Pesach 2018: How to Treat a Stranger

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (1883)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Johan van Hulst (1911-2018)

In 1942, Johan van Hulst was the director of the Reformed Teacher Training College, a Protestant religious seminary in Amsterdam. The nearby Schouwberg theatre was the main clearing site for the Jews living in Amsterdam who had been issued deportation notices by the Nazi government. Children who arrived at the Schouwberg with their families were separated and sent to the next-door créche run by Henriëtte Pimentel, which shared a back garden with the college that van Hulst directed.

Starting in January 1943, Pimentel and Walter Süskind, a German Jew who had been appointed by the Nazis to run the Schouwberg operation, began canvassing potential adoptive families for physical descriptions of children who could fit into their families without detection. Once the children's parents had agreed, the names of the children to be rescued were removed from from the Nazi's registry of Jews who had passed through the Schouwberg theatre.

Then, working with Pimentel, Süskind and dozens of other volunteers, van Hulst arranged for the children to be spirited over the hedge separating the neighboring back yards of the créche and the tacher's college, often assisted by the teachers-in-training or local university students.[5]When the time came to move the rescued children and babies away from the school, they would be hidden in baskets and sacks. One of the operation's helpers would then wait for the moment a tram passed, blocking the view of Nazi guards at the facing Schouwberg, to cycle away with the hidden child.

The operation came to a halt on September 29, 1943 when the Nazis sent Pimental and 100 children from the créche to Nazi concentration camps. Decades later, van Hulst described the days preceding the closure to Yad Vashem: "Now try to imagine 80, 90, perhaps 70 or 100 children standing there, and you have to decide which children to take with you. ... That was the most difficult day of my life. ... You know for a fact that the children you leave behind are going to die. I took 12 with me. Later on I asked myself: ‘Why not 13?'" In total, the operation had rescued between 500 and 1000 Jewish babies and children.

Van Hulst received the Yad Vashem Distinction in 1970. During a state visit to Israel in 2012, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of van Hulst "We say, those who save one life saves a universe. You saved hundreds of universes. I want to thank you in the name of the Jewish people, but also in the name of humanity.” Van Hulst died last week at the age of 107. May his memory be a blessing of inspiration for all of us.

I Am A Rabbi, And I Was Arrested On Capitol Hill While Protesting For A Clean DREAM Act

Read more: https://forward.com/scribe/393448/i-am-a-rabbi-and-i-was-arrested-on-capitol-hill-while-protesting-for-a-clea/

By Rabbi Barbara Penzner

February 1, 2018--Last week I joined 100 Jewish community leaders from around the country in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. Organized by Bend the Arc Jewish Action, we marched in together, many in Jewish ritual garb, sat down, and sang about building a world of compassion. When the U.S. Capitol police warned us that we were breaking the law and would be charged with obstruction and “incommoding,” we had a ready response. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

My own arrest was shown on MSNBC, reporting our action live to a million viewers and zooming in on the zip ties that the U.S. Capitol police put on my wrists.

It took the police forty minutes to move us all, and we continued singing down to the last two leaders who were arrested, handcuffed, and led away. Our answer to the police was melodious but not commodious.

We were singing and praying for hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, that youthful subsection of our population that, from childhood, has known no real home but the United States. One hundred of these young people surrounded our hundred, chanting “Dream Act Now!”

As Rev. Dr. William Barber has inspired the nation with North Carolina’s “Moral Mondays,” this was our “Moral Minyan.” Meanwhile, conservative Congressional leaders have been so afflicted by these young people that they shut down the U.S. Government for three days to avoid giving them a path to citizenship. Congress now faces a deadline of February 8 to act or shut down again. We have much work to do to obtain a clean Dream Act.

My arrest was one of the most empowering days of my life. While my hands were pinned behind me, I had a visceral understanding of the vulnerability that others experience with the police. But I was not risking brutality or death. Our arrests resulted in no conviction on our records. We ended up in a frigid police garage for four hours and we had to pay a fine, but we did not truly encounter our country’s criminal justice system. As one man of color commented afterward, this was the easiest arrest he would ever know.

Still, all of the leaders from across the Jewish spectrum, from 18 to 78 years old, took time from their lives and took a risk, not knowing exactly what might happen in the Capitol. Through steadfast loving commitment, spirited singing, and connection with the Dreamers who stood as witnesses, my life felt transformed that day.

Why did I risk getting arrested?

I could put my body on the line, but the Dreamers cannot. My arrest did not lead to a conviction. Their arrest could lead to deportation. I wanted the Dreamers to know that we stand with them.

Wearing stickers that read “Jews for Dreamers,” we communicated to these brave immigrants that they are not alone. With tears in their eyes, and solidarity orange knit caps on their heads, they told us how isolated they felt because people in our country have told them they don’t belong here. Our action, our singing, our presence showed that we are with them.

I represented multitudes of Jews who support the Dreamers.

This arrest was not about the bravery of the Jewish leaders. It was a way to communicate to our elected officials that the Jewish community, recalling the Biblical injunction to protect the stranger, is solidly with the majority of Americans who polls show overwhelmingly want to give the Dreamers a path to citizenship.

I want others to stand up for the Dreamers in any way you can.

Congress may have reached an agreement to restore government operations, but our government remains far from an agreement to recognize the contributions of these individuals to our communities. In fact, 90 percent of these Dreamers have jobs, from fast food to the Fortune 500. In order to continue to protect education and work opportunities and facilitate a path to citizenship, we have much work to do.

Call your elected officials in Congress and tell them you’re also behind the Dreamers. They need to support a clean Dream Act, with no deal for walls, and no tradeoffs for military budgets.

Many Jews, like myself, recall our own immigrant forebears. We must not betray our ancestors or our American ideals by abandoning children or separating families. We must not become an America of concrete walls and broken dreams.