Still disappointed by my community

Shortly after Alex Pretti was killed by federal forces, I sent the following email, with “murder” as the subject line, to Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, the rabbi of my synagogue, Congregation Rinat Yisrael, and to my friend, Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter, University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University.

“Now that masked ICE thugs have murdered an American citizen, an ICU nurse, in cold blood and on video (it’s truly hard to watch knowing it’s real life and not a movie), I wonder whether it would it be possible for the RCA [Rabbinical Council of America] and YU, the two leading religious and moral voices of Modern Orthodoxy, to finally use their voices for something other than about us and speak up against injustice and cruelty.

“I just read a speech by R. [Pinchas] Teitz in 1963 supporting MLK and his proposed March on Washington. It took lots of guts then to do that. Not very many in Orthodox leadership spoke up for the Civil Rights movement or their leaders. I can think of some few but not many. But R. Teitz had the strength of character to do so.

“I’ve been distressed that our movement’s leadership had not shown that strength of character recently. But perhaps this will be a turning point. Or is that a futile wish?”

JJ responded quickly, suggesting that I reach out to Rabbi Menachem Penner, the RCA’s executive director. I thus forwarded my email to him, and for good measure, to Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, president of YU, my alma mater.

Only JJ acknowledged my email in writing, although R. Strauchler may have replied in another way, as noted below.

A few days later, my brother, Lawrence, a well-known Jewish studies scholar and author, asked on Facebook whether any “Orthodox rabbis with pulpit shuls … [have] spoken out about the latest outrage in Minneapolis involving the shooting of Alex Pretti … ?”

While there were more than 250 comments to his post, only one answered his question with a name: Rabbi Max Davis, an Orthodox rabbi from Minneapolis, ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, who was one of 49 signatories on a letter from the Minnesota Rabbinical Organization expressing grief over Renee Good’s death, horror at the fear ICE has brought to Minnesota, and resolve “to take action … , bear witness, and make a difference.” R. Davis was later interviewed by the Forward about this letter and the current crisis.

The following Shabbat, a number of MO rabbis touched upon this issue. R. Strauchler, perhaps responding to my email (emphasis on perhaps), began his sermon (on a different topic) with a statement about the Minneapolis killings. He referred to his recent sermon about “moral courage,” where he implored his congregants to “practice choosing tzedek and mishpat [righteousness and justice] in small moments.” Reminding us that “history depends on the people who decide whether ‘this is normal’ or whether ‘this is not OK,’” he thundered that “the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are not OK,” and that “we must not normalize this with our silence.”

Having heard R. Strauchler’s sermon, after Shabbat I too asked Lawrence’s question on my Facebook page and to my 400+ email list. I received only two responses mentioning names of MO rabbis, other than Rabbis Davis and Strauchler, doing so. (At least one other local MO rabbi did so this past Shabbat.)

A sermon by one of the rabbis mentioned, noted how for centuries “Jews were total aliens. ‘Illegal immigrant’ may be a modern label, but Jews lived for thousands of years with its defining realities — rightless, unprotected, and perpetually removable. It is precisely this historical vulnerability that the Torah refuses to let us forget … The notion that a human being could be deemed ‘illegal’ — or considered to be breaking the law simply for seeking shelter — is antithetical to the vision and mandates of the Torah. … This is not a political statement, but a deeply religious one.”

The rabbi then quoted Elie Wiesel about Sodom — “a society that negates the humanity of its weaker human components is in fact bequeathing, if not producing, its own misfortune and malediction” — and observed that “Wiesel is not speaking about ancient Sodom alone. Every generation stands at the edge of that path, and must decide whether it will walk it or turn back. This is where we are right now.”

The other sermon discussed that rabbi’s recent lecture to an undergraduate Yale divinity class, where students had an opportunity to ask questions on any topic. The rabbi had never “encountered a darker year of questions,” and when told that everyone is worried, noted “that what is happening in Minneapolis is dark and feels close to home and personal to so many of them. That they feel afraid and pessimistic for our country and the world, but that now it’s door to door with guns. Citizens getting beaten up on their way to doctor’s appointments or their workplace.”

Moving beyond congregational rabbis, some Jewish intellectuals addressed this issue. Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Zuckier had a long Facebook post discussing how the “increasingly aggressive, quasi-military ICE raids … are troubling on both moral and constitutional grounds … and seem to contravene core American principles of freedom of expression, decency, and responsible governance.” Shlomo, looking at it from a Jewish perspective, also noted that “the fact that they are being carried out through forceful tactics … reflects a deeply problematic way of relating to the stranger.” He praised the acts of “disruptive civil disobedience, … legal protest, and … writing and teaching” by “faith leaders including many Jewish leaders [but almost no Orthodox ones (JCK)],” and concluded that “taken together, these efforts embody an ethic of loving the Ger (stranger), an ethic deeply rooted in the Torah and reinforced by Jewish historical experience.”

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky also used Facebook to observe that the emphasis in our community over the past two and a half years advocating for Jewish safety “can begin to dull our sensitivity to the sanctity of human life beyond our own community.” Thus, Tzvi argued that “right now, we have a responsibility to remind our community that every human life is sacred. In this moment, let’s lead with that moral clarity.”

