Reading Ezra in an Age of Mass Deportation with Rabbi Sarah Bassin

Rabbi Lizzi is joined by her friend Rabbi Sarah Bassin, Rabbi in Residence for HIAS. R’Sarah has developed a curriculum titled “Reading Ezra in an Age of Mass Deportation,” and she shared her insights into this alarming moment with our Morning Minyan crew.

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Transcript

Transcript

Not a wrecking ball, a bouncing ball, a bouncing ball. Um,

so, so maybe before going into, before going into any learning, I can also, I can also exercise those muscles of coming down and kind of finding stability like we do every morning here together. So

I'm going to say the blessing for putting on this. Talit, you're welcome to join me. We're just sort of imagine yourself in this moment, being enveloped by light,

by tradition, by arms of generations coming to give you a warm, loving embrace.

Baruch atah Adonai, Elohim, Bucha at yashina, mal catalda,

mitzvotnu, liji, TAFE, but seats, eat.

Blessed are you

great mystery of the universe, God, Goddess, who brings us close,

who warms us up from the inside, who connects with us through, meets, votes, through spiritual acts, like, for example, putting on this Telly right now.

Just take taking a moment to to

sit up a little bit straighter, or, you know, whatever position you're in, to find whatever version of it allows you to breathe more deeply.

Stretch out your spine if you can

roll shoulders,

let your let your shoulders relax and fall away, creating as much space between the bottoms of your earlobes and your shoulders,

and just taking a few deep breaths here and

So we always begin. We always begin minion with gratitude. That's how the that is how the service is structured. And so I wanted to do the same thing this morning,

but I also wanted to theme our Minion around around the holiday that is upcoming. So

so here the words for our gratitude are not going to be from the sidur. They're going to be from the Seder.

Here we go. So anybody can anybody guess? I mean, Hallel, obviously is, is praise and gratitude that comes during the Seder. But what's another very popular song?

Oh, okay. All right. This was an easy one. It's easy little trivia. All right, so I'm just, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a version of it. If you've been around Mishkan long enough, then you've heard this one. Um Hillel tiguei, the Hasan at Ikar found it. It, I believe, is from some non Ashkenazi tradition. I don't know where, though, I think it's Sephardic.

It has a really beautiful

this version is not the sort of happy clappy version that's the total earworm from many of our childhood satyrs.

You'll hear it here, and,

you know, maybe you'll bring it to your tables at we sometimes do both.

And one of the things that I like about it is

it lets you,

it lets you go through all of the verses, which, in many haggadot They don't even include all the verses anymore. They just figure you're gonna do the last three.

This is quite similar to Psalm 136 which, I think it's 136

which kind of chronicles the history of the universe and the Jewish people and and it seems like it's positive, but then if you really look at all the lines, you realize like, oh my gosh, this is actually more complicated. There's stuff in here that I actually don't really want to look at, because it makes me uncomfortable to think that my freedom or my existence, might have come at the expense of somebody else's, you know, because, of course, like that's the Jewish story of crossing the Red Sea, is all of those Egyptian chariot riders and, you know, army generals, including Pharaoh drowned, which seems like justice.

Yes, but then again, like they had families at home, you know? And so what this does is it really it puts the whole story in dialog and makes it far less black and white,

but even in the midst of the gray, we can still say thank you.

So just take a moment now

in this morning to think about what it is that you're feeling. You're feeling grateful for.

You know, we do this all the time, and sometimes we say coffee, and coffee is a good one.

And I hate to complicate it, but somebody picked those coffee beans. Do you know how their day went? Do

you know if they're being paid a fair wage?

You know, and so, like everything in this world, I mean, I don't know sunshine, maybe you know, like, I'm trying to think of something that's uncomplicated, but even sunshine now feels complicated.

So,

so this is a complex, capacious gratitude. Deena,

all right, feel free to drop in the chat this morning.

What you're feeling. Deena, for, you know, if just this, it would be enough. And of course, it's not enough, but it would be just for now. Kamalo to vote. La, Ma, come a le, no. ILU hoci Anu Mimi.

Rafa

deenu. ILU a Sabah hem shafa, Team below.

Sa

vlo ein Deena you ILU,

Asa, Belo Hai,

hello, ha. Ragbi hora, I am. Deena ka malo, to vote, LA, Ma, come, ale, nu, ILU, ha. Ragbi hora, ham pelo na tan, la nuet, Mamo Nam, daenu ILU

na tan, la nuet, Mamo Nam, hello,

Kara la nueta. Ya

e Nuka.

E Toho Deena, hi,

lo Shika Betsa Reno veto, ho,

lo si PETA Reno de mi, ba, a Bani,

No. Ka malo, to vote, LA, Ma, come, A, le, no,

hi, lo si peixa,

hasha, bat day, no ILU Na, tan, la nuet, hasha baat,

hello, Keith Anu, live. Nei har, Sinai Dain ho ILU, Keith van nuyf na har, Sinai, Lu

Na, tan, la nuet, ha Tora

Deena, Hilo

na tan la Nue, To hora, lo hizmi Nue, Sanu de Israel, Lo

ba

Deena,

oh, so now I just need to read these, because they're beautiful,

breathing gratitude for just simple pleasures, Puppy snuggles, knowing I'm in someone else.

Thoughts, music, a smile on a face, having three healthy kids, yes, ooh, the breeze, knowing my family is safe and all together, shelter and food for me and mine. Grateful for my sight with all the complexities over the years, grateful for imagination, blue sky dreams, kisses from my dog, snuggling with cats and hubby.

Oh, it's a good melody. Thank you, Blair,

grateful for my severe sinus allergies that they're finally clearing up. And grateful for different perspectives, and grateful for the ability to do mitzvah, which brings good things into the world.

