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Jan 31, 2016
Historic Agreement on the Kotel is Reached!
Jan 28, 2016
Rabbis Against Gun Violence (#RAGV) Press Release: National Coordinator Announcement
RabbisAgainstGunViolence (#RAGV)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Rabbis Against Gun Violence (#RAGV) Names Eileen Soffer as National CoordinatorPress release |
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January 27, 2016 — Rabbis Against Gun Violence (#RAGV) announced that its Executive Leadership Team has appointed Eileen Soffer as its inaugural National Coordinator.
“Eileen’s experience and longstanding commitments, including previous work as Deputy National Field Director for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and community programming for Jewish organizations including Jewish LearningWorks in the SF Bay Area, make her the ideal National Coordinator for Rabbis Against Gun Violence #RAGV,” said Rabbis Against Gun Violence chair, Rabbi Menachem Creditor.
“#RAGV is galvanizing its 840+ members to reach out through Jewish communities to the tens of thousands of our constituents, both Jews and people of other faiths, to say ‘enough!’” said #RAGV Executive Leadership Team member Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin “We believe in the value of every human being on this planet. There have been too many lives tragically lost because of the misuse of guns.”
Since Rabbis Against Gun Violence #RAGV’s launch last week, the International Rabbinical Assembly, the Reform Movement's Religious Action Center, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Gabby Giffords’ Americans for Responsible Solutions, and other organizations have all reached out to partner with and leverage #RAGV's commitment to save lives in the midst of an ongoing American Gun Violence Epidemic.
With the commitments of over 800 American Jewish faith leaders, and the ongoing support of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, Rabbis Against Gun Violence #RAGV stands ready to lead the Jewish community to do its part to reduce Gun Violence in America.
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Jan 21, 2016
#RabbisAgainstGunViolence (#RAGV) Update
The inaugural #RabbisAgainstGunViolence (#RAGV) call just ended. 801 rabbis, spanning the American Jewish spectrum,...
Posted by Menachem Creditor on Thursday, January 21, 2016
Jan 20, 2016
CNS Social Action: Men's Shelter Dinner Report
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Jan 18, 2016
Until that Day: Remarks at the Berkeley City Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast 2016
Until that Day: Remarks at the Berkeley City
Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast 2016
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Dearest God,
We are here as a city united for a moment. This beautiful morning is a brief episode of togetherness inspired by your servant, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We thank you for the food before us and the fellowship surrounding us.
But we know You know, God, that the Beloved Community Dr. King called us to build is hardly here. Those who labored to bring us together deserve our praise, and we offer them at least that. But we know, we know, God… We are barely at the foot of that mountain.
We know this because the clinking silverware bringing abundant food to our mouths is only for those who can pay to come. We know this because this lovely room we share for this sacred occasion has locks on the door.
More than that, God, more than that.
We know this morning isn’t enough because citizens of Flint, Michigan have poison water in their very homes and Americans have the poison of hatred in our ears. We know this because we still haven’t learned how to love each other, black and white, gay and straight, rightly and well. Our silence in the face of these things, as Dr. King taught us, is nothing less than betrayal.
The world You’ve call us to build leaves no one hungry. The Beloved Community needs no locks. The America our teacher, Dr. King, died loving is supposed to be a safe home for those seeking safety and refuge. This Nation is not yet what it is supposed to be, and so we turn to You.
Your servant Dr. Martin King might not have been happy to see us sitting here this morning having this very nice breakfast. He might have led us outside this fine establishment, back into Your fragile world, O God, marching our feet to the rhythmic beat of the deep rumblings of discontent (“Loving Your Enemies”, 1957), back into our streets. And so we pray this very morning to not enjoy so much of the wonderful bounty before us that we forsake the hungry, that we forget our own calamity, just yards away, and miles away, and counties and states away. But really, we know they’re right here in this room. We haven’t set them down, not even for a moment, Lord. We know, as Dr. King taught us, that “our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter.”
Dr. King would have called us to know the number of children going hungry in Alameda County this very minute. To know their names and seek their welfare. He would have called us to know the number of dead, thanks to guided missiles and misguided people, willfully-ignored gun violence, and woefully-unequal systems of legislation and enforcement and incarceration in our country. He would have pointed to the immorality of unequal sentencing and the widespread use of solitary confinement. He would have had a thing or two to say about that.
Dr. King, your servant, would speak truth about the astounding costs of financial corruption, of ongoing institutionalized inequality; he would have forced us to see the costs of "free trade": 27 million people today still cursed to live in slavery.
He would have seen beyond the numbers, to the faces of people.
