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From Moses to Memphis, the work of liberation remains unfinished
(JTA) — Rereading Exodus this month in synagogue reminds me of when I first learned about Moses’ role in freeing the Children of Israel who had been enslaved to Pharaoh. I grew up in Monsey, New York. My mother was Black and my father was white; my family identified with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. I discovered the Passover story through ultra-Orthodox coloring books that depicted the liberation of the ancient Israelites from bondage in Egypt.
One illustration depicted Moses as an 18th-century Hasidic Jew clad in a shtreimel (fur hat) and long kapote (robe), with abundant sidelocks flowing down to his shoulders. I brought home my masterpiece, fully crayoned in purple, and showed it proudly to my mother. She gave me a puzzled look and said, “You know, Moses didn’t look like this. He had brown skin like mine.”
It was an enlightening idea that hit me like a thunderbolt. Seeing Moses as a Black person changed my whole idea of Jewish history and religion in one fell swoop — it made me feel my Black and Jewish roots even more profoundly, and that I was a descendant of great Jewish and African men and women who founded our tradition.
As time went on, though, and I went “all in” and studied to become a rabbi, I realized that Moses’ skin color mattered much less than his role as a liberator. Although many Jews do see in color, Judaism does not. The way to follow in his footsteps, I grasped, was to become an educator, a leader and a champion for freedom. I’ve devoted my career to empowering Jewish communities across the continent to become more welcoming and inclusive, to overcome racism and prejudice, and to create a more just, equitable and loving society.
The Biblical narrative of the Exodus is a call to stand for freedom and against tyranny in every generation. It says, in effect, “You are able to speak, and to be carried away on the wings of words from millennia ago, bound to no Pharaoh’s story, but liberated by your own.”
Neither my Black nor Jewish forebears could have imagined how far their descendants would come in terms of participation and even leadership in our society. As the Black visual artist Brandon Odums has reflected, “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”
But there is, alas, still so far to go, as last month’s brutal killing of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the police in Memphis reminds us. Both Black History Month and the Book of Exodus teach that we can only fulfill our destiny if we fight for the liberation of all peoples.
Earlier this month, we celebrated Shabbat Shira, in which we read about the Children of Israel’s miraculous escape from Egypt by crossing the Red Sea. I was reminded of what the late 20th-century Slonimer Rebbe, Sholom Noach Berezovsky, said about the ancient Hebrews wading into the water because they had faith not just in their hearts and minds, but in their bodies — in their very bones, he said.
What does it mean to believe with your bones? The Prophet Jeremiah declared that the word of God was like “fire shut up in his bones” (20:9). Dr. Martin Luther King quoted Jeremiah in his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” saying, “Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around, he tell it.” King gave that speech on April 3, 1968 — in Memphis — on the night before he was assassinated.
Early in the speech, King imagined “God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across, the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the Promised Land.” He concluded with these uncannily prescient words: “I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So, I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Our commitment to creating a better world — making it to the Promised Land — must always be so much more than merely skin deep. Only when we believe in our bones that change is possible, and that we can be agents of that change, will fear melt away and we will be able to defeat the Pharaohs who seek to deprive us of our dignity, whether in Memphis or anywhere in our land.
We shall reach the Promised Land — someday. We shall recognize that we are all God’s children—someday. We shall overcome — someday.
May that day be very soon and may we all unite in joy, peace and celebration to usher it in.
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The post From Moses to Memphis, the work of liberation remains unfinished appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew
This morning, when I woke up, it was the first time in my entire life that my spiritual leader, my rabbi and my friend, was gone. People are born and die every day, and we live totally oblivious to that fact, but I feel the absence of this one human being almost on a cellular level. And the very person I would call to help me make sense of a time like this is the one who is gone.
Rabbi Capers Funnye wasn’t your typical rabbi. How could he be, though? After all, his congregation was full of Black folks and people of color. There were also some white congregants, but for the most part, his temple was a place created for people like me to have somewhere to go and practice Judaism freely without suspicion or judgment. Beth Shalom was established over one hundred years ago by Black Jews who knew at that time that they could actually be arrested here in America, in Chicago, for daring to say out loud that they were Jewish. I know that sounds unthinkable, but it’s a historical fact: It used to be illegal in Chicago for Blacks to claim that they were Jewish.
