Now I can change my Facebook profile picture
My Facebook profile picture since March 23 has been this:
(Note that this “hoodie” — we just called them sweatshirts when I was a kid, or hooded sweatshirts — is from the Women’s Rabbinic Network conference in 2001.)
As of today, I’ve switched it back to something else. George Zimmerman is being “welcomed” to the Seminole County Intake Center. If I were him I’d be terrified, and I am sad to see this. His life has changed irrevocably, and I don’t wish him ill.
But I am still glad that he has been charged and arrested. That is what the hoodies and marches and petitions have been all about. Not a conviction or punishment, but a call for the system to be working properly.
The speakers and commentators tonight have impressed me greatly. Angela Corey, the Florida prosecutor who brought the charges. She spoke clearly, to the point, powerfully, and intelligently. It cannot be easy to be a woman in her job, and she walked the line between tough and sensitive with a skill I have rarely seen. But the thing that impressed me the most was that she spoke simply and truthfully, refusing straight-out to answer questions that she should not answer, putting no one down, making no predictions. I suppose it’s ok for a public servant to begin a private meeting with bereaved parents with prayer; it makes my church-state-sense a bit queasy, but I suppose no harm done and comfort perhaps brought.
Trayvon Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton. Dignity. No anger. Specifically, Tracy Martin said that they do not feel anger at George Zimmerman. That is an amazing thing to say. I would be furious. They spoke of gratitude, and they spoke with sadness. Gratitude that the justice system has gotten un-gummed and is moving again. Gratitude for the outpouring of support from around the country. Their on-line petition showed that a lot of people were noticing, and I cannot believe that it was irrelevant. As one of the commentators said, that pressure wasn’t what resulted in charges being brought, nor should it be. But the pressure got the powers that be to take a second and clearer look, and that in turn resulted in the merits of the case commending themselves to the special prosecutor.
George Zimmerman’s (new as of today) lawyer Mark O’Mara on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Honest, fair, clear, to the point, sensitive, and intelligent. And classy: he began his first appearance (I didn’t see it, but he spoke of it when asked) by offering his condolences to Trayvon Martin’s family. The lawyer for one of the members of that family said it made her proud to be a lawyer. It’s so simple; but so rarely done. Nobody is disputing the fact that an unarmed child died (though show me the 17 year old who wouldn’t hate to be called a child!).
The three commentators on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Three black faces and three measured, thoughtful responses. Their faces are becoming familiar to me from appearances on MSNBC, but names don’t stick in my head; O’Donnell’s blog doesn’t mention them, so I can’t look up who they were. One was from TheGrio.com. Another, a man from Washington DC with locks, spoke words that Jews could really identify with, historically. I paraphrase: This restores your faith in your country. It restores your sense of belonging. It deletes that sense of powerlessness that was hanging over you while it looked like someone was going to get away with murder (metaphorically speaking, at least), again. You come out of this feeling like a full human being again — not because you weren’t one, but it felt like you were being treated as if you weren’t, as if you and yours didn’t count for as much as other human beings. He spoke of restoring your manhood, as a black man.
So I’ve changed my Facebook picture back. Nothing will bring Trayvon Martin back to life, but what’s happening is finally what should be happening, and it only took 45 days. Justice had to be on bed rest for a while, but she has not miscarried.
Dear God —
December 15, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
I don’t usually address You this way. I don’t mean it like I’m starting a letter. I mean, Dear One. You Who are tender and compassionate toward Your creatures. You Who are precious Yourself. You Who may have created us, humans, in Your image so you wouldn’t be alone — but like all children, we have grown beyond Your expectations and control. I think that happened on Day 1 of our existence, exercising our free will to choose something You had told us not to.
I don’t usually address You this way. You are far more abstract and metaphorical to me than personal, up-close, and known. I respect Your mystery and know You best as Creator: When I lift my eyes to the starry sky and contemplate the depths of space, You are there. When I tell my storytelling beads and consider the magnitude of Creation and the brevity of our lives against the backdrop of 13.7 billion years, You are there. When I reach into my tradition and the words, the melodies, the images speak across thousands of years to illumine our today, You are there.
But I don’t usually lean on You as a Friend.
Dear God. You who must be more troubled than any of us tonight. Dear One. Be with them. The families. 20 families (as far as I have heard) whose children will never be coming home. 6 families whose beloveds will never be coming home. One family whose son and mother are dead but not only that — their son and brother (nephew, cousin) is the perpetrator of this horror. The families whose teachers will never return to their classroom. An entire school bereft of its principal — apparently, so I have heard, gunned down while trying to tackle the gunman, and the school psychologist similarly.
Dear God, help them. Shield them. Comfort them. Strengthen them. You who are close to all who call — I am calling. But not for me. I’m ok, thank God. My children are ok, and thank you God for that. (This hit me as a mother for the first time. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve now been a mother long enough; or because if that were my town I would have had two children in that school, my two youngest. I don’t know. But it did.)
But for me it’s just reflected grief, shared in some tiny measure with others whose life-long burden it has become.
I haven’t heard, but it must be that among all the families, for some the sixth light of Chanukah has now become forever the night that their children didn’t come home.
And for the rest, probably, there are already presents under the tree, or wherever they’re kept mid-December.
Dear God. Be with us yet. And especially, be with them.
For the rest of us, our job is just to be there; and then to continue to have, as civilly as possible, the very difficult American discussion about what “a well-regulated militia” might mean in terms of “the right of the people to bear arms.” A discussion much of the rest of the world looks on with astonishment.
And our job is also to fund more complete mental health care, and restore the grants which provided for staff training in schools on how to avert or lessen tragedy when it comes to call. These teachers were practiced, and undoubtedly that saved lives.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet / Lest we forget! Lest we forget!
That’s not where I thought I’d end. Kipling’s poem is titled “Recessional” and I have that sense tonight of having turned a corner: the wave receding down the beach, the funeral over. But that’s only me. I make sense of things once I begin to understand the story, and though we don’t know the story of the shooter, there are other stories which are more important to remember and it’s been good to hear them.
This is why we will not fail. Our tradition teaches us to bring light. Our history teaches us that, indeed, the light will not go out; I think after 3 millenia we can be fairly confident in that. So that’s what we do: Bring hope of continuity even in the moment of radical discontinuity.
But our tradition also tells us: Do not seek to comfort your neighbor while his dead still lies before him (Pirkey Avot 4:18 or 4;23, depending on your translation). So I do not say these things so that mourners will hear them. For the mourners, our job is to be still and be present.
Don’t just do something, stand there.
Dear God, stand there with them.