He would be preaching with the “urgency of now” a determined, measured, poetic, prophetic outrage. He would be teaching by example our civic duty of compassion, the obligations of citizenship, the nobility of non-violent protest, the grave danger of cynicism.
When he gave his life for peoplesʼ rights of speech, and assembly, and the vote, it was for people who had no money to pay for speech. They knew speech as an unalienable right, and their wealth of spirit sufficed.
Dr. King had faith in a few great things: one was our essential American dream.
Not middle-class or upper-class working-poor, or impoverished-class, but the defining American dream which lifts up those who are bowed down: the abiding American dream of liberty and justice - for all.
There is a love deep within us, Dear God, a deep, flowing love, a love Martin Luther King Jr described as an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative… a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor. [it does] not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes.”
And so we stand before You, Dear God, because we must learn that Love. It is well within our reach, tucked into our very souls. We know it is. We place our hands on our own hearts and feel an overwhelming Love, God. We know that’s You, the gentle presence of our own beating, aching hearts.
But it can be hard to feel so fiercely so often. We can become pressed down by a world too much with us, a world where the racism, poverty and militarism Dr. King railed against are so very present.
We have some glimmers of hope, here and there, for which we offer tears of gratitude, but we stand before You today because there are also crucial truths that should be self-evident and are not so evident in our country.
We turn to you to breathe ever more of Your Spirit into us because some of us find we cannot breathe, the arms of power constricting our ability to call out for justice, and we know well that human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.
We turn to you, Dear God, in the hopes that our elected officials, public servants, and engaged citizens can together rebuild a trust eroded by a surplus of the weaponry of war on our city streets and a prison system and a drug war and sentencing laws that casually - and we pray, thoughtlessly - perpetuate a racism that systematically ignores your Divine Image in black and brown Americans. We turn to you because Dr. King’s dream has yet to be fulfilled.
Dr. King's story is not to be appropriated as a tool for easy comfort and self-satisfaction by the established, by the well-off, by those who worry life will be inconvenienced by pointing out that Black lives seem to still matter less in our unfinished society. His words were honed sharp by the depth of righteous rage at society's inequalities. And those dreams he dreamed are, and forever will be, dreams worth dreaming. We lost our teacher so many years ago, at the tender age of 39. But we have not lost his challenge to not search for consensus but to mold consensus by the power of our convictions.
Dear God, we know we have to do much better than we’re doing, that we have to be so much better to each other, better to our world if we are to share our prophet’s vision of a beloved community. We've got so much to do, and the good news is that we’ve got Your love waiting to pour out of us and into the world. We promise, Dear Lord – that, in memory of your prophet Dr. King, we’re going to rediscover Love, this greatest of all powers. Armed with this Divine Love, we know we are stronger than the accursed weapons on our streets. We know that the beauty we channel as Your children can defeat the rampant cynicism in our country. We know that within this sacred gathering there is more than enough power with which to see this great task done.
And so we pray:
- May we learn, Dear God, to reach again for that which is high.
- May we be blessed to pursue justice for all, to see when pieties and niceties fall short and protest is truly called for.
- May we remember, as Dr. King taught us, that “life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘what are you doing for others?’”
- May we remember the power of our convictions to change the world.
- May we pause to recognize the divine image in every human being, deeper than our uniforms, deeper than our skins, as deep as deep gets.
- May we be blessed to stand together - now and for eternity - with overflowing, unconditional light and love, for as Dr. King taught us: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." (“I’ve been to the mountaintop, 1968)
- May we be worthy of the work ahead, and dare to see ourselves as carriers of this sacred prophetic work.
We have miles and miles to go before a celebratory breakfast is truly deserved.
Until the day when our love overflows in the streets instead of our blood;
Until the day our bruised hands are raised up in gratitude for the work we’ve done together and not in fear of each other;
Until the day every one of Your Images, God, can lay down and not be afraid,
Until the day, Dear God, we see You in each other’s eyes and take risks to to create an ascending spiral Love and Compassion in our Beloved Community,
Until that day, God, we will pray and we will march and we will see You in other’s eyes, expanding our circles of belonging until we remember we all belong to You.
And so, friends, let us pray that we do something worthy tomorrow, not just say amen to lovely words today.
Amen.