Rabbi Funnye dedicated his life to ensuring that Black Jews wouldn’t have their Jewishness questioned.
White Jews love to reminisce about the Civil Rights Movement and their close relationship to the Black community, and this coalition brought about monumental changes to American society. But those same white Jews who marched in Selma and rode buses to Mississippi had little to no interaction with Black Jews. We were nonexistent. A myth, if you will. Some people had heard that there were Black people who called themselves Jews, but no one had actually ever seen one or met one.
We were there, but just as other Jews had hidden before, we were hiding too. We worshipped in basements, living rooms, and the backs of storefronts. We were in the shadows until Rabbi Funnye came along. He was born to leave the world a better place than he found it, and that’s exactly what he did.
Rabbi Funnye was supposed to be an AME pastor, but the church didn’t need him. The synagogue, the Jewish people, did.
I used to joke with him that I’d known him so long I could remember when he had a full head of black hair. And I did. I can remember going to services and seeing him on the bimah on Shabbat. Even as a little kid, I recognized he was different. He had a voice that could command the attention even of a pew full of antsy five-year-olds. But he also had a smile so warm that we never felt scolded. When he spoke, people couldn’t help but listen, and eventually he started saying what people wanted and needed to hear.
I watched him rise from assistant rabbi to leader.He could teach Torah in a way that held the congregation’s interest, imparting important lessons while adding levity with razor-sharp wit and perfectly timed humor.
If I’d been born male, I probably would’ve wanted to be a rabbi my whole life. I wanted to be like him. But I was a girl, and that was unthinkable.
But he made me believe I could do things.
I can remember when he started to integrate the Chicago Jewish community. When we’d go to events like Shabbat dinners or Black and Jewish seders, he was unfazed by the whispers and stares when he’d ask where the tables were for those who were both Black and Jewish. While this made the rest of us uncomfortable and, for some, unwilling to ever go back into any room where we were treated as oddities, he was undeterred.
He went back, over and over again. He would not allow the existence of Black Jews to go unacknowledged any longer. And many of us went with him. I was one. I saw how he was treated at times by white rabbis and even just by people who were white and Jewish and still felt that somehow they were better than him. It would infuriate me, but not him. He’d smile, tell a joke or one of his signature stories that would completely disarm them.
And while the behavior of some of my white co-religionists would thoroughly anger me, Rabbi Funnye understood how to deal with bigotry and hate in other ways. He grew up in it. He knew how to rise above it. Another lesson learned. He never met hate with hate or derision with derision. He met it with love.
He knew that was the only way he could move us from the shadows and out of the margins, into the mainstream. And it was also the only way that he could show white Jews we were nothing to fear or exclude.
At times, his message wasn’t popular with Black Jews who wanted nothing to do with white Jews or with white Jews who weren’t ready to accept the fact that G-d made Black Jews too.
None of that changed the fact that it was the right one.
Chief Rabbi Funnye wasn’t a Black Jew. He was a good Jew. And that is the lesson that I, and hopefully all who knew him, will learn from his life.
The post Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew appeared first on The Forward.
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All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close
(JTA) — DETROIT – The U.S. Senate race in Michigan, a deeply contentious contest that has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party, drew to a bitter close Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in a race that could shape which party controls the chamber.
At its center is Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement.
His uncompromising stances on Israel have also made him a target among pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, which has spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election. AIPAC’s rare entry into a general election race came to support El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
One of El-Sayed’s positions on Israel — to end all U.S. military aid — was once thought a far-left pipe dream. But that has changed. On Election Day morning, Trump announced that, under his watch, nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in agreement with the need to end aid and deny Democratic critics a point of attack.
In his announcement of the plan, Trump cited El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings like lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump said on Fox News, referring to Israel’s financial strength.
Representatives for the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, did not immediately return requests for comment on Trump’s new pledge. It is unclear whether it will be straightforward for the White House to halt the funding by the end of 2026, given that the existing memorandum of understanding that governs it extends to 2028.
El-Sayed’s campaign has galvanized young voters and a range of other constituencies, and he pulled ahead in the polls in the race’s final stretch. But his questioning of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and whether it or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, as well as his prior associations with figures such as Hasan Piker, the streamer who has spread extreme rhetoric about American Jews, have sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders.