If my husband had to put up the streamers for our daughter's 18th birthday and also not offered to pick up the cake, it would have been enough. Deena, one

of the Yeah, Miriam, I love what you just did there. One of my favorite things about

Jewish liturgy is it gives us a format to to format gratitude and words. Sometimes when we don't know how to say it exactly, or don't know how to say it as poetically as possible, we can kind of turn to some of these structures, and they're great. They're great. Food and shelter, heating and air conditioning, clean and hot and cold running water, electricity and breath, and all the people who make that possible, grateful for personal growth this breath and the next and the next,

grateful in the thought that God is behind me no matter what, especially in these challenging times as I fear and prepare for future confrontations. I'm the upcoming chair for the New York CPA society, IRS Council relations committee. The recent announcement that the IRS has agreed to share taxpayer info with ice violates the taxpayers Bill of Rights. You will need to work with the

CPA society and other state societies to push back. Kind of heavy for this morning. Sorry, but you know what Miriam the theme, or Irene the theme was kind of complex gratitude, gratitude that you can be grateful for the place that you have on that committee, even in the midst of it not being great circumstances around that committee, but thank God for you in that role.

You know what? If everything had to be pure, emotions all the time, I don't know. I don't know what emotions we would feel, because, to be honest, once you start to scratch the surface, everything's a little more complicated underneath, isn't it?

So you I'm

going to move us all the way to the shimmer so that then

we can do a little bit of learning on the heels of the Shema,

when we

to do a little more deep dive into Seder stuff, before Rabbi Sarah joins us.

Okay. Here we are, putting down my guitar, taking

a moment to just situate ourselves in our seats, or however you're lying or standing,

and just contemplating for a moment the oneness

the hardness of all of us throughout time and space, all of the people who came before us, who who once made satyrs or didn't you know, in in their own history, but knowing that the air we continue to breathe is infused with the molecules and atoms of air that they breathed 1000s of years ago

and that people all around the world, all of us, are part of the same pulsating heartbeat

of Life,

past, present future

that we call God,

and so we say, pay attention. Pay attention ourselves. Shema Yisrael, pay attention me. You, all of us,

this pulsating heartbeat, this mysterious connection throughout time and space.

There's no division in it. It's just one, and

it includes all of us.

And if we can live that way, we might get a little bit closer to the Liberation Our tradition invites us to strive toward every year at this holiday, but actually every day, multiple times a day, when we sing Michel mocha as well. So.

So our first task is just to open our heart to the oneness,

so close our eyes.

Gather your seat seat, if you have them, into one hand,

and just take a full breath for every word.

Shimah,

yes.

Adonai,

hello, he knows.

I

don't know there are eight. Adonai,

Aloha, Bucha verha, you had very a share, I know he met savaha hai, yon alabaka, shenan tanah, over left, ahava, Taha over there, who

ketaftam,

almazus, oh, they Taha will be sure.

Okay,

so

let's let us use Mihai as a healing prayer for anyone who needs to come through something, cross the sea,

expand, grow, change, adapt, heal.

So Irene has got a long list here,

as usual, every single person

who's on the beautiful receiving end of your energy,

everyone in Leah Ari's list, everyone in this room, quite obviously, everyone in Lori's list. Aiden, shalom. Deena, rabbinu, Vasari, menu,

Prudy,

cherry,

all right,

oh, Ev, Ev, Ev, sending love to have

that Moira of arachal.

All right, all of you, all of you praying for each other and praying for the people you love.

I want to try singing mija mocha in the same tune I sang Deena, and I want to see

if it works. Miha, moja ba Elim, Adonai, mi ka mo ha ne da

lish, I am

Deena,

Yahad,

kulam, o du Vim, liho ve do,

I don't know

Adonai

to Israel.

Kumaba, dying,

day

man,

healing of body and spirit.

To all of us. You.

And all of you,

amen.

Amen.

There's so many people we love so much and want to pray for.

And it matters. It really matters.

It makes such a difference to people who know that they're being prayed for every single day. You know what? It makes a difference even to the people who don't know, although it is nice to catch up with somebody every so often and let them know. You know, I know we don't talk a lot, but I want you to, I want you to know I pray for you all the time.

It makes people smile.

Alright, I wanted to, I wanted to read in our last seven minutes here, and by the way, Sarah, are you here? Have you joined us? Already?

Okay,

great.

I wanted to read you

something that I just thought was thoughtful

as a kind of intro to

as a kind of intro to Passover and the Seder. So this is Yehuda Kurtzer

from his podcast, identity crisis, and he does an interview with the author, Dara horn, but it this is part of his kind of intro to that interview. And he says, you know, the question isn't, how is this knight different from all other knights? He says, the question is, how is this Seder different from all satyrs that have come before it. He says Passover is a layered exercise of remembering previous passovers. This has some banal implications, like how we use Passover as a means of marking time. Like, Wait, it was that the year we were in Virginia. But it has more profound implications as I think we're meant to think less and less over time about the actual Exodus and more and more about recent incarnations of the remembered past. I'm

just going to read that again. We're supposed to think less and less over time, about the actual Exodus and more about recent incarnations of the remembered past. Sometimes the things you remember about previous passovers Were so wacky and outrageous. You can name the Seder where it happened in our family, it's like the first time my usually placid grandmother threw plastic frogs at everyone and caught everyone off guard.

We remember the first time that she did it, or the Seder when I was a kid when an Israeli peace activist came to our Seder and had such a great time and got so drunk that he fell into the bushes on his way out. Or one of those times when a guest who we barely knew riveted us with some personal story of redemption and salvation. Those are like bold, independent art pieces in our memory, but more often than not, the memories of Seders past blend together like Schnabel paintings, like most of our memories, they're hazy. They give us an image of a past and a composite experience of passovers built over time independent elements harder and harder to discern. That's precisely when we need to ask, what's different this year from last year and anyway, rarely it's what's on the menu. And I think it's fair to say that the forces that drive the differentiation of passovers from year to year are US and the world around us. The four children of the Haggadah stay the same age, but we don't. I think the difference between personally relating to them at times in my life as images of children like I was, and then later about them as my own children, and in between, most commonly as abstractions of children, and that's just one window, one example of how our own evolution and development as a people take the fixed script of the Haggadah, the one on the pages and the script that every household has about the roles that we invariably play year after year, and makes the script still feel different as we change and grow. So the book might not change, but we do, and the world changes. And the implication, excuse me, the implicit subplots of subjugation and liberation translate into different debates at our Seder table each year, corresponding to the new cycle, I think, in all the right ways that Torah and Jewish tradition are supposed to breathe and pulsate with relevance just by being reapplied over and over to whatever world we inherit and create. So he writes, show me your fears and hopes right now, and I'll tell you which parts of the Haggadah will emerge as moments for tears or laughter This.

