I originally wrote this on Nov 11, 2016, 3 days after the election.
If you or your family does not feel safe, how can I help?
If members of your community are afraid, how can I help?
If bad things are happening here in our local area, how can I help?
If you are attacked for wearing hijab, I’ll put one on too.
If children are being harassed or bullied, I will call the school or attend a school board meeting or whatever the families involved decide is the response they want.
If workplaces are not responding to acts of hate and intimidation, I will go with you or call or send a letter or post on social media or whatever the people involved decide is the response they want.
If your house is targeted, I will help clean and repair and stand outside or sit with you or whatever you decide is the response you want.
If I/we/my community can help make safe space, whether to process emotions or strategize and organize or just to eat and play, we will do it.
If we need to take back public streets as safe space for everyone, we will join in the effort.
If Muslims or any other group are required en masse to register with the government, I will be in line with you.
If … if … if …
I’m not first and foremost an activist; I’m first and foremost a teacher and communicator. But I have a perfectly good body that can stand up and show up and speak up and clean up. If those things will help, please keep me and lots of others in mind. If my title of Rabbi will give what I say or do more power to protect/defy/comfort/challenge/inform/help/be a role model, ask me to use it.
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We must also engage in whatever public action we can, locally or wider, that will turn the tide and change the climate.
That includes not “othering" people who “other" us — as best we can. Do not lose sight of this truth: half of the United States is not the enemy of the other half. My pledge to be an ally, to make a place of safety, to stand with you so you don't have to face an attacker alone, is also for folks who voted for our incoming president, as well as for folks who are appalled by him and what he's unleashed.
My pledge to be an ally, to make a place of safety, to stand with you so you don't have to face an attacker alone, is also for folks in my own communities. In this country, white middle-class Jews have generally experienced ourselves as part of the mainstream. White gay men and lesbians increasingly have too. Do not lose sight of this truth: You can be "othered" as easily as the rest of the groups who have been singled out for verbal attacks and hate crimes during and after this election. You may feel safer, and you may be further down the list of targets, but you're on somebody's list--and "somebody" is feeling more license right now to propagate hate.