It was a rare gathering,
one in which vulnerability was on full display. Walls fell away and defensive
fortifications crumbled, all of the ways we use to separate ourselves from each
other by closing off what is hardest to share in being who we are. There were
tears and outbursts of passion. So too did compassion flow as people met in the
open camp of true encounter. There were interruptions, as when a speaker used
pronouns that excluded some among us, a lovingly firm challenge calling the
speaker to pause and consider. And so the speaker did, setting at ease the one
who had taken a risk.
Race and racism became
real as lived experience, challenge felt by the most open of those whose
whiteness brings privilege, if even in spite of ourselves, yet to acknowledge.
There were shallow assumptions of Christians in regard to Israel, failure to
understand the deep roots of anti-Semitism, Jews challenged to convey the
immense complexity of our historical fears and why. And among us all, there
were microcosms of identities within identities.


There were times when those
most alike met as a caucus, Ashkenazi
Jews meeting separately from Mizrachi
and S’fardi Jews, Christians of color
meeting separately from white Christians. It felt awkward, painful, to so
separate, and yet to strive within our own microcosms to break down the walls
we carry within ourselves just a little more by looking most honestly and
freely at who we are.



It was a three-day
conference under the organizational umbrella of “Faith in Action.” The organizing
rubric of the gathering was, “Anti-Semitism, Racism, and White Supremacy.” From
the beginning we were challenged to bring all of ourselves into the open camp,
to truly share who we are. In so sharing so we could dare to tread upon the
common ground, to know the love that joins us, even as we walked gingerly among
the minefields. We gathered to the singing of an old spiritual, sung from deep
within the soul of a people, all of us sharing, trying to feel what it means,
to grasp the intimations of its meaning beyond the words, “Before I’ll be a
slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free….” How to
hold the fear of a black mother and father among us for their young son growing
up to be a black man in America?
How to hold the courage
of a young trans person only recently become in the world who they always knew
they were within? It was their courage in quivering voice that challenged the
one who spoke with pronouns that denied this young person’s presence. How to
hold the brave awkwardness of a white Christian man trying to figure out his
place in all the swirling of identities, amid all the sharings of what it is to
be of a minority of one sort or another. How to hold and honor the depth of not
knowing felt by most of the non-Jewish participants who listened as Jews
discussed in a fish-bowl setting the ways of our relationship and struggles
with Israel and each other?
How to hold the tender truths of who we are among
ourselves as Jews? We shared of our fears in the face of resurgent anti-Semitism,
and of the challenge in discussing Israel even, especially, among ourselves. As
Jews shared in that fishbowl setting, there was something poignant and tender
in a common thread of attachment to Israel, a thread so frayed for all the
torment in the nature of our relationship to what is today, and yet a thread of
hope that joins us to each other in our struggles and in our yearning. As walls
fell away, trust emerged, vulnerabilities shared in the open space of our
gathering.



So does the Toldos Ya’akov Yosef, an early Chassdic leader, teach of Moses’ call for scouts to go forth to search out the land. It is not about an external search says the Toldos, rather, dayka la’tur et atz’m’cha/it is surely to search out yourself. Moses tells the scouts to see what the cities are like in the land to which they go, whether the people live in open or in fortified places. The great Torah commentator Rashi teaches of this verse’s import, if they dwell in open cities they are strong, and if they dwell in walled cities they are weak.

As walls fall away and we
come out into the open space of shared humanity, our vulnerabilities revealed
for all to see, the gift of new opportunity emerges. Acknowledging that
sometimes we feel like grasshoppers so easily crushed, in sharing of both fear
and pride a new strength emerges. So may we learn to share, bravely coming out
into the open space of encounter, discovering ourselves in the process of
discovering each other.
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
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