Heartbreak and Beyond
Dear Companions,
Last week, from Tuesday night till Friday was the worst in my life that I can remember. Tuesday night, Americans elected a fascist government. Heartbreak, deep and abiding.
The future of our country hangs in the slaughter-house. But not just the future. What powerful officials in the New Order may try to enforce caricatures of the past to stun and bewilder us? What would my four grandparents have thought, coming as they did to and for an America ever more free?
Wednesday night, I had some problems breathing. Thursday I went to the hospital and discovered that my heart’s electrical-conduction system had broken down. Literally, physically, my heart was broken.
The docs there advised me to get a pace-maker to restore my heart rhythms. Impossible at that hospital. They suggested a sister hospital. I went home to rest, enjoy Shabbos, have a gorgeous conversation about circumcision as Shabbos-morning Torah-study. (Was circumcision an attempt to heal one body part as a pace-maker is an attempt to heal the heart? What problems does each create?)
Monday, absorbing a pace-maker into my body. Feeling rejuvenated. (Rejewvenated?) Turning toward the next question: How do we heal a whole heart-broken country through love, justice, celebration of festivals, new sacred prophetic texts?
First specific thought that has occurred to me:
Bring together a small group (max 20) of trusted friends. Before anyone joins the group, ask each potential member whether they/ she/ he are willing to offer absolute confidentiality before introducing them to anyone else. If not, don’t.
If you have gathered a group, explain about creating a Freedom Cheder. (“Cheder” is a Yiddish word for a Jewish school.) Why might we need one?
We have joyfully lived through sixty years of one of the most creative periods of birthing a new Judaism in all our history. Women’s and gay people’s equality and freedom as Jews. Beginnings of a multiracial Judaism. Attempts to create a Jewishly responsible State of Israel. New liturgy. New actifests. Reopening the docket of Prophets and haftarot to some in our generation and some from early in this great renaissance of Judaism.
We may well face a new attempt by power-holders to smash much of what we have created. How do we prevent this?
Imagine a Freedom Cheder on the model of Black Freedom Schools in Mississippi in 1960-1970. (Unofficial schools, often held in churches, those schools taught a true version of Black America's history — great teachers of the past like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, great teachers and activists of the Change Generation like Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, and many more. Those schools taught the techniques of opposition and resistance against white tyranny.)
In some synagogues, the Freedom Cheder might be possible to sustain inside the shul. In others, that might be made impossible by powerful members or outsiders. In that case, survivors of the Change Generation might be recruited as teachers.
Some of us might feel ready to create a confidential commit with a different agenda—focused around protecting a group threatened by the New Order—Refugees and immigrants. The Black community. Gay people. Trans people. Women.
You might want to create confidential committees of friends you trust to defend one or another such group. We will be in touch with you about ways of doing that. For this moment, we offer the agenda of creating one or more Freedom Cheders.
One prototype might be the Fabrangen Cheder in Washington DC, which was and is a parents’ co-op, beginning in 1974 and still infusing young students with a strong sense of prophetic/progressive Judaism. Parents were many of the teachers—teaching that adults could live a committed Jewish life, as well as other work, directly contrary to the drop-off model where parents drop off kids and themselves jaunt to the golf course.
Another source of examples and advice: Look up "Freedom Schools" in an Internet search if you need more info. The first key question: What and who are you willing to trust to keep all discussions confidential??
If you want to raise some question, please write me. Confidentially. At my address as Prophetic Envoy: Awaskow@theshalomcenter.org
I send you a blessing of as much safety as you need, as much risk as you feel ready to drink in, as much love as you feel able to breathe in/out, from/to the Breath of life. And a branch of the Burning Bush to carry in your heart.
—Arthur