Year,

none of us are the same, and none of us experience the world's turbulences the same way. And still, we seem to be surprised that an evening when we're supposed to bring all of that to the table and read ancient parables about hope and suffering that often elevates our simmering disagreements and conflicts into passionate disagreement. We are surprised satyrs Passover. Satyrs are choose your metaphor, a microscope, a magnifying glass, an amplifier, a laboratory. You take a great story and a legacy of a great past, you add obligations to live that story and that past as if you're in it. You add the vicissitudes of the human condition and the plain reality of human difference, you filter in all the ways that our closest relationships can be crucibles of our own self, self definition. Add wine and a little strategic deprivation of food. Good luck.

He says, I love Passover, and I love talking about it, by the way. I think it's also the underrated, best night of eating on the Jewish calendar. And once, once you get to the actual eating, but that's a different podcast.

And then he and then he goes into his conversation with Dara horn. But I love the I love just his recognition there that, like, why are we surprised when we take all of these big ideas and just the reality of people's differences and add wine and a little bit of strategic food deprivation? How are we surprised that Seders become animated and a little bit spicy, but like, do we think that's just our family. You know, I've talked to so many different people who say, like, well, you know, it's hard at our table. You know, we have a we have a lot of different opinions, and it's like everybody should get together and talk about how that's actually true everywhere. I don't know if there's one Seder where everyone shares opinions about things, and that's as it should be.

And I feel like, you know, maybe one of the the things that we can do at our at our various Seders, is just acknowledge that right up front, with a little bit of love, like, like, so much love, and that this is what our people have been doing for so very long.

All right, I want to, I want to, I want to say kadishi atau Warner, Scottish, and then we are going to make a transition, because I see that our guest has arrived. Hello, Rabbi. Sarah.

If anybody what? What's the source that I was just reading? That was the transcript from Yehuda Kurtz identity crisis podcast. You

all right, as we transition into Kadisha tome, I already see Theresa, Owen, Mark nur love, Barbara, Claire Sheehan, Barry costs, oh, this is his

Podolsky,

Leanna, Diana, lennick, Nancy, Jacobson and Sheldon tobolsky.

Anyone else whose name you want to mention this morning for keithtown Warners, Scottish,

Joan curlo, Diana Lennox,

can I ask Sarah Cantor and Lori Rodge? I didn't know if the two of you know each other, but you know you're saying the same name of a person who I feel like is a new name in Armenian.

I went to high school with Diana and she and when I and she came out to Washington, and I spent time with her and Nancy,

wow. Nancy is my mom,

and Diana was my aunt, and I went to high school with Nancy too. Nancy, oh, my goodness. Nancy was a cheerleader. Nancy was, was was, was a goddess. Oh, well, she still has her cheer jacket.

Oh, my God. And Diana was just a wonderful, wonderful person doing, doing good law in Champaign Urbana, did she recently? She recently passed? That's right, she passed in December. Okay,

May her memory be a blessing.

Harry Rosenberg, Alex Cohen Andy Bates, Michael golden,

anyone else is

there anybody who'd like to lead us in Kaddish this morning?

I don't have the confidence to lead, but if everyone says it at the same time, it'll be better. And also, Alex Cohen is my father, so I'm like connected all over the cottage today.

All right, well, I know you can do it, and I it'll be messier if everybody joins you for all.

That I can promise you that.

All right, let me put the screen up for you

All together now you

or

you said,

I

say,

oh,

amen.

Amen, may all of their memories be blessings, and may they be having as much fun in the next world as that Kaddish was here in this one.

Thank you, Laurie for volunteering,

and now we are going to completely switch gears.

Let's see we got a good crowd here.

So, all right, minion, the official minion is closed, and now I've opened up a learning space. So Rabbi. Sarah Basson, where are you? Right? Here? Am I puffiness? Yes, but you sound a little sorry. I did not mean to just mute you. I did that. That's okay. Is that better? Oh yeah, that sounds better. It was echoey for a moment. And

I want to, how do i Huh,

okay, oops, wait, sorry.

I wanted to try to, oh, wait, hang on. I see. Oh, there you are. Yeah, I mean, I'm in both spaces. I'm sorry my my visual was not working on my computer, so I've got my phone open too. Oh, look at that. All right. Well, hello.

I'm so excited that you're here, everyone. This is my friend and colleague, Rabbi, Sarah Basson, Sarah and I were in Los Angeles at the same time as rabbinical students, and Sarah and the Reform Movement me at the Ziegler school, and we knew each other at E car, and then I moved to Chicago, and Sarah went on to become the founding Executive Director of the new ground initiative for Muslim Jewish partnership and change, which was an incredible it is remains an incredible organization doing bridge building work in LA between Jews and Muslims. And now Sarah is the rabbi in residence at HIAS, like formerly known as Hebrew immigrant Aid Society. Or is it still right? Okay, exactly. Prince right. It's highest formerly known as the Hebrew immigrant Aid Society, one of the oldest and the the major Jewish refugee resettlement agency in America. And Sarah was recently in town well. So first of all, Sarah and I are doing this Hartman fellowship together. So we're spending five weeks together in Jerusalem every year, a couple weeks in winter and a couple weeks during the summer. So we've gotten reacquainted through that. But also, Sarah was just in town for the rabbinic the reform movement. So rabbinic conference, we saw each other. She was telling me about this,

this particular learning, this teaching that she put together.

