In memory of my mother, Nelle Frisch and in honor of Representative Sean Casten.
I want to tell you a story about deviled eggs. It begins to answer a question that Congressman Sean Casten asked of an interfaith panel last night, the night before the inauguration. How did we get here? How is it possible that the Congress was attacked, some would say stormed, by people who used Christian symbols to make their point. The panel was comprised of three Wheaton College professors, Evangelical Christians, a retired Anglican bishop, a Reform rabbi and an immam. But this is not a joke.
The esteemed panel was quite literate and articulate and deeply pained. How could these symbols of their faith be so misused? How could Jesus’s name be used in vain? How could the hallowed halls of the US Capitol be desecrated?
How did we get here? When my mother died (on the night Obama was elected), we wanted to make sure that there were deviled eggs at the shiva. We had them at every Fourth of July parade. They are a staple of midwestern Americana. And they are a symbol of life. It is traditional to eat a hard boiled egg when returning from a Jewish funeral. A hard boiled egg was my father’s last food. We make them for lots of shiva minyans. It just felt right. But we couldn’t reach the woman who usually did them for the 4th of July so we hired my mother’s housekeeper. She refused. She wouldn’t make deviled eggs. But she would make what she would call “Angel Eggs” (same recipe). She did. Then someone else hired her to cater an inauguration party for Obama. They wanted deviled eggs. She refused. She called them Obama eggs because he was the devil.
Those eggs became a symbol to me. Calling Obama the devil is part of how we got here. But the roots go back much further. When I was a young Hebrew School principal I trained with Facing History and Ourselves, a Holocaust curriculum that works on the idea of being an Upstander not a Bystander, I learned some of the scary history of white supremacy in this country. White supremacy is not new. It is based in a fear that “others” would replace the dominant white, male Christian culture in this country. We have seen that fear in the people who chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” in Charlottesville in 2017. We have seen that fear in media interviews with people who worry that there will not be jobs for them, that there is no path for the next generation for success. That fear has turned to anger. That anger spilled over.
With a change in leadership, liminal time, may come more fear and anger. As we discussed last night G-d is a G-d of rachamim, mercy or compassion, and chesed, lovingkindness, G-d is “erech apayim”, slow to anger. And patient. In the story of the Golden Calf, which leads to a recitation of the 13 Attributes of the Divine, the people are scared. Where is their leader? He’s been gone for days, eventually 40 days. They beg Aaron, build us a Golden Calf and he does. In fact, in later Jewish commentators, we are told, “Be like Aaron, loving peace and pursuing it.” (Pirke Avot 1:12) In fact, the full quote: HIllel and Shammai received the oral tradition from them. “Hillel used to used to say: be the disciples of Aaron loving peace and pursing peace.” Hillel and Shammai who argued all the time. Hillel and Shammai who never saw eye to eye in this same verse. Eventually we are told by a bat kol, a divine voice, that both Hillel and Shammai are the words of the living G-d.
In fact, the roots of that “supremacy” goes all the way back to the earliest days of this country. When Simon and I used to do colonial re-enacting in Chelmsford, not far from where the ‘shot was heard round the world” or where the chests of tea were thrown into the Boston Harbor, we learned that only white, male Christian landowners could vote. We were none of those things.
We hear frequently that this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian values. If you studied Native American history that pre-dates the United States, you’d be convinced. If you read the Puritan writings, which I have extensively, including the Hebrew marginalia in Governor William Bradford’s own Bible, which I held in my own hands, you might conclude it was. If you read why Roger Williams was kicked out of Massachusetts Bay Colony and then founded Rhode Island, you might think we were not so welcoming.
The history after the Civil War is not a pretty part of our history. The arguments that southern land owners could have slaves because there were Israelite slaves in the Bible ring hollow. The use of the Confederate battle flag continues to sow hatred. Some of that is crumbling. The New Jim Crow and how we handle mass incarceration, and police brutality has led to other real fear and anger. The book Caste does a good job of outlining painful history.
Last night I was supposed to be at a congregational book group, discussing another book, The Jews Should Keep Quiet, outlining a painful history between Rabbi Stephen Wise and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As the fate of the Jewish community was on the line, over and over again, Wise urged the Jewish community to remain silent, to not rock the boat. Roosevelt would make promises but did little action. That repeated inaction is directly responsible for the murder of many Jews in Europe. That inaction leads us again to this moment.
Rereading Letter from a Birmingham Jail for Martin Luther King Day, I am painfully aware of his indictment of the white clergy friends. “I felt that white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.”
There is that silence again. Yet, like as Mordecai told Esther, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) Perhaps we are all at this very moment for such a time as this. It was that very sentence that I was thinking about when I was in Washington DC with American Jewish World Service to lobby for IVAWA, the International Violence Against Women Act. I looked up and saw the Capitol and knew just how far I had come as an American, as a Jew, a woman and a rabbi, speaking truth to power. It is a unique privileged we have in this country and one we must use in order to reclaim our own voice and to make the halls of Congress sacred again.
After Charlottesville and then again after the massacre in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life Synagogue, I was part of organizing events in Elgin. There were many people who spoke. One of the most powerful was Rev. Jeff Mikyska, who spoke as a white Christian male. He expressed his righteous indignation. His anger. He urged us to continue to speak out. To have our actions match our words. To root out racism and anti-semitism wherever they are found. I applaud Representative Casten and the members of last night’s panel for really wrestling this most important topic.
And yet…the Statue of Liberty still stands in New York Harbor, its base inscribed with a poem written by an American Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus. I grew up believing I belonged in America. I was part of the American dream, founded on democracy. I was a Girl Scout during the US Bicentennial and a girl from Grand Rapids when President Ford was the sitting president. If the president came to town and the Girl Scout Council needed diversity, it was I.
And yet…the US Congress and our democracy still stands. It is our sacred duty to guard it. It is our sacred duty to reclaim our sacred symbols. It is our job to speak out…wherever and whenever injustice rises. When the leadership passed from Moses to Joshua, both G-d and Moses told Joshua, “chazak v’emetz. Be strong and of good courage. Be strong and resolute.” This is a good message in our liminal time. I’m in. Hineini. Here I am.
But first, pass me the deviled eggs.
Earlier this week, I wrote this: I was asked to write a poem/prayer for the inauguration. Jews have been praying for their country since Jeremiah’s day. Every week we pray for our country. Here is mine tonight: