honor and humbling to be invited to such a spiritual and holy space. It is amazing to me when I think of the Jewish faith tradition and I think of my faith tradition, in a sense our new spiritual reality grows out of the same place.
When Isaiah was prophesying a new time, a new year, a new space after exile, the scripture says: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor.” Jesus was talking about a new time and a new moment when he said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor
As we are moving across the country with Rabbis, Imams, Christians, people of faith, people not necessarily of faith, organizing for a new Poor People’s Campaign and a National Call for Moral Revival to address systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy, and to transform our national morality to where once again, as Rabbi Heschel said to John Kennedy a month before the march on Washington, he said to the President “until we get this issue of race right, we forfeit our right to worship God.”
Dr. King was killed and we believe that when prophets fall the new generation should go to where they fell, reach down in the blood and pick up the baton and carry on.
Our nation is in need of a New Year. Not just a new day on the calendar but a New Year. A year where the poor are lifted, not isolated. A time when we no longer see politicians and others afraid to even say the name “poor.”
And so I come today in the “ruach,” I come today in the Spirit, that unites us regardless of our religious tradition, to say with my dear sister Rabbi and others: It’s time for a New Year and a New America.
There are 110 million poor and working people – they need a new year when everybody has a guaranteed living wage. We need a New Year. They are 37 million people who still are not covered with health care and they need a year where they know that health care is not a matter of a political party’s decision but a fundamental human right that’s available to everybody. We need a New Year.
There are DACA students that find themselves under attack but the other day they reminded us: “don’t play the DACA students against the other immigrants.” We need a New Year of just immigration policy for all 11 million immigrants.
Your tradition has to speak to this nation – that the brother or sister who is a sojourner should be treated in the land just like one is a blood brother or sister. We need a New Year where we do take care of this earth rather than destroy it. And we need a New Year where we move away from war mongering. If we want to fight, let’s fight to get everybody education, let’s fight to get everyone health care. Let’s fight to honor everybody regardless of their race, their creed their color, or their sexuality.
Indeed, we must announce that it is time for a New Year. So I have come here to hear the blowing of the shofar and to call us all to become shofars for a New Year and a new reality until we are one nation under God for liberty and justice for all. God bless you.
Dr. William Barber, IKAR, Moral Revival, Poor People's Campaign, Rabbi Sharon Brous, William Barber Rosh Hashanah
Tell ICE to let Pastor José stay! Pastor José Chicas has served his family and community for two decades. The government's limited resources should not be used to deport him.
Help us get to 2,000 signatures and urge our government to take climate change seriously, as recent events in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico have demonstrated we are already in a state of emergency.
Film and video are critical tools for 21st century social change-making. Hartley Film Foundation and Auburn Seminary have partnered to develop the Hartley Media Impact Initiative to explore and teach how film and video can inspire communities to heal and repair the world.
Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership
Get your spiritual, creative, and intellectual juices flowing with the Fortification podcast. Catch up on Season 1 before Season 2 launches in October!
Toolkit for Addressing Racism
Check out this toolkit for ministry from the United Methodist Church for a deeper understanding of systemic and root causes of what we see happening in Charlottesville and all over the U.S.
Free online or in-person trainings from our experts on technology, movement-building, combatting racism, and more. Our next webinar is “Creative Activism & You” on Thursday, October 12th at noon.
Powerlabs frequently does free webinars to help people pick up digital and organizing skills. On October 14, learn how organizers are using Facebook video to "tell stories, build a collective identity for supporters and inspire people to take bold action." Register here.
Learn how to offer sanctuary from one of the organizations that's doing it best: the American Friends Service Committee.Recorded previously and free to listen to here.
GROUNDSWELL: Inspiring faithful action to heal and repair the world. We offer tools and resources for organizing online, and we find and share the best faithful content on the Web daily. Powered by Auburn Theological Seminary.
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