And Dr. Erica Brown said in a letter that “how we treat people who are strangers says a great deal about who we are,” and decried “the absence of basic decency, a sense of morality, respectability, modesty and humility in the face of a complex issue. …”

All these sermons/posts were pretty good, with some better than others. Yet there was a ha-mayvin yavin (a word to the wise is sufficient) aspect to them; they inched close to the line but didn’t cross it; they didn’t call out by name those whose words and actions are counter to Jewish values of justice, decency, and compassion. They would have provided true leadership had they been more specific; had they excoriated Trump and Noem, who denigrate and demonize immigrants and invoke racist tropes without apology; mourned Good and Pretti; pointed fingers at ICE agents, looking like Iranian counterterrorism units (NYT, 2/6/26, compare pp. 8 and 28), who brutalize and without warrant arrest citizens and non-citizens alike; and explained how to view those specifics through the lens of Jewish tradition. And Dr. Brown undercut her otherwise thoughtful piece with a misleading reference to problems on “both sides of the aisle.” While there is certainly plenty about which to criticize both sides on the broad issue of immigration, it is only the right side that supports the horrors taking place in Washington, Minneapolis, and across the country.

As for the two organizations I referred to in my initial email, the RCA seems to have gone out of the statement business. And YU, in its silence in the face of evil, ignores its core values of believing in truth and the infinite worth of every human being, bringing values to life, and accepting the responsibility to reach out to others in compassion. Compare this silence to the public words of Rabbi Berman, YU’s president, when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed or, indeed, the statement made then by the now-silent Orthodox Union, another leading MO institution. Our leaders, rather than leading, hide behind the pretext of not talking about “politics.”

There is, however, a glimmer of hope. A Yeshiva College student, Yechiel Amar, wrote an article, “But We Did Not Speak Up,” for the Commentator, his college newspaper, where he criticized what is happening with the refreshing passion that college students are known for. This student courageously spoke up; his usually articulate university president, to my chagrin as a YU alumnus, is shamefully unable to find any words.

There are three more rabbis, two Orthodox and one not, who exemplify what I was looking for but found too little of. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote the following commentary on Exodus 1:13-14: “The degree of justice in a land is measured, not so much by the rights accorded to the native-born inhabitants, to the rich, or people who have, at any rate, representatives or connections who look after their interests, but by what justice is meted out to the completely unprotected stranger.” Yet otherwise eloquent MO rabbis can’t find 21st-century language to reflect Rabbi Hirsch’s important 19th-century words.

Rabbi Pinchas Teitz, to whom I referred earlier, courageously spoke up for a beleaguered and oppressed community, one not his own. He understood that the Torah and Jewish values that were deeply embedded in his DNA demanded that he do so, even though most of his community was not supportive. It’s that type of courage that I was looking for, to no avail.

I understand, as expressed to me by a bright, sensitive, thoughtful, and younger rabbi friend, that rabbis who might agree with me face real personal and professional repercussions if they speak out. He’s right; my ask is a difficult one even if some of the problems can be ameliorated by ha-mayvin yavin type sermons. Beyond that, though, R. Teitz’s actions teach that there are times when religious leaders must make clear which side they’re on, problems notwithstanding. These fraught days are just such times.

Finally, what do I want? I actually recently heard exactly what I was looking for, though sadly not from an Orthodox rabbi. Rather, it was from Rabbi Dr. Shai Held, philosopher, theologian, Bible scholar, and president and dean of the non-denominational Hadar Institute, an egalitarian community rooted in rigorous and nuanced Torah study, gender equality, and meaningful Jewish practice.

Shai gave a talk over Zoom, “Loving the Stranger-Sojourner (Ger),” to more than 500 listeners. The best way to make my point would be to post a transcript of his presentation as an attachment. Since that’s impossible, I’ll simply quote a few excerpts from his introduction and conclusion, and urge you to click on the link and hear the entire class yourself.

He began by telling us he would “ask in a deep way, by looking carefully at texts rather than appealing to slogans … , what the Jewish tradition, particularly the Torah, has to teach us about the place of the immigrant in our society, and the responsibility of the native born to those who have come to live among them.” He wanted us to “think about the limits and possibilities of drawing contemporary conclusions from ancient texts.”

And his conclusion was uplifting. “What the Torah very explicitly does at minimum, … is it articulates and … gives voice to an ethos, a way of being, an orientation, a posture we take towards gerim and immigrants. … To demonize or dehumanize immigrants is not just an ethical abomination and not just a political danger, it is directly an affront and an assault on those whom God loves most. That is simply what the Torah says.

“In truth, the moment we are in right now in the very short term does not actually seem to me to be exactly about immigration. I actually think … it is about … what happens when a poorly trained, ideologically motivated paramilitary is given impunity to do whatever it wants, and when those in charge of it actually mock the notion of accountability. … That’s about government run amuck.

“Part of our DNA as Americans, part of the story we tell ourselves is about resistance to tyranny. … We had better rediscover that part of who we are right away. … We the people … will have to do it for ourselves. … Whatever we think immigration policy should be, … we should be able to agree, first, that dehumanizing and demonizing human beings ought to be utterly intolerable to us, and second, that unchecked, unbridled power deployed to attack precisely those who are most vulnerable is an abomination and a frontal assault on everything the Torah imagined it could help bring into the world.

“The future of this country depends very simply on us being willing to say no when tyranny, not to mention abject cruelty, threatens to overrun us.”

Shai did what no MO leader did; he seriously and at length applied a clear vision of Torah and Jewish values to the specifics of what we’re experiencing. He explained, eloquently and effectively, how Torah and Judaism are relevant to the lives we live, the problems we share, and the evils and cruelty we face.

That’s what I was looking for. And I’m disappointed — no, angry — that in my MO community, one overflowing with scholars and teachers, rabbis and community leaders, men and women highly educated in Torah and Maddah (secular knowledge), what we mainly hear when we look for guidance and relevance beyond the parochial are, with too few exceptions, the seemingly safe, sadly shirking, sounds of silence.