And I said, Oh my gosh, I want you to do that for us. Would you do that for us sometime before Passover? And so here we are. And so I just want to say thank you, Sarah for making time on a Wednesday morning to teach. And we're recording this, so we're going to share this out. And the name of the teaching is reading Ezra in an age of mass deportations. And so I wondered, Sarah, if before we just, like, jump right into the learning, if you might also kind of catch us up on, like, what has been happening in your world, and then, and then we can, you know, jump into this learning. But I just feel like so many of us are hearing on the news stuff about deportations and, you know, customs, law enforcement, like, what's happening and how is it affecting? Hias,

well, first of all, thank you for getting me in under the wire before Passover.

Here on on your one state minion, it's really, it's really a joy to be with you guys,

as you can imagine. It's a pretty complicated time right now in the world of organizations that seek to provide welcome and security and safety and opportunity to forcibly displace people of all backgrounds, whether they're refugees or they're here under a different status, asylum, TPS, humanitarian parole. There are a lot of different ways that people come to the United States in search of safety, and pretty much every one of those pathways is either under attack or has been shut down within the last two months as a high priority of the administration. So in addition to seeing a lot of these pathways shut down for people coming into the United States, we're also seeing an expansive use of

different statutes to try to expel people who are here, both with and without status. It's a

little bit too detailed to get into all of it. I'm happy to stick around for another few minutes after the teaching to provide context or to answer any specific questions that you might have to the best of my ability, with the recognition and hopefully a little grace from you

that I am not a lawyer, I am a rabbi. So there's a different kind of skill set of knowledge there. However, the skill set of knowledge does quite apply when examining Jewish tradition

for trying to meet this really transformational moment in our national identity. This is cataclysmic. This is, this is the breakdown of bipartisan, bipartisan consensus that has guided us for more than 40 years, and you know, a national identity that we've had, however fragile, however, you know, complicated as a nation of immigrants,

there's a core, fundamental aspect of our identity that's being challenged. And through the Hartman learning that Lizzi and I did together, we had the opportunity to study just a little bit of the book of Ezra, and there was part of it that just smacked a couple of us in the face in terms of its relevance to this particular moment that we're experiencing in terms of American policy. So the first thing I want to do before I dive into the teaching is just to ask, does anybody have associations with the book of Ezra? Is like,

does it raise anything for for folks? Has anything come to mind when you think of Ezra?

Scribe? Okay, great. So, so, yeah. So Ezra was an elite

of his of his era. He was actually part of a class of leaders that were living in exile during the time of the Babylonian Empire. So at this point in history, the Babylonians have decimated and taken away national sovereignty from the Jews in our traditional homelands, the elites were exiled over into Babylon and AMCHA kind of the regular everyday people had stayed and remained behind. But wouldn't luck have it, the Babylonian Empire that had conquered us, they were actually conquered by the Persian Empire, which had a totally different approach and how it ruled its, you know, facile dominions, the the peoples that I conquered and the Persian Empire, Cyrus, right, he sent people back to the Land of Israel, right? These leaders that had been exiled get to go back. They get to rebuild. They get to kind of re establish a national identity. And Miriam, wasn't he a little more pissed off than your average prophet? Well, you know what I will say, he was probably a little more directed. I feel like a lot of the prophets had a very significant array of things that pissed them off. Ezra a little bit more fixated. Okay, so Ezra, when he comes in, he is he comes back to the land and he sees one thing that really disturbs him, which is the preponderance of inner marriage among the people who have remained behind and to him,

not not to us. This is not a this is not an assessment of ours right to him. This was a fundamental threat to.

The national identity of the Jewish people and their ability to rebuild a sense of national identity. So he fixates on this as a policy issue, and he comes up with this notion that there is a new definition of citizenship within the people of Israel that had not previously existed, which is that you have to have two parents who are Jewish in order to be considered Jewish. And his policy recommendation, that was picked up with some significant fervor from a number of followers, was that if you were a non Jew, married to a Jew, and there were offspring from that family that you were to be separated out.

His followers went a step further. They said, No, it's not just that. You know, there's a divorce and there's separation. Everybody can kind of live amongst each other, but just separately, his supporters said that they had to be exiled.

So I want you to think about the trauma

of what that deportation initiative would look like, the family separation, the intimate cruelty, the bureaucracy that it would take in order to actually implement a policy like that, and if intermarriage were as widespread as seems to be the case, that concerned Ezra so deeply, just how many people this likely impacted within society?

If you're hearing some resonance

of things that might feel a little familiar today, in terms of the implications of policy on our cultural fabric

that is intentional,

it is very easy for me as a rabbi to Bring the lovely Torah about welcoming the stranger about Passover, I think it's a better moment right now for us to really grapple with some of the hard Torah that we are inheriting.

Because if we're able to see it in the past, and if we're able to see it in the history, I think it gives us a little bit more

strength and a bigger toolkit to face the current moment that we have. Okay, so

I am going to share with you

the book of Ezra and and just because it's a I'm kind of toggling between two screens here, for those who are

wanting to weigh in on the conversation, when, when I ask a question, it's easier. Don't, don't raise your hand. Don't wait for me to call on you. Just throw in and and ask. Okay.

Okay, great. Okay, so I'm

going to skip through the first bit. If you want to follow along in your own screens, that's fine as well. We're just going to read this one little section from chapter 10 and then start to have a little bit of a discussion around it. So if I could get a volunteer to read the English that would be great,

starting with Ben Ezra,

the link, please? Yes, I will re put in the link in the chat.

