03/22/2026
My words at today’s vigil. (Rabbi Shoshana Leis)
Everyone here has at least one ancient or modern tradition or story moral model or mentor whose choices and words and actions compel ours today- Religious or secular.
Whether it’s a grandparent a high school teacher a faith tradition a contemplative practice. Let us thank them for their messages and models, for the way they lived, and for the well-tread paths on which we march forward together.
What/Who brought you here ?
Give space to reflect.
We thak them.
The Torah brought me
מִשְׁפַּ֤ט אֶחָד֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כַּגֵּ֥ר כָּאֶזְרָ֖ח יִהְיֶ֑ה כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם
The Torah teaches repeatedly to make One law for the citizen and the immigrant alike.
This is what brought me today as well as many reminders not to oppress the immigrant in our midst but rather to love them as we know the heart of the immigrant…
who also brought me here is rabbi activist and Holocaust survivor Abraham Joshua Heschel who wrote a telegram to JFK in 1963. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE [people] . CHURCHES SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE.
Another person who brings me today is Aurora Levins Morales a cuir, feminist, disabled and chronically ill Puerto Rican Jewish poet, essayist and visual artist who wrote a poem in 2002 entitled Red Sea
“Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.”
Justice and ritual were never meant to be separated.
Ritual without justice is empty.
But there’s something even harder that needs to be said here and now.
Religion itself can go bad.
A religion that teaches triumphalism is bad religion.
A religion that teaches supremacy is bad religion.
Structures that perpetuate the outdated concept of exceptionalism are bad structures.
Bc each and every human is created equally in God's image.
Perhaps what brought you here is knowing something deep in what we call your kishkes, your gut.
It is KNOWING that what is happening to our immigrant neighbors and those who advocate for them- cruel acts that disregard basic human dignity and even take lives -is wrong.
What brings us here today is knowing that it is not enough to just know and speak of these matters…
This nation was rooted in dignity, refuge, and welcome.
Building partnerships beyond our comfort zones to stand with our immigrant neighbors is building the very foundation of this young and formative country.
The jewish people know what it is to be strangers in a strange land and to make a home for ourselves. Many of us here have families who are immigrants and who were not always welcome in the places where they lived. We gravitated towards places and people who welcomed us.
And our immigrant neighbors are rightfully doing the same.
To our Immigrant neighbors
You have enriched our lives
We value you
We love you
We bless you as you have blessed us.
Our neighborhoods, our hearts, our lives would be lessened without you.
We Join together with our immigrant friends and neighbors today and every day, in mutual concern. Mutual aid. Mutual partnership for the benefit and safety of all of us.
I call on every person of faith, and every person of conscience to listen for and trust the quiet voice inside you that knows the difference between right and wrong.
Human beings deserve dignity.
Our immigrant neighbors deserve protection.
Justice and ritual are both rooted in this truth and in our inner knowing and therefore “We must also forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate human beings.”
the question isn’t what we believe.
The question is:
Will we act?
What brought you here today? Who brought you here today?
Let’s discover this together in the days and weeks to come.
In the coming new life of spring time we will re-discover the Wisdom of the Heart, our ability to understand what another person is carrying - their fear, vulnerability and burden - and to respond because this time no one will be left to drown. all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
