Earlier this week, the Boca Raton Interfaith Clergy Association gathered for a vigil to call attention to the plight of immigrants and refugees in our community. Inspired by shared teachings from the various faith traditions represented in our community, which instruct us to greet the stranger who sojourns among us with compassion and dignity; we gathered together for song, poetry, personal stories, and a call to action. We gathered not to advocate for or against any specific policies, but to express our collective concern for the basic humanity of each and every person, regardless of where they were born or in what phase of our immigration system they find themselves. We advocated for the spiritual truth that each of us are created in the image of God, and carry within us a spark of divinity.
It was just a coincidence, but there was meaningfulness in this event happening just a few days away from Rosh HaShanah and in the middle of our season of cheshbon nefesh, self-reflection, and teshuva, repentance. Tomorrow evening at 7:00 pm at our Schaefer Family Campus we will mark our place in the Book of Life as we gather for Selichot. After some study and activity, we will move into the sanctuary for our worship service, which includes our first recitation of the 13 Attributes of God. Invoking the majesty of the Holy One, we also remind ourselves of God’s predilection for forgiveness, forgiveness we seek in this season.
Those 13 Attributes come to us from the Book of Exodus. After the Israelites fashioned and worshipped the Golden Calf, Moses destroyed the Tablets with the Ten Commandments and returned to the top of Mount Sinai. In his anger and anguish, he cried out to the Holy One, begging for the spiritual nourishment as he said, “Let me behold the glory of Your presence!” (Exodus 33:18)
But God told Moses that humans cannot see God face to face. Instead, God held out the Divine Hand in front of Moses, passed in front of him, and declared “The Eternal! The Eternal! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin (Ex. 34:6-7).”
Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev, the late 18th century Ukrainian Hasidic master, wondered why God declared the Holy Name twice in that moment, “The Eternal! The Eternal!” His answer? In each person there is that spark of divinity, that reflection of God’s image implanted in each of us. That spark is represented by the first utterance of “The Eternal!” When we invoke God’s name in prayer, he taught, we invite the Holy One to join us in that prayer. With fervency and intentionality, we bring God into that prayerful moment, and it is that second utterance of the Holy Name that teaches us that God joins us in that prayer.
As we enter into the High Holy Day season on Selichot, we begin our calls to God to join us in prayers for teshuva, repentance, and that we should be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good new year. I will be holding this teaching in my mind through Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, through the haunting images of Unetaneh Tokef as I imagine God deciding who will live and who will die. It will resonate when we hear the melody of Kol Nidre, inviting God to join us in our spiritual cleansing fast of Yom Kippur. As we make our prayers of confession, they will prompt me to pray that God is answering our prayers with Holy Prayers of forgiveness.
We also called upon God to join us in prayer on Wednesday, as your rabbis, along with our clergy colleagues across the community, offered words of prayer. This prayer, that you can read below, call us all to respect the dignity and humanity of those who are on an immigration journey, and brings up some of the morally challenging aspects of our nation’s choices.
Inspired by our various traditions’ collective teachings, desiring a world that has been made more whole by our words and our deeds, we offered them, hoping the Holy One joined us.
Whatever our prayers may be, as we prepare ourselves for the coming new year, my prayer for us is that the Holy One joins us, blesses us, and inscribes us in the Book of Life for this new year.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Greg Weisman
A Statement on the Plight of Immigrants and Refugees from the Boca Raton Interfaith Clergy Association
As leaders of faith, we stand together in witness of the challenging, sometimes heart-wrenching realities that immigrants and refugees in our communities are facing.
Each of our spiritual traditions teach the moral obligation that we have towards those whose lives have prompted them to sojourn from the land of their birth to seek out opportunities for safety, security, and prosperity.
The obligation to greet our neighbor, those who sojourn among us, the stranger and the foreigner with love and respect resonates throughout our Holy Teachings, amplified over the generations by the brightest minds of each tradition.
We come together to express our collective concern that those teachings are not being lived out in our time.
We note with disappointment increasing hostility in our nation and in our community towards those immigrants and refugees who live among us. We have heard them vilified, denigrated, and dehumanized as criminal threats to the safety and well-being of those around them, words that upbraid our sense of moral responsibility and demand our action.
Of particular concern are the abhorrent conditions faced by those who have been taken into custody by our immigration officials. Detention centers like the one in the Everglades with restrictions of access to adequate food, clean water, and humane shelter, the basic needs that each and every human being should expect, are cruel and morally repugnant. Preventing access to legal advice, the care and concern of family and friends, clergy and pastoral support, tramples on our American and our religious values of justice, family and community. Deporting people to countries with which they have no ties cruelly deprives them of what little they might have to rebuild their lives that a homeland could offer.
We appreciate each and every nation’s responsibility to promulgate and enforce boundaries of who may enter and who may stay, and call upon our elected officials to enact the long overdue reform of our nation’s immigration system to one that offers clarity, common sense, and respect.
At the same time, we call upon each and every law enforcement agency and law enforcement officer to fulfill their moral responsibility to recognize and respect the humanity of each and every human being. They ought to remind themselves of this responsibility while they carry out enforcement actions, interact with the public, and whenever they act in name of these United States.
O Merciful God, we pray for those who have been separated from their families and their communities. We ask for Your favor in granting them patience and comfort during these difficult moments in their lives.
We pray that all can come to appreciate the beauty of Your varied creation we call humanity, and that we should all merit Your blessings through the works of our hands.