Then Ezra, the priest, rose up and said to them, you have committed sacrilege and settled foreign women to add to Israel's guilt. And now make a confession. Give praise to Hashem, the God of your fathers, and do His will and separate from the peoples of the land and from the foreign women. And the whole congregation responded and said in a loud voice, indeed, in accordance with your words, we must do but the people are numerous, and it is the season of rains, and there is no strength to stand outside, and the work is not for a day and not for two for we greatly trespassed in this matter. Let our chiefs stand up for all the congregation and everyone in our towns who has settled foreign women will come at the appointed time, and with them the elders of each town and its judges, until the fierce anger of our God over this matter turns back from us. But only Jonathan, son

of Asia, son of Tikva stood up over this, and Mishkan and shabdai the Levite helped them. Okay, excellent job on the names. First of all,

all right, I am curious. I would love to hear reactions, whether emotional, analytical, what resonance Are you?

Seen to today's text. What sticks out at you just kind of give me initial reactions here.

I ask a clarifying question first, sure. Okay, so when

I'm confused, actually about the response to some degree,

okay, the congregations in agreements, but they say

this is going to be a lot of work because it's such a mess.

Our chiefs are going to stand up for the congregation

and

and go at the point of time and then,

but only Jonathan and jazz stood up over this. I don't understand what stood up means. Did they stand up in opposition, or did they stand no, no, so, so, I mean, I think you're spot on. This is, this is something that I read into the text. Maybe it's there. Maybe it's not. There's part of me that wonders if the community is saying one thing, but really not actually in full support of it, right? Absolutely. God demands this. Of course, we're gonna do it. Oh, but you know what? It's really rainy outside right now. It's going to take a long time, you know. And when it actually comes down to who's volunteering, it seems like there are like two guys who are being voluntold to actually carry through with the policy, right? So that, you know, there's this disconnect between the purported embrace of of the policy, maybe the fervor with which some supporters are carrying, and perhaps the actual execution of it. Is this some deep state resistance.

Maybe. Okay, good. Excellent point. What else?

It also reminds me of, sort of that idea that this sounds like a fabulous policy, but when it's my neighbor, but my neighbor, the immigrant, is a great person, and they're all these things. So it's that you can hate the other but the person that is close to you, you can think of all the excuses in the world why they don't qualify and right? So I think we're seeing that now as well in our country. Yeah, there's a real difference between the abstraction of a policy and understanding its lived implications. And once you see like the level the level of cruelty that it takes to actually implement it. Then,

then there's a little bit of hesitation or a little bit of questioning about it.

Good. What else are people seeing, reacting to thinking about I'm also really struck

coming back to what you said. I mean, it's mean, maybe the people really are on board with this policy, but they just want it to be done in like sort of a normal, elderly, normal, orderly process that involves input from the elders and the judges. And, you know, the Zealots are like, now, let's just put these two guys in charge. And, you know,

move fast and break things. Move fast and break things. Yes, yes. From Silicon Valley to the government, it feels like sometimes the the

the byproduct of that is it's a little bit it's a little bit different, um, I'm curious how people read the use of God in this and the leveraging of God,

because I'm not actually seeing God's demand here,

right? Sure, Ezra is speaking in the name of God. Yes, we have plenty of texts from earlier in the Torah that, you know, tend to be a little bit suspicious of our neighbors that we live among in the ancient lands there. But there seems to be a lot of talking in the name of God. None of the directive seems to be coming actually from God, right? Ezra is making a connective assumption that obviously the intermarriage is the source of all of our woes and problems.

Okay, I bet there were some other sins that we could have pointed to. Miriam, you look like you're going to chime in. Well, I

it also, as

you were saying that I thought, yeah, because, like, even, even though Judaism was tribal, i.

So in the term, we see plenty of advanced examples of men marrying foreign women. I mean, Moses married a foreign woman, right? Like, like, this is not an uncommon thing that happens, and no one's kicking them out, right, right? Is this the first time we hear this suggestion that

that this is an abomination, or does it come earlier? Is he working off something earlier? Well, there's certainly discomfort earlier of the idea of intermarriage that's introduced, but it's not a hard, fast rule, right? If you're going to apply this standard, then we're all a little screwed, because Moses marries a non Jew, right?

We have a David's comes from a line of descendants where Ruth right, who was not a Jew, right? So, so, so there is, at least, within the context of our history, the ability to fold people in and welcome them into some form of citizenship, both for them and their offspring, within our national identity that at this point, Ezra is trying to undermine, right? It's, it's like, you know, it's like an attempt at chipping away at birthright citizenship, right? That there's been operating assumptions that even if we don't like it, there are ways to fold it in, right? And this is just trying to draw a hard and steadfast line. And this, this notion of the Zara HaKodesh, of the consecrated seed that he tries to kind of put out there like our seed is so holy that it should not be mixed with any other seed, and if it gets diluted or tainted, then it ceases to maintain that status. Great, okay, I have a question. So I'm wondering what happened between Ruth and Ezra to cause this? And of course, there was the trauma of the destruction and the exile, and I'm just drawing a parallel here, maybe not even so much, with what's happening in the US as was what's happening in Israel, in terms of desperation at the fact that most of the exiles didn't follow him back, right? And so what? Maybe he was trying to create something, right? Just like, you know, Israel, it was created artificially, and that he's basically trying to do the same thing, and it's working about as well as the other one. So, yeah, that was just a thought. No, I think that's a totally appropriate analogy, right? And I use the word fixate, not necessarily in a negative way, like for him, this was the solution to a national identity crisis. And again, like kind of all throughout our tradition, we have, like, some level of hesitation and suspicion of that boundary being too porous with our neighbors or with outsiders,

and we have all of these laws that say, Don't do it, don't mix, don't mingle, you know, stay separate. But those it's it's clearly happening in every generation, right? Like we're not actually maintaining the clear boundaries that we dictate that we thought we were right. So

okay, can I? Can I just jump in and yeah, also just emit to your question, like, what happened between Ruth and this? I even just putting, you know, in juxtaposition these two different these two different stories that are toward the end of the Tanakh, which is like, these are not stories that your average, like, you know, medium, educated Jewish person knows very well. But the story of Ruth, like, really lifts up in a very positive way the contributions of non Jewish partners, mothers, you know, family, to perpetuating the Jewish story and to living Jewish values, you know. And Ruth is sort of like, iconically, the descendant of King David.

