Sage, Old Hippies
In 2018, I gave a sermon in which I called out Stephen Miller over his immoral and craven tactics that border guards used against refugees who tried to enter the U.S. with their children. The press called me “Stephen Miller’s Childhood Rabbi,” a title that is a bit of a misnomer because, although Miller was here as a young grammar schooler, I never had the opportunity to interact with him one-on-one. I’m not sure that anything I might have said would have changed his angry attitudes toward immigrants and those that he already viewed as “other,” but I would love to have tried! His family left Beth Shir Shalom after his older sister became a Bat Mitzvah.
In an attempt to shroud the cruelty and chaos Miller created, the first Trump administration benignly labeled his policy “Family Separation.” Those words didn’t describe at all what he did. He ordered border guards to rip children out of the arms of their mothers. Some agents placed screaming and crying babies and children on buses to undisclosed destinations, while othersdeported their parents. Neither the government nor private agencies successfully reunited all of the families.
Last month, speaking about the protesters in the streets of Washington, D.C., Miller first cited anecdotal evidence: homeless encampments he’s seen in the city since moving there 20 years ago and graffiti that’s never been removed. He said that D.C. is one of the most violent cities in the world. According to any list I could find, that is false. Then he denigrated the protestors in the street by saying:
And the voices that you hear out there, those crazy communists, they have no roots, they have no connections to this city.
They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for the criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.
All these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been.
Most citizens in Washington, D.C. are Black…So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies. They all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old.”
Well, Mr. Miller, this old, white Jewish hippie needs to respond to you again.
If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet
Some gentle people there
Come on people, now smile on your brother
Everybody get together and love one another right now.
Mr. Miller is often labeled a sycophant to Mr.Trump. Perhaps the relationship is the opposite. Maybe Trump bows down to Miller’s policies, policies that are grossly immoral, anti-American, and antithetical to the values expressed in our founding documents and in the Jewish tradition that I teach.
This is the time of year when crazy, old, Jewish white hippies “start swimmin’” before we “sink like a stone.” These holy days are the time of year when crazy, old, Jewish white hippies begin to push back against Miller, the other minions of Number 47, and 47 himself.
One could look at Judaism as a culture of pushing back when society doesn’t live up to its best possibilities. For Jews, pushing back can undoubtedly come in the form of marching in the street with hundreds of others, or it can be something we do in private, unless you’re a pulpit rabbi with a Discretionary Fund. If you were to talk with any of the fine folks I worked with over the years who volunteered to be treasurer of the temple or even those who were members of the finance committee, I would wager that, to a person, they would say, “Don’t let Rabbi Neil near the temple checkbook! He’ll give away the store! Look at those $18 and $36 checks he writes from his Discretionary Fund to save the whales, rescue abandoned puppies, or fund surgeries for children with cleft lips or palates. He leads with his heart. His caring runs amok!”
Regarding my overactive caring gland, I could cite the eloquence of Barack Obama in my support. He said:
“We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes.”
Standing in the place and seeing things from the perspective of those whose life challenges overwhelm their resources is, for Jews, incumbent upon us all. If we accept this as an individual mandate to act rather than a societal “need” to be filled by “someone,” hopefully, we won’t ignore the call, and we will become and staymotivated. Even though the commandment to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger comes from the Torah, sometimes the inspiration of someone else’s real-world approach catalyzes us into action.
Years ago, when the part of this synagogue that was called Temple Shir Shalom was still resident in the basement of Saint Bede’s Episcopal Church, our then president, Carole Weiner, told me something about her Aunt Mary, a member of our congregation. Aunt Mary was a lifelong liberal and progressive. Even though everyone was beginning to use personal computers at the time, Aunt Mary was old school, so all of her requests to help fund one liberal cause or another came through the Post Office. Mary was not a wealthy woman. Still, every January 1st, she began collecting the requests as they came in. For her, not one ask was expendable or ignorable. At the end of the year, she sat down with her huge pile of lettersthat she had assembled and sent each organization, cause, or candidate a check for $1. Her niece Carole knew that the dollar barely covered the cost of the postage, the envelope, and its contents, but she never told her Aunt Mary.