So, too, did comments the candidate made following the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which El-Sayed appeared to link the attack to Israel’s war in Lebanon after reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior from some of El-Sayed’s supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently on display at the state party’s spring convention, have also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.
Some Jews who had long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, have cited such controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers. In some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods, yard signs proclaim that a vote for Rogers is a vote “against antisemitism.”
Accordingly, Rogers has made a play for the Jewish vote. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is “anti-Jew,” while running ads that played up El-Sayed’s tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Top Republicans have seized on the narrative, with President Donald Trump calling Jews “crazy” if they back El-Sayed, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calling him a national security threat. A Trump administration event to address antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election, though El-Sayed’s name was not mentioned there.
Jewish Democrats who had broken with El-Sayed found major validation in the race’s dramatic closing days. Democrat Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who had narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, flipped sides to endorse Rogers days after her Jewish fiancé, a Democratic megadonor, did the same.
The surprise move, which Jewish Democratic leaders joined many other prominent Democrats in criticizing, came after days of back-and-forth between Stevens and El-Sayed as she sought to publicly pressure him to condemn a PAC ad that had linked rising grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel.
Meanwhile, some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state either avoided endorsing El-Sayed or did so with heavy reservations. Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership has been deeply divided on El-Sayed, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican.
“Our commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition,” the caucus stated.
Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters. He apologized for his Temple Israel comments; distanced himself from Piker; hired a Jewish outreach director; said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that Israel has a right to exist; and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, “I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice.” He told JTA in August that “the prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me.”
More than 1,000 Michigan Jews have signed an open letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed, compared to 560 who have done the same for Rogers. Progressive Jewish figures of note have held salons throughout the state in a bid to convince on-the-fence Jews to back him.
Yet El-Sayed also has continued to stake out positions many Jews find alienating. He asserted in the campaign’s closing weeks that Israel was “not actually our friend” and declined during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the U.S. His campaign also released an ad, designed to appeal to conservatives, that featured a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, the right-wing pundit who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In addition, El-Sayed’s careful sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from his ostensible allies, such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, has continued up to Election Day.
Ahead of Election Day, some liberal-leaning Zionist Jews tried to put pressure on El-Sayed to speak more directly to their concerns. A group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan in a bid to have him affirm what they called five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” After silence from the campaign, some of Nonnegotiable’s figureheads urged their followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet “Emma Lazarus” instead of voting for either candidate.
Michigan’s already small Jewish population, which numbers around 105,000 adults, has further splintered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. But it could prove pivotal to the outcome of a race that may determine control of the chamber. In 2024, the state’s Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes.
Either way, the race has crystallized the Democratic Party’s shifting fault lines over Israel — and many Jews’ growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump says US aid to Israel will stop at end of year
(JTA) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning said that the United States would halt billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026, potentially ending decades of military support for one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East.
“We were giving them $4 billion. We are. But it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump declared during a call-in appearance on the “Fox & Friends” morning program on Fox News. Israel’s 10-year memorandum of understanding with the United States, which currently gives Israel $3.8 billion annually, runs through 2028 so it’s unclear how easy it would be for the White House to stop the funding this year.
Referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in January that he wanted to taper off aid to zero at some point in the future, Trump questioned why Republicans should have to deal with criticism from hardline pro-Palestinian Democrats like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed when “we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it.”
“It’s a bad talking point,” he added. His comments came as Americans across the country are voting Tuesday in midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate.
“We reached an agreement on that” and Netanyahu “brought it up,” Trump continued. “He said: ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
A growing number of Democratic congressional candidates across the United States have campaigned on a platform of reducing or halting military aid to Israel during the run-up to today’s midterm elections. This April, dozens of senators — almost all of them Democrats — voted in favor of a failed motion to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel.
Yair Golan, chairman of Israel’s liberal Democrats party, slammed Netanyahu in the wake of Trump’s statement, tweeting that “precisely at a time when Israel’s defense spending has reached enormous proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its offensive weapons stockpiles, and after air defense capabilities have been depleted following such a long war—Netanyahu logs another massive failure under his name.”
“The cessation of U.S. aid is heavy damage to Israel’s security” and “a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American aid, not eliminate it,” added Golan, whose party opposes Netanyahu’s and is trying to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu from power following Israel’s own elections last Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Trump says US aid to Israel will stop at end of year appeared first on The Forward.