And so it's just, it's interesting to juxtapose these two books, where, in the book of Ruth, like intermarriage, is, it's, it's, it's a fact of life, and it's okay, and it's beautiful, and it actually positions it in a really kind of, not just inevitable, but also beautiful way. And, yeah, and a contributory way, right? I would, I would say the same with with Moses and sappora, right? Moses has such a close relationship with his father in law, neutral that you throw is actually responsible a Midianite priest, right? Is actually responsible for the advice that structures our society, subsequently, right, and how we set up our judges. So there is this sense of benefit.

That comes from from these interactions that's thoroughly woven throughout the text. So for Ezra to come in and draw this hard line, right, it might reflect some aspects of the texts that we have inherited, but it over emphasizes those relative to the full narrative that we actually have. The challenge that I really have in engaging with this text is okay, so we got the good stuff. We got the tough stuff. The hard part for me is just how embraced Ezra is within the context of our tradition. That if you look at this right, Rabbi osa rabiosa says that edible was suitable enough, given his greatness, that basically, he would have been Moses if he were born in that era, right? It's like, it's a heck Sure, it's a seal of approval on what Ezra stood for, which, if you find these impulses problematic,

it's a little hard to grapple with, right? Okay, thank you, Rebecca, appreciate you being here. All right, we are going to get into some amazing contemporary commentaries. The first two that we are going to look at are juxtaposed directly, almost in conversation with each other. Tamara Eskenazi literally wrote the book on Ezra. She just recently published a new commentary on the book of Ezra, and she takes a more redemptive understanding of what Ezra was trying to do in this moment. And Rabbi Seth Goldstein takes a slightly more critical approach, so I'm going to go down. Let's read.

I think Seth is probably a little bit more expected, if somebody would read

the part I just highlighted in the blue.

Sure we should not be we should be troubled by this text on two levels. One, it points to the ancient roots of the persistent tendency for nations to need to blame certain groups for their issues and to as is often the case, those groups are immigrants. Ezra not only seeks a semblance of national purity by casting out immigrants, he is blaming those immigrants for all the troubles of the community, both past and possible future.

Throughout our history, we Jews have been cast as the foreigner and the scapegoat for the problems of communities and nations, a practice that has led to repeated expulsions and mass murder. It should shock us to see this idea presence present in our own sacred texts. At the same time we can read Ezra knowing that just as our ideology is different than Ezra is in that we do not tend to ascribe reward and punishment to an intervening God. So too is our attitude toward immigration different from Ezra, rather than a source of division and fear, it is the diversity and hope brought by immigrants that can make a country great. Thank you. Okay, so first of all, a great Reconstructionist, Jew, right? That and his his philosophy that he's putting out of we don't believe in a God of reward and punishment. I love you. Said perfect.

I'm curious, does this interpretation from him resonate, right, that like we have this record of one particular thing in a given moment? But maybe it's not our thing. Does that work for people and in terms of interpretation, or does that sidestep the issue for you?

You mean the idea that that in this particular moment, we're ascribing reward and punishment to God or No, no, no, I'm just saying that like you know, Seth says ezra's attitudes towards integrating immigrants, right, doesn't reflect maybe our own attitude towards integrating immigrants. Is that enough? Like, is that enough wrestling with this as a sacred text in our tradition? Well, I would have to say one, I don't necessarily agree that all Jews agree that with the person who was writing this. You know that? I think it really depends, and that's what we want to aspire to. That's what I aspire to. But I don't agree that it's just in our nature because we're Jews, beautiful. Yeah, I also want to, you know, having been married twice, and having no rabbi willing to marry me and my non Jewish husband, I know that's changed. You know, I've experienced the

the Jewish rejection of the outsider and also the seems to me the more religious people are sometimes.

Sometimes the more they use words like William and shiksa and other kind of not complementary terms to

to talk about non Jews. So I don't think it's I think it's naive or optimistic to say this is our current day. Okay. So, so, you know, the the love, the stranger notion, hasn't totally won. I can attest to hearing a lot of that, both in terms of, like, the more personal intermarriage piece of it, and coming as a byproduct of a interfaith family myself. But also, you know, HIAs is getting attacked by some elements of the Jewish community right now, because we are helping too many people who are not Jewish, right?

So, yeah. So that impulse, you know, Ezra, Ezra isn't gone. Ezra isn't gone. Any other reactions,

yeah, oh, who was? Who was that?

Who's about to jump in. I was just gonna say, like, I feel like, this is the, this is the trump card version, you know, the trump card version of, we don't like what it says and but the fact is, like, let's be honest, it was written a long time ago. We're different. And, you know, we don't always adhere to what that, you know, like, there's a lot in the Torah. We don't do we don't stone our stubborn and rebellious children. We don't force their, you know, our daughters to marry. You know, people who rape them, God forbid, you know, just so that they'll have a husband to take care of them, because now their status in society has been ruined. Like there are many things in ancient texts that we obviously don't do, and we don't do them because we are, you know, modern and have different sensibilities. So that's like, you can always pull that card, but I like it better if we can somehow contextualize or understand more deeply what was going on, or, you know, like the the commentaries I find more convincing are the ones that somehow give us a deeper understanding of what we're looking at. So, you know, your question kind of invited that is, like, Is this enough, or do we kind of need something? Like, I'd love to see what other commentary, right? Yeah, I think that's so important, especially when you know the impulse is still there, right? People aren't typically advocating for the Sony of children at this day and age, like, okay, that that one's not continually bubbling up as an impulse that we're wrestling with this like line between self preservation and nationalism and xenophobia and like that dance That is something that can give this text more lasting power if we don't really take it on in a more serious way. Yeah, I mean, and the other point of that is, as you were saying, you know, sort of like Jews who disagree about things. So one of the easiest ways to distance yourself from us, you know, different genre of Jew who disagrees with you is basically by saying, like, well, you know, you take the Torah literally. I don't take the Torah literally. So I guess you think about it this way, but I don't, and it's like, well, then, I mean, it's just like that Midrash. Well, then are we even reading the same Torah? You know, are we? And so if we want to be in dialog with Jews who read it differently, it does help to be able to place ourselves in the same kind of context, where we take it just as seriously,

but have a different read, you know, to our affair.

