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As I sat down to write this month’s bulletin column, these words of Thomas Paine from December 23, 1776 rang in my ears: “These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

I am speaking, of course, of the crisis of democracy we see unfolding before us in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The crisis, we understand acutely as Jews, is the execution of citizens in the streets by agents of the federal government. There is no due process, no judge, no jury. In this assessment I am speaking in accord with the leaders of the American Jewish community. On January 21, they issued a joint statement, which we featured in that week’s email and which is repeated in this newsletter. They began: “Adding our voices to millions of others across the United States, leaders of the Reform, Conservative/Masorti and Reconstructionist Movements of Judaism condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law—above all, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as in cities and towns across the nation.” Later, when speaking to a reporter with ejewishphilanthropy.com (eJP), Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said: “We just felt that it was critical for us to raise our voices, because what’s happening is really not who we are, it’s not who we are as Americans, it’s not who we are as Jews. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have legitimate criticism of the immigration policies, but [America] actually [has] laws.” Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, who also signed the cross-denominational statement, told eJP that the issue hits close to home for many Jews, who are the descendants of immigrants. “That immigrant history is not so removed from our present reality,” he said. “It does feel personal to many of our people.” Jacobs told eJP that the Jewish community should be able to stand for multiple values, including immigration, democracy and fighting antisemitism, concurrently. “You can stand up against antisemitism. You can fight for Israel. You can do all those things at the same time. We are a strong, smart people.” To think that we can only do one thing at a time is not giving us the credit that we deserve,” he said. I am inspired by the more than 600 clergy, including dozens of rabbis and cantors–many of whom I know personally– who joined the leaders of the Minneapolis Jewish and faith communities for a day of learning on Thursday, January 22 and for protest actions on Friday, January 23. They were inspired by the words of Frederick Douglass, from his mid-19th century autobiographies, which articulated his understanding that faith requires action: “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” His call was echoed a hundred years later by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the 20th Century’s greatest rabbis, who taught for more than a quarter century at the flagship rabbinical school of the Conservative Movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary. The sole survivor of his family from the Holocaust, he was drawn to the Civil Rights Movement. His daughter recalled: “When he came home from Selma in 1965, my father wrote, ‘For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my feet were praying.’” I’ll close this month’s column with words from a rabbinical school colleague and friend, Rabbi Diane Tracht, spoken while on the street in Minneapolis. When Tracht was asked why she had come to the faith convening in Minneapolis, she recalled the Holocaust, saying it reminds her of the “genocide that authoritarian governments can do. What did we learn from the Holocaust? We have to act and we have to resist. If I’m not going to act and resist now, then I shouldn’t call myself a rabbi and I can’t be a proud Jew.”