Rabbi Amy Eilberg didn’t make a special trip to Minneapolis to take part in Friday afternoon’s rally against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ongoing “Operation Metro Surge.” It was merely a happy coincidence that the Bay Area rabbi and national Conservative movement leader was going to be in town visiting family.
“I would have come anyway. I could not have not come because I’m deeply connected to the Twin Cities,” said Eilberg, who worked at the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at the University of St. Thomas. “I know the places, having been especially deeply moved and impacted by what’s been happening in Minnesota, listening to my kids talk about what they’re encountering, and keyed into at least a little bit of what their experience is.”
Eilberg is one of an estimated 80 Jewish clergy members and 600 clergy members of many faiths who have come to Minnesota to support the local community. Many of the clergy – including more than a dozen Twin Cities rabbis and cantors – were at training sessions at a Minneapolis church on Thursday, while also seeing what has been happening on the ground around the city.
Eilberg, who co-chairs the Racial Justice Subcommittee of the Conservative Movement’s Social Justice Commission, was one of several national leaders who will be taking part in events around Friday’s “ICE Out of Minnesota Day of Truth & Freedom.” The event starts at 2 p.m. at The Commons, 425 Portland Ave. S., in Minneapolis, which is the green space outside of U.S. Bank Stadium.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, is expected to be one of the speakers at Friday’s event.
“When a local community is really in pain, we always show up,” said Pesner. “It’s typical that one of our staff [from RAC] would come and be there. Whenever clergy asks, we show up.”
Pesner said he’s been in regular conversation with clergy across the Jewish movements.
“It’s all rooted in the biblical commandment that we were slaves in Egypt, and we’re to love the stranger,” he said. “The biblical text repeats that 36 different times in 36 different ways, and it really calls our clergy to action.”
Pesner said that he has been hearing most from clergy on the ground is the horror and outrage of how the most vulnerable are being treated.
“It’s also that their businesses are now impacted. Their daycare and early childhood centers, senior centers,” he said. “It’s the permutations of this crisis.”
Pesner, who will be speaking at Friday night services at Temple Israel, pointed out that, like many Jews, he’s heard stories of when the State used its powers against Jews.
“I think Jews are uncomfortable with when the state winds up suspending due process and rounding people up,” he said. “Jews never do well in those times of history, right?”
Pesner’s point was echoed by Cheryl Cook, the CEO of Avodah.
“The fact that there are, you know, people being taken from the street, from their workplace, from their school, in front of their kids, like this kind of brutality is reminiscent of, you know, for those of us who are Jewish, of times when Jews were targeted,” she said. “It’s unbearable to watch, and this kind of eroding of due process, eroding of rights for people, is never good for anyone, and it’s certainly never good for Jews, even if we’re not being targeted.”
Cook said that there are a lot of important issues that Americans and Jews are facing that don’t require “unaccountable agents roaming the streets.”
“We need good jobs, affordable housing, a path for citizenship,” she said. “That’s what we need. We need to be standing up for each other. What is happening is not taking care of our needs; it’s creating fear and division.
“What I really saw today is…there’s so much good happening. There are incredible amounts of good happening. And there’s good in terms of neighbors taking care of neighbors. There is good in terms of people just trying to figure out how to help each other.”
In a press conference with clergy and leaders from multiple faiths, Jamie Beran, the CEO of Bend The Arc, quoted Exodus 12:49, Exodus 23:9, and Leviticus 19:16 – all verses that talk about the treatment of immigrants and migrants.
“These are not just passages from the Torah. These are also passages literally by spirit or through values echoed in the scriptures and beliefs of so many of our faith traditions represented here today in this holy coalition,” she said. “When Minnesotans from across the state saw their neighbors in need, Minnesotans came from all over to stand with each other against ICE. And when people like me from across this nation saw our neighbors in need and heard the call from our friends here in Minnesota, we came from all over the nation to stand together.”
Beran said that she’s been inspired by the way Minnesotans have been stepping up for their neighbors through organizing mutual aid or being on ICE watch for their communities.
“It’s really important to continue to show up even when it requires some risk and inconvenience,” she said. “We’ve been talking for a long time about how, what’s going to be required to really stand up in this time and to this administration, is these critical inflection points. We can’t all be everywhere at once, but there are moments where it actually really matters to show up.”
Beran said that the way ICE officers are carrying themselves is rooted in pre-Civil War America.
“I know there’s been a lot of conversation around what’s happening here in Minneapolis that has echoes of the Gestapo and Germany, but it has echoes of slave patrols, of history from our own country here, that actually the Germans learned from,” she said. “There’s something about also actually knowing the way that history repeats and echoes, and that progress isn’t linear, but we have to keep pushing.”
Pesner said that he knows many Jewish community members are in pain — not just from having once been immigrants themselves.
“There are Jewish people who have challenging immigration status,” he said. “And the local rabbis and their members are also directly impacted. They’re traumatized by what they’re seeing in their neighborhoods. They’re traumatized by the impact on their businesses. I think we’re setting a model for other cities.”
Eilberg said she’s been moved by the clergy she spent Thursday with, as well as the work the Twin Cities community has done.
“All the structures that they’ve created, some of them large and formal, and some of them informal and grassroots, I’ve just been amazingly impressed by what I’ve seen here,” she said. “I look forward to participating and seeing more of what’s out on the streets, and putting my body in the place where I know that my beliefs are.”