Yeah, I was, I was also going to say Lizzi that I think that

sometimes I do agree with the fact that like

criticisms that that put us as like virtue signaling, because I, you know, as somebody who works with like disabled Venezuelans,

people really love to be like for immigration and for

like, it's actually like more like, against what, like,

I guess, like right wing people would be proposing and so in that way, like they're for immigration in a kind of virtue signaling way, but when you really push like so,

I mean, as a parent of a disabled kid and somebody who works with Venezuelans who, like, literally schlep kids, like my kid across jungles To get here,

like I'm working to get them Medicaid Right. Like, and when you really push liberals on whether or not

like, migrants from Venezuela should have free healthcare here. So.

So it's people start to divide and in kind of ways that don't

the that feel more like their original proposition was just to be against what everybody else was doing, as opposed to like what it really means to to offer asylum, to offer a place to be

beautiful. So if, if, if a critique on the hyper nationalist approach is that they didn't think through the implications of their policies and like the cruelty of it right, right? Then a critique of a large swath of the liberal segment is like, okay, but, but are you actually thinking through the implications of what it means to welcome like? Are you thinking through what we actually need to do to successfully integrate people into our society and to set them up with the values that we purport. Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, all right, let's go on to to Tamara Eskenazi text here, because I think that this is going to give us some of that, like more juicy wrestling.

So if I could have somebody volunteer to read this one,

I can do it please.

There's so much irony at work in the use of Ezra here, the author of the story is working hard to get away from the destruction mandated by Deuteronomy seven, by replacing the demand for the extinction, extinction of foreign inhabitants in the land with a call for separation from them, that expulsion or deportion, neither of which we were doable, were doable given that they lived under Persian rule.

The author is trying to offer guidelines for how many, for how minorities can retain their religious, ethnic or cultural identities while living in a pluralistic society. When communities in power, with national authority, especially when they are the majority, apply the same rules, they are doing something very different. The issue of boundaries continues to remain important, and the treatment of minorities remains a challenge.

So interesting, right? So she's drawing out a couple of interesting distinctions here. Number one, she's saying what's going on today is not the same thing as what what was happening back then, because Ezra is trying to work under very difficult circumstances to rebuild a sense of national identity when we still don't have national sovereignty, right? We're still actually living under the Persian Empire. And she's arguing that this whole notion of deportation that some of Ezra is followers were were trying to push that he didn't actually have the the sovereign authority to implement right? What? What Ezra was trying to push was some idea of stronger boundaries maintenance with other people within the land, so

we might not 1,000% still wrap our arms around Ezra and love it, but, but it looking at Ezra as a mitigator of more extreme tendencies, I think is a Really interesting take, and for her to further take it one step, you know, the next step, and to say, if you are doing this as a sovereign national power to more vulnerable minorities, that's that's not the same power dynamic that is, that is a perversion of the values of of what Ezra is at least attempting to do here. Um, it's kind of like the Talmud spending the entire track date on capital punishment they would never carry out. So weird, great analogy. Um,

under patriarchy, what's the difference? Say more about that. Yeah, because she's talking about, well, this is like a minority trying to keep their their boundaries. And if the majority the hegemonic, she doesn't use that word, but the majority tries to do the same thing. That's bad, but for a minority, it's acceptable. And I'm like, given the you, and it's like, well, he couldn't really deport them because of the Persian law and so on. But I'm like, within their community, given patriarchy,

it was the same thing, these women and their children are being deported from the community. It's not that they're not being deported like the nation state didn't exist at this time. So that's not what they're talking about that but, but they're being thrown out of the community. They're being a.

Spelled from the family.

The father has all the power. The women and children have none. How is that different from ice really? Yeah, I'm, I'm not giving Ezra. I'm not giving Ezra an A. I'm giving him a D plus, you know, and I think, I think that's what Tamara is, is doing is as well as to just like if part of our part of what we need to do in order to face these impulses is to really wrestle with what they are trying to achieve. And I do think you know that there is some fair impulse to want to create and build and sustain a national identity. This isn't the way that I would go about it, right, but I am sympathetic to the project of that being broken and wanting to repair that. This is not the method by which I would go about doing it, right. Okay, we've got about six minutes, so I want us to just kind of look at the last two commentaries.

This one by Felicia. We're not going to read the whole thing, but

it points to the earlier part of the text, where everybody is weeping for their sins and how much they have transgressed by doing all of this intermingling with foreigners, and it's awful, but she turns it upside down, and she says, What if they're not weeping about their sin, right? One might imagine that the tears shed. Am I sharing my screen right now? Is this visible to you? No, thank you. And also, Sarah, if you want to take a couple extra minutes, nobody will fault you. If anybody needs to go, they'll go, and they can hear it later on the recording. Hear it later on the

recording, one might imagine that the tears shed by men, women and children might not only be tears of shame for intermarriage with foreign wives, something that happens in other areas of the Torah without causing any upheaval, as noted, but also the bitter weeping of deep sadness and broken heartedness for the family separation that is about to ensue. Quote, with the counsel of the Lord, fathers are poised to expel their families, women, sons and daughters who once understood themselves to be part of a community, all of the sudden become outsiders.

I just get chills reading that.

And on any given day, you know, with with my work, I'm able to, like, put my head down and

help the Afghan SIVs that still have the possibility to come into the United States or like, connect people to legal services. You know, like, I can focus on the good that is to be done, the advocacy, but when I actually pause and let myself think about the lives that are being interrupted or ruined or broken or ended, quite literally ended by virtue of this policy revolution that is happening right now. It is overwhelming, and it is all consuming and and the tears do flow, it is. It is a really hard moment, both to do the work and to not be overwhelmed by by the tragedy that's happening.

