Ending the Plague of Cruelty

A plague is unfolding in front of our eyes.

Over the past month, we have watched in horror as residents of Minnesota were terrorized by federal law enforcement officers.  Yet the attack on the immigrant community is not limited to our neighbors in Minnesota.

Last week, we were shocked to read about the Department of Homeland Security’s new policy of arresting and detaining refugees who have not yet received their green cards. Additionally, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service published a rule yesterday that would cut off work authorization for asylum seekers – people here lawfully who have a legal right to work while their case is adjudicated.

During a recent protest gathering of clergy, one Minnesota colleague, Rabbi Alex Davis, noted that the plague of darkness is truly shocking as he reflected on this Scriptural passage:

Moses held his arm out toward the sky and a thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could move about.

The darkness of this moment is palpable. You feel it on your skin and in your soul. Businesses in Minnesota have closed down. Employees across our country are missing from their work. People are dead, having been murdered because of their resistance to the cruelty, violence, and bigotry they witnessed.

What is most powerful about the darkness, Rabbi Davis wrote, is that “[t]hey didn’t see the other. They didn’t see the pain they were causing. They didn’t see the dehumanizing effect of their oppression. And when darkness descended, the Egyptians couldn’t get up. The darkness was so thick it was disorientating and paralyzing…  I know some issues are fraught, are divisive, are controversial. But sometimes, it just isn’t so difficult. No one here wants to see an older gentleman, an American citizen, taken at gunpoint without a warrant and led outside wearing nothing but his underwear…   No one here wants to see a five-year-old wearing a blue bobbled winter hat arrested, even though his family had entered this country legally…   And people of all political persuasions should be calling it what it is – cruel and outrageous. It’s a moment that demands a response. And we have the words and the wherewithal.”

These policies are intended to be cruel. And we need to respond with more than just our words. We must respond with our action.  As Rabbi Heschel noted after marching with Dr. King during the American Civil Rights Movement, we need to “pray with our feet.”

As a community of faith, we cannot rest on the idea that the world will eventually be better or that we will eventually learn the error of our ways. We must build a world worthy of the love shown by the Divine in the act of Creation and uphold the value of Tzelem Elohim – the knowledge that we are all created in God’s image.

As Father Peter Gyves (of blessed memory) wrote, “Compassion is guttural. It’s being sick to your stomach at what you see and saying, ‘I cannot accept what I see, and I am going to act because of that.’ It’s that compassion that moves the love we have to a commitment to work for justice for all people.”

At other moments of inflection in our nation’s history, good people of faith have been guided by these core values of welcoming, of shared humanity, and of Divine love. We must harness these values once again and call ourselves into action at this moment to push back against the darkness.

We need to remember that the term “neighbor,” as Rabbi Joachim Prinz so beautifully articulated, is not a geographic term but rather a moral one that speaks to our collective responsibility for the preservation of human dignity.

I don’t know how long the darkness of this contemporary plague will last. It has certainly been longer than three days. But I believe that if we want to find our way back to the light, we need to be called into action because the status quo is so painful and awful that we simply cannot let it continue.

And while I am white and privileged and have little to fear from this immigration enforcement action, my heart is broken, and I am deeply worried for my community, for my country, and for the world that we share.

There is work for us to do, and the call for justice could not be more urgent. But if we want to bring back joy and light to this moment, I believe we need to lean into the Bible’s story of liberation.

The plague of darkness is not the end of our story – it is just one step along the journey. We must remember that what follows is the crossing of the Sea of Reeds[i] and the rest of our miraculous story. The progress we saw as a nation in ancient times was not guaranteed. It was made possible by the upstanders in our community who pushed us forward.

May we be blessed to be upstanders in this moment and to serve in ways that bring joy back to a world plagued with too much darkness.

[i] Sometimes called the Red Sea.