It doesn’t matter whether Mary created this annual custom, learned it, or borrowed it from someone else. What matters is her commitment to give, to donate, to do what she could. Where did her commitment come from? It might have been some American notion of participation in our democracy, and this was one way she chose to strengthen our republic. It might have been the Jewish commandment to“not stand idly by,” or our mandate regarding harvesting our fields:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I יהוה am your God. –Leviticus 19:9-10
I believe Aunt Mary’s sense of commandment came from many sources and ultimately, from within. If we do what needs to be done only because some entity tells us to, then we give up the right to call ourselves sentient beings. Instead, we become automatons. Upton Sinclair wrote:
I intend to do what one little man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime, I am not frightened by your menaces.
But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.
Sinclair recognizes that the most significant obstacle on the road to behaving morally responsible and addressing the needs of others equally to our own is pessimism, the voice in our heads saying, “This is too much to accomplish. It can never be done!” Sinclair goes on to say:
Pessimism is mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, contemporary conservative thinkerYuval Levin places optimism alongside pessimism as a twin seduction to inaction:
Optimism and pessimism are both dangerous vices because they are both invitations to passivity. Hope is a virtue, and so it sits between those vices. It tells us that things could go well and invites us to take action that might help make that happen and might make us worthy of it happening.
Mr. Levin’s understanding is a stunning and eye-opening perspective. Clearly,the notion about the passivity of both optimism and pessimism is a challenge to most of our default attitudes. Considering hope as positive energy is a further challenge. Defining hope as action that brings the content of our hopes to fruition,and to do so in a manner that makes us worthy of the outcome, holds our behavior and our speech to the highest moral and ethical standards.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey expressed this kind of hope in the aftermath of the recent shooting in his city, in which two young children were murdered and several other children and elderly adults were wounded. Mayor Frey said:
…To everybody out there, do not think of these as just somebody else’s kids…Think of this as if it were your own.
Of course, the Mayor, who was speaking extemporaneously, meant to say, “Think of these (children) as if they were your own.” Indeed, the kind of hope and attitude Yuval Levin speaks about prods us to hope even more actively. It’s not “as if these children are my own.” They are my own. These are my children. Everyinnocent resident-refugee who checks in with U.S. immigration as they are required to do, and then is arrested and/ or deported by ICE agents waiting in the hallway, is part of my family. Every nanny arrested in Santa Monica when ICE invaded a park where they were taking care of someone else’s child, that is my kids’ nanny and my friend. The woman who used to sell fruit to my wife at Rancho Park, who is now too afraid to show up anymore, is my fruit lady, cowering in her apartment. Every Ukrainian child stolen by Russian troops is my child. Every Israeli child terrorized, brutalized, and orphaned by Hamas before, after, and on October 7th, 2023, is my child, and it is my responsibility to make sure that s/he is comforted, nurtured, and given a safe future. Every shell-shocked Palestinian child starving in Gaza is mychild.
The book of Proverbs (13:12) tells us, “Hope deferred sickens the heart.” Rashi, the great 9th and 10th century French commentator, reflected on that versesaying, “He relies on his friend and does nothing.” The world’s problems and challenges are not my neighbor’s responsibility; they are mine. I must sit down like Aunt Mary and give to all the deserving organizations that ask for my help.
Stephen Miller, this crazy, old, Jewish white hippie, told you 8 years ago that most Jews don’t do what you do; they don’t act like you do. Jewish Americans, despite our history, or perhaps because of it, are hopeful in the active sense. We donate to organizations that haven’t given up hope. Jewish Americans walk toward the country’s and the world’s challenges. We don’t blame others. We do our part to fix what’s wrong, what’s immoral, unkind, inhumane. “Hope deferred sickens the heart.” Look out, Stephen, HOPE is coming, carried with commitment and determination by crazy, old, white hippies.