blogs/brentspodek

In one of the greatest rock songs of all time, the Clash asks, 

"When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come? 
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?"

Those have always seemed like the options - violent resistance or acquiescence. Hold the trigger or face the barrel. 

In so many ways, our political and spiritual future rests on remembering that those are not the only options. 

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise since the election of Donald Trump.

Hebrew Union College was defaced with a swastika earlier this week, and neo Nazis are planning an armed Anti-Semitic march in Whitefish, Montana. 

So how do we come? With our hands in the air or on the trigger of the gun?

There is a time for violent resistance and there is a time for resigned surrender. This is neither of those times. This is the time to link our hands with others and come in solidarity. 

Just before Hanukkah, BHA held a Family Reunion for the Children of Abraham with the Masjid Ar Rashid on Main Street in Beacon. The Jews and the Muslims together learned from each other and with each other. We saw our differences and our similarities and saw the obvious truth, that we have such grounds for solidarity. Our efforts to insist on solidarity in the face of violence and hatred will continue with a workshop on Non Violent Resistance and other ways of standing, as Jews, in solidarity with all who oppose oppression. 

The central Jewish story, the liberation of the Exodus, teaches that the only way to cross the wilderness that separates the oppression of Egypt from the Promised Land is to join together and march. Linking hands with those we are told to hate is resistance. 

So how am I going to come when they kick at my front door? Hand in hand with my brothers and sisters.