Jan 10, 2016
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor: "Then Tell Me You Don’t Want to Check Who is Buying the Gun"
"Then Tell Me You Don’t Want to Check
Who is Buying the Gun"
Reflections
Upon Attending
the CNN #GunViolence Town Hall Meeting
with President Obama
January 7th,
2016
Rabbi Gary
S. Creditor
Richmond,
Virginia
December 22, 2011
was a day that changed my life forever. That day I buried a woman who was shot
to death by a handgun while on her way to work as a nurse at a hospital after
she had visited the grave of her son who had also been shot to death by a
handgun. Neither murder has ever been solved. I had always paid at least
“lip-service” to the issue of handgun violence. I signed the petitions. I made
sermons reflecting on my experience of the deaths of JFK, RFK and MLK. I
remember growing up with cap pistols and an air rifle. We would play and say
“bang, bank your dead” and have absolutely no idea of what we had just said. We
didn’t know the reality of death. That
day changed everything.
I can honestly say
that I am scared of guns. I never served in the military, due to the lottery
system, and so have neither exposure nor experience. I have touched rifles
twice and was trembling both times.
But I tremble even more
so every time I open up the newspaper or hear on the television or radio of
another death due to handgun violence. Perhaps I am somewhat inured to the pain
of mass killings because I can’t even recount them one by one anymore since
there are so many and they don’t seem to ever stop. My mind can’t take the pain
of visualizing a gun going off, a bullet flying through the air, the rearing of
flesh and bone and spraying of blood and the absent look upon the victim as he
or she dies. Especially of young people, especially of children. As a Rabbi I have buried children who died
from disease. That was hard enough, so sooth bereft parents, staunch
grandparents’ tears, hold a community shaken by the loss of child. I have done
it more than once. But what do you say when a young teenager sitting in a car
is murdered? And I don’t mince words. I don’t use euphamisms. I say it
straight. He was shot to death by a handgun. He was murdered. He died. I had to
answer the unanswerable questions from girlfriends of the daughter whose mother
was shot to death as she drove in a car: Why? How does this happen? They had been
sheltered. Maybe they didn’t read newspapers. Maybe they didn’t pay attention
because it was happening in some other segment of society than their own. Now their
innocence was stripped away and in their pain they came to me and asked: “How I
can I believe in God when this happens to such a good person, an esteemed and
beloved nurse, an adored wife and mother, and kind and gentle soul?” I trembled
in trying to articulate a suitable answer while literally on one foot. I then
had to write a sermon in the quietude of my office to search inside my heart to
find what to say to them. To my community. To myself.
If this death could have been prevented, wouldn’t it have been worth it, to just check on who
was buying this gun? Wasn’t the pain and agony of her husband, her daughter,
her parents, her–in-laws, and her communities’ deepest grief worth making sure
that this gun wasn’t getting into wrong hands? Who can be so cruel, who can be
so hard hearted, who can be so callous to deny this claim? To oppose back-ground
checks that could possible prevent such tragedies, such catastrophes, such
calamities, such pain and agony?
- I want those who oppose President Obama’s initiatives to come stand with me in the morgue and look at a bullet-riddled body.
- I want them to walk with me as I hold weeping men, women and children with a pain that has no remedy.
- I want them to stand with me as I lower the casket into the grave from which it will not return.
- Stand with me as teenagers search my eyes for some wisdom to help with their disillusionment with society, with rules, with leadership.
- Stand with me in the breach at each of these moments and then look these people in the face and say that you are against back ground checks.
Get out of
Washington!
Get out of your
offices!
Come with me into the
trenches of humanity.
Come and feel the pain
that courses through your body so you feel hollow even as your eyes erupt in
the tears that drains your body of its moisture.
I dare you to stand
where I have stood!
I want leadership
that reflects President Kennedy’s book “Profiles I Courage,” men and women who
know right from wrong and are willing to sacrifice prestige and privilege,
position and power to do what is right. What is more important in the world? Be
worthy of title Senator, of Representative. Know that you are standing before
something more important than getting reelected. You are standing before
something more powerful than the NRA.
You are standing
before God, who, in sacred scripture said to Cain: "The bloods of your brother cry out to Me from the earth!"
In the original Hebrew text the word for ‘blood’ is in the plural. Perhaps it
indicates that not just the murdered person is dead. The future of this person
is dead too. There is a dead spot in each family member’s heart. Something dies inside each and every one of
us. And society has died a little too. I talk about only one family. Multiply this
by the count of each day, each month, each year, each decade.
Before you go to
sleep, look at your children, look at your spouse, if you are older, look at a
picture of your grandchildren or of nieces and nephews. Think of them shot and
bleeding, dead in the morgue, lying in an empty coffin. Interred in the cold
earth.
Then tell me you
don’t want to check on who is buying the gun.
Jan 5, 2016
Shabbat Dinner at CNS THIS FRIDAY NIGHT with Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block!
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