And I am, I am hopeful that as more of these painful stories start to emerge, that they do start to trigger that empathy that I do think still exists within our nation of like, Oh, but I didn't sign up for this. Like, yeah, you know, I don't, I don't love the invasion of foreigners, but this is just cruel, or this is just awful and and that, hopefully that that creates more pushback against the adoption and implementation and the overreaches of of what's happening now.

Okay, the last the last text with

from Josh Winston, if I could have somebody just volunteer to read the whole thing, let me pull it back up.

Okay,

so 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, somebody start here.

Torah is the foundation of the Jewish people, guiding us in every generation. Similarly, the Constitution serves as the cornerstone of American life. As Jewish Americans, we draw strength from both as we confront challenges large and small. Scott scholar of Jewish Studies, Christine Hayes, notes that the intent to send out foreign wives from Judah went beyond the Torah prohibition targeting nations not restricted by biblical.

Law, while our sages didn't formally reject the expulsion decree in Ezra, they their practice firmly countered its rigidity. They embraced permeable boundaries, recognizing the transformative potential of conversion, naturalization,

the principle of fairness endures shaping a Jewish community where belonging can be earned and is irrevocable.

Today, in the face of an executive order challenging birthright citizenship, Jewish tradition offers a compelling counterpoint. For 2000 years, we have upheld the value of semi porous boundaries and the unshakable fairness of belonging that cannot be rescinded. So too, for 157

years in response to the evils of slavery, America has stood by the right of citizenship to all native, born and naturalized people, even as echoes of Ezra reverberate today, Jewish values call us to reject and fight this kind of extremist rhetoric and affirm the enduring wisdom of inclusion,

except for people are revoking conversions all the time, like, what

fair and, you know, listen, I think, I think the point that Josh makes of

Ezra definition of citizenship didn't win,

right? In spite of him being venerated by our tradition, in spite of him being raised up, in spite of him putting this out there. Ultimately, that's not the vision that won Right. And, like, I think that this is true with with, like, our sense of American legalism as well, right? There's this whole body of law and norms and tradition that exists, lot of it good, a lot of it problematic. What ultimately is our responsibility is to give more elbow room and to fight for the space for the values that we deem to be most important to actually dominate. And

that's where I find that like as depressing and awful as as it feels to really imbibe this Ezra text and to see that impulse within ourselves and our own tradition, it actually gives me more hope, and it's more heartening because it gives us the agency back to determine what wins and what actually dominates, and At a moment that we're facing this level of inhumanity and darkness and rejection and like an attack on what feel like fundamental and core values of within the American context, we actually have a tremendous amount of agency to push back and to reclaim what that narrative is.

So thank you. Thank you, Sarah,

you're reminding me of, I don't know. I guess it was now close to two years ago, Ezra Klein interviewed Rabbi Sharon Brous, who was also in our in our little Hartman circle, and asked her, you know, if there are these orthodox guys over here who are justifying, you know, some some things that really feel like violent and not in the best interest of the Jewish people, but they're saying that, and certainly not in the best interest of, you know, other people. But they're, they're rooting it in tradition, and they're saying, These are the texts that justify and explain it. And he's saying, like, well, so then where are your texts? And she's like, Genesis, like, I'm not some liberal Rabbi who's got, like, no basis to stand on, actually, like, there are other texts that I think are just as foundational and just as authentic and just as worthy of lifting up to the level of, you know, countering those voices, just because those voices are louder and more xenophobic and maybe a little bit more attractive in a moment when the whole world seems to be falling apart and people are looking for easy answers. Hi, I'm here to say, like we don't, you know, we don't have to go that route.

And so I, you know, you did a, you did an important thing for us today, because you started by saying, of course, we have the 36 times in the Torah where it says, you know thou shalt welcome the stranger. You know thou shalt not hate the stranger. You were a stranger in the land of Egypt. Of course, we have those texts, but you know what? We also have these. And we have to contend with the reality of this in order to come back to those values that so easily, that so easily, you know, fit, but also we, we need, we need to experience them in dialog, because otherwise we won't be prepared for when people come at us with those texts. I would, I would take it one step farther. I think that we are so profoundly swimming in the water of like.

Like being the stranger and knowing oppression, and like crossing boundaries, and to be an EBRI is to cross boundaries like that is in every single generation. Like we just forget that we're swimming in that water. It is so prevalent we don't even know how much it is there, right? So, yeah, like all of that is there. This does feel like sometimes it breaks through, but the weight of that ocean, I think, is so powerful to put it back in its place. Yeah. Well, I just really want to thank you for bringing this to us. I think, like for everybody here, this was reading a series of texts, both the original Ezra and the commentaries that probably was new and valuable exploration. Thank you. And so as we're getting off, you know, and going toward preparing for Pesach, I hope everybody has a cache of a healthy, happy, liberatory Passover. And as you're as you're signing off, feel free to you know, come on to, you know, say whatever salutation you want to say, by way of gratitude and goodbye, I'm still here. I didn't sign off. Rabbi, Oh, all right, hi, Gail, so I wanted to, this was just too important, and I didn't want to get off. So I multitasked a lot, but that I was saying that JC away is honoring HIAs and icirr at the acts of change. That's going to be June 11, and

I'm just even more excited because I'm on the committee for the planning of that. So talk to me if you want to know more. Thank you. Okay, bye. Bye. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And then Rabbi Lizzi, I wanted to thank you again for last year, really helping me find a Seder. I went to rookies, and that was so nice. And then it's so lovely to see all the you know, the people that are reaching out and offering their homes for this year Seder. So I will not forget that. I really do appreciate that. So grateful for that. And thank you so much.

Glad it worked out. Yay. All right. Well, lots of love, everybody. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai