Protective Presence

Rabbi Arik Ascherman this Sunday in the Upper West Side

Dear friends, 

“I often think about our ancestors in Europe who would get pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, or attacked in the streets of Germany, and imagine how different they would have felt if there were a non-Jew standing with them to protect them,” said Rabbi Arik Ascherman on Sunday morning. “I can’t promise you that we will prevent evacuations of villages,” he said, “but I can promise that we will be there physically with them, in the villages under threat, and in the courtrooms fighting for their rights.”

Rabbi Ascherman was laying out the heart of his current work in the West Bank, which he calls protective presence. It’s what my father did this week when he slept in the Jordan Valley village of Ras El 'Ain in case the nearby settlers would raid the village in the middle of the night, as they’ve done often recently. I did something similar a couple of years ago with Rav Arik, when we accompanied shepherds to the pasture and stood with them when the settler from the local outpost came to scare them and their sheep away. Just be there with them.  

This may seem remote, a hopeless struggle across the ocean in a part of the world turned more and more upside down every day. But the notion of protective presence is a spiritual stance that is germane to both the socio-political struggles ahead here in the US, and our day to day actions with those we love. Consider these words Rav Arik spoke: "Our job in this coming period is to protect those we can protect and prepare for the time when things will be better, so that when that comes - and it will - we can hit the ground running.”  I haven't heard a clearer definition of what our task will be in the coming years.

We will certainly need some heroes, like my neighbor Meghan who in 2018 couldn’t bear the news of the children separated from their parents at the border, so she flew to Texas and started working on uniting immigrant families. Her instinctive action became a grassroots organization of women called Immigrant Families Together, which united dozens of families. “We have proven you really can do something as one person and one collective of concerned people,” Julie Schwietert Collazo, the Executive Director of IFT proclaimed a couple of years in.  

But protective presence is a concept that far transcends the ups and downs of the political world. When Rav Arik talks about it, he leans on a tradition that sees physical presence in times of need and joy as qualitatively higher than other actions. These are political acts of tremendous power, human acts of the greatest import, and spiritual acts of the highest order.

In the morning prayers we find this paraphrasing of the Talmud: 

אֵלּוּ דְבָרִים שֶׁאָדָם אוֹכֵל פֵּרוֹתֵיהֶם בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה וְהַקֶּרֶן קַיֶּמֶת לוֹ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. וְאֵלּוּ הֵן. כִּבּוּד אָב וָאֵם. וּגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים. וְהַשְׁכָּמַת בֵּית הַמִּדְרָשׁ. שַׁחֲרִית וְעַרְבִית. וְהַכְנָסַת אוֹרְחִים. וּבִקּוּר חוֹלִים. וְהַכְנָסַת כַּלָּה. וּלְוָיַת הַמֵּת. וְעִיּוּן תְּפִלָּה. וַהֲבָאַת שָׁלוֹם בֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ וּבֵין אִישׁ לְאִשְׁתּוֹ. וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה כְּנֶגֶד כֻּלָּם. 

These are precepts, the fruits of which a person enjoys in this world, while the principal is preserved for them in the World-to-Come. They are: honoring father and mother, performing deeds of kindness, early attendance in the House of Study morning and evening, bringing guests into your home, visiting the sick, participating in a wedding, accompanying the dead to the grave, concentrating on the meaning of prayers, making peace between fellow people and between husband and wife— and the study of Torah is equal to them all. 

At least half of this list of transcendent deeds necessitates physical presence. When we visit the sick, our presence protects that person and aids their recovery. When we go to a wedding, our presence elevates the couple. When we attend a funeral, we are physically accompanying the body on its last journey, as well as protecting the mourners with our care and love, without which they would be in a far deeper state of despair.  

The Shechinah, the presence of God has protective powers. Perhaps even more so human presence.  

This week marked International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the signing of the UN’s Human Rights Declaration. Rabbi Ascherman, who for decades ran Rabbis for Human Rights, and today runs Torat Tzedek, The Torah of Justice, is a truly unique presence in our world. Despite the hordes of religious Jews like him who see Jewish people’s rights as qualitatively different than others’, he cannot but see the image of God in every person, and the ever-present light in our tradition calling out א-ח-ד, O-n-e.  It is that protective presence that shields his compassionate, forward-looking world view and allows him to keep maintaining his protective presence of Palestinians in the West Bank. Those of us lucky enough to know him continue to maintain our view of a compassionate, active Judaism, thanks to the presence of Rav Arik and others like him. 

This evening, at 6pm we will be gathering for Kabbalat Shabbat in Brooklyn (followed by dinner from Mimi’s Humus!). One of those transcendent acts I listed above was bringing peace between fellow people. Given how elusive peace feels in these times, I've invited my better half, Erika Sasson, to share a recent story from her work in peacemaking, which brought together two families in the aftermath of the death of a loved one. I hope you'll join us.  

May we bring our protective presence to the lives of those we love, and those who are in need.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha