2022 TCIC Thanksgiving Service Homily, With a Grateful and Hopeful Heart
Address at the Tri-City Interfaith Council Thanksgiving Service Copyright © 2022 by Joy T. Barnitz

The poet Audre Lorde wrote:
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford biologist, writes that:
“Humans universally make Us/Them dichotomies along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, language, group, religion, age, socioeconomic status, and so on. And it’s not a pretty picture. We do so with remarkable speed and neurobiological efficiency. … But crucially, there is room for optimism … we all carry many Us/Them divisions in our heads. A Them in one case can be an Us in another, and it can only take an instant for identity to flip. ….”

I find it pretty depressing that we are hormonally wired to distinguish Us from Them; and that, as Sapolsky further points out, we readily forgive our fellow in-group members for their transgressions and interpret their “wrongs” situationally, highlighting extenuating circumstances to explain their behavior. However, when a THEM does something “wrong”, … well, “that’s the way They are.” We need to be skeptical of our instincts and biases; lest we become foolish
… and gullible.

I find comfort in the fact that humans are flexible with respect to their identities. We create and change our identity factors quickly, depending on the circumstances. We easily convert “Them” to “Us” depending on the question asked. …. A question as simple as “Do you like broccoli?” can serve to split a group of people into YES –- (maybe) – -and NO!!! subgroups. … For the record, I am in the ‘maybe’ group on broccoli.

Dwelling on the differences between us can take a tremendous toll on our individual … and on our collective health; … if “indulged in regularly, (it) ends up warming the soul,” robbing us of empathy for those with whom we disagree. …. It ‘hardens our hearts.’ These differences may divide family members, as some find themselves suddenly in a group singled out as “different” … as “other.” The cumulative effect is ‘compassion fatigue,’ … ‘burn-out’

… We are grieving. … We are heartbroken. … We need a ‘change of heart.’

Religiously motivated discrimination, … “like the other social sins of racism, sexism, classism, judging people by what their bodies look like or how those bodies move or express themselves, and so on, has become so normalized that people often don’t even (notice) it.” Our faith traditions point the way to being “better than we are, and part of that process is opening our hearts. ... a kind of heart surgery. It is painful (and) we come out of the procedure with scars, but
ideally, we come out healthier.

In an opinion essay written just after the 2016 election, Derek Black attributed his renunciation of white nationalism to the “many talks with devoted and diverse people … who chose to invite (him) into … conversations rather than ostracize (him).” Black wrote:
“People have approached me looking for a way to change the minds of (white nationalists), but I can’t offer any magic technique. That kind of persuasion happens in person-to-person interactions, and it requires a lot of honest listening on both sides. … the conversations that led me to change my views started because I couldn’t understand why anyone would fear me. I thought I was only doing what was right and defending those I loved.”

No “magic technique,” just the “honest listening on both sides” that happens only person-to-person, between individuals and in small groups. These conversations gave Black the courage to renounce white nationalism; … and in doing so, he lost his family and the community that formed him. It was not an easy choice to leave “those (he) loved.” He needed to know he had a new community which welcomed him, … one where he belonged.

Scientists have found that “expressing gratitude actually can rewire the brain, making us more resilient and less prone to depression.” I find hope in that! …. And I find hope in the kinds of conversations that take place with community members I meet through TCIC, … healing conversations where people find connection and identify ways of working together to build a strong, resilient community.

The image projected on the slide is a “Heart of Peace” labyrinth, a variation on the classic labyrinth patterns whose spirals symbolize growth and evolution. Let’s commit to walking a path of peace together to build a compassionate, hope-filled
community, one where we find out what connects us, and one where we revel in our differences. …. A community where our spirits are fed by belonging … which is the most vital of foods.

May it be so.

2021 TCIC Thanksgiving Service Message – © by Joy T. Barnitz

We are one.
We are one.
After nearly two years of pandemic, is there any doubt? Signs in downtown Fremont read: the virus doesn’t see race, … gender, … color, … age, … income … ethnicity …. To Sars-CoV-2, we are all potential hosts, each one of us is a source of nourishment for its growth and reproduction. Each of us is vulnerable, … and none of us know how we will be affected. Many of us have lost loved ones and friends to COVID-19. Many more of us have been ill … and a significant number of us have never fully recovered our bodily health, our mental health, our spiritual health … our sense of wellbeing and wholeness. None of us remains untouched, unaffected in some way by nearly two years of masks, social distancing, quarantining, sanitizing … and fear.

We are One.

For many years, I lived in western New York, on the unceded land of the Haudenosaunee, better known to many of us as the Iroquois confederacy of six nations. Haudenosaunee means "the
people who are building the long house;” it’s not about the house so much as it’s about joining together to live in peace. They have gifted the world their Thanksgiving Address by placing it online for all to see, read and use. In this address, they greet the natural world and proclaim humanity’s place in it. They open and close every social and religious meeting with this address, which begins:

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
Now our minds are one.

They thank mother earth, the land, the waters, the fish, the plants which support all life, the medicine herbs, the trees, the animals, the birds, the four winds, the Thunderers – “our grandfathers”, the sun – our “eldest brother,” the moon – our “oldest grandmother,” the stars and the Creator, the Great Spirit, who has provided “everything we need to live a good life … here on this Mother Earth (and) for all the love that is still around us.”
Each verse ends with the words: “Now our minds are one.” They call this address, this prayer they use at all gatherings: “the Words That Come Before All Else.” I invite you to rest in those words; rest in the power of hearing “now our minds are one” repeated many times at the beginning and at the ending of each gathering. There is great power in repetition, power to express an intention, to bring everyone into this moment, in this place, to work toward the common purpose for which they have gathered. Through the pandemic, I have missed singing in a choir, in person. Virtual choirs did not fill my longing for the physical presence of other people, for the sense of being part of something much larger than me, one in which my voice would merge with that of others into a rich tapestry of powerful expression. Where each voice, all voices matter. For me, that’s what tonight’s gathering is: a gathering of people working together to create a community larger than the sum of its parts. Gathering to give thanks for the vitality that comes from our many faith traditions. It’s why the Tri-City Interfaith Council (TCIC) holds this annual Thanksgiving service in which we honor this rich diversity of traditions, that we all may appreciate the beauty of our different expressions of a shared intention: the establishment of a society where all may thrive and where all may flourish.

We are One.

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address concludes by thanking
… our enlightened teachers … who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers. We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
Now our minds are one.

We are one.
Let our hearts and minds be one community.
Thank you.

A sermon preached at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Fremont, California,
on Monday, November 25, 2019, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer
as part of the Tri-City Interfaith Council’s annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
Copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey S. Spencer


Good evening.  Thank you for being here tonight.  Some of you ventured out alone.  Thank you for being here.  Some of you came as families.  Thank you for being here.  Some of you are part of a group – a youth group or something like that.  Thank you for being here.

Thank you all for being here.  Your presence is a blessing.

I’m Jeffrey Spencer.  I am the Senior Pastor and Niles Discovery Church, which is a Protestant Christian Church.  I also serve this year as President of the Tri-City Interfaith Council and I am honored to be here offering this reflection.

Before I started working on tonight’s reflection, I would have eagerly told you that Thanksgiving is my favorite civic holiday.  Most of the other civic holidays celebrate war and violence (usually indirectly, but still, they celebrate war and violence), or they are civic versions of religious (that is to say, Christian) holy-days, and I’m a little resistance to the government coopting my religion.

I suppose New Year’s Day is an exception, too.  It’s a civic holiday that marks – I’m not sure what … the need for recovery after too much partying the night before?

I like Thanksgiving because it focuses on giving thanks.  It resists commercialism … for a day.  Black Friday soon follows.  Still, for one day, commercialism is resisted.  By focusing on giving thanks, this holiday encourages us all to a practice that I find to be a deeply spiritual and that can be practiced by people who have no faith or spiritual tradition just as easily as those of us who do.  Giving thanks is a truly universal practice.

My problems with the civic Thanksgiving holiday started when I realized that what I had been taught about it in grade school was fabrication and lies.  This is how the myth that I was taught goes:

A ship called the Mayflower brought a group of people called “Pilgrims” to North America.  They came (a little indirectly) from Plymouth, England, in 1620.  They were seeking religious freedom.  They got off their boat in a place that is now called Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they set up a colony.  That first winter was filled with hardship, disease, and death.  Had it not been for the kindness of some “Indians” – that’s the word that was used when I was taught these lies – these Pilgrims would have died.  After surviving that winter, learning to plant and gather food that spring and summer, they had a successful harvest and they decided to give thanks.  They decided a feast was in order, so they invited the “Indians” who had helped them, and everybody ate too much and played various games.  It was an amazingly wonderful, intercultural, deeply peaceful time.  And that’s why we gather in late November each year with our families and friends and eat too much and have a joyous time as we offer thanks.

It’s a wonderful story.

And very little of it is accurate.

Yes, there was a group of people who left Plymouth, England, seeking to settle in the Americas.[1]  They were actually heading to the Jamestown settlement in what is now called Virginia, but a storm blew them way off course, and they ended up much farther north.  They were not seeking to create a community that embraced religious freedom for everyone.  They were wanted to create a community where they were free to believe what they believed and to worship the way they wanted.  In fact, they didn’t call themselves Pilgrims.  They called themselves Separatists.  They wanted to separate from the Church of England and worship God the way they thought was correct.

They did create their little colony near where they landed, that’s true.  And it’s true that if they hadn’t been helped, they might have all died that first winter.  The people that helped them, however, were not Indians.  These Separatist colonizers were about 7,000 miles from the nearest Indian.  The people who helped them were from one of the communities of people who already lived on this continent.  In particular, they were Wampanoag people.

The Wampanoag did help these colonizers learn how to survive in this land.  And there was a feast at the harvest after that first summer.  And members of the Wampanoag nation were there.  However, there is no evidence that an invitation was extended to them – only evidence that they were present.  There also isn’t any evidence that the Separatists held the feast as a thanksgiving.  That word isn’t used in the surviving journals, nor any word like it.

The record does indicate that the Separatists did hold a thanksgiving day, but that wasn’t for another 16 years.  And it came after they a massacre of Pequot village, the culmination of a war with the Pequot people.  Remember that thing I said about Thanksgiving being a civic holiday that didn’t celebrate war?  Never mind.

If you know your history of the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, you know it didn’t happen until 1863.  President Abraham Lincoln made it an official holiday and his goal was to find a way to heal the nation that was divided in the Civil War.  That holiday had nothing to do with the so-called “Pilgrims” and so-called “Indians” I was taught about and it all too often still taught about in American schools.  The myth we are taught actually didn’t take hold until around 1920.  And it came about in response to immigration.

Those who were established and in power in the United States got anxious about the wave of immigration from Europe.  The response was to develop a “Colonial ideology [that] became the identity of what it was to be truly ‘American’…”  And so a myth was developed with a “sanitized story of Thanksgiving – [one] which fabricated a peaceful depiction between the colonizers and the tribes and neglected to mention the amount of death, destruction and land-grabbing that occur[ed] against the first peoples…”[2]

This has been the story, this has been the myth we’ve told ourselves about Thanksgiving for the past 100 years.  I think it is time to let go of the Thanksgiving myth and all its underlying white supremacy.  Don’t get rid of Thanksgiving.  Let’s keep Thanksgiving as a holiday and as a practice.  Let’s just jettison the lies we tell about it.

Instead of pretending that the British Separatists were wonderful friends to all the Native peoples they encountered when they arrived, let’s acknowledge the violence perpetrated by them and their descendants against the peoples who were already here.  Let’s acknowledge the violence and oppression of Native Americans that continues to this day and agree that it is time for it to stop.  Let’s acknowledge that even before the Separatists’ boat landed in Wampanoag territory, the first African had already been brought to this continent, and not of his own free will, but as an enslaved person.  400 years ago this year.  And then, let’s work toward stopping this racial violence that is the legacy of the actions of the first Europeans to come to this continent.

Instead of accepting the illusion of a non-existent interracial unity, respect, peace, and equality in the 1620s, “we can focus simply on values that apply to everybody: togetherness, generosity and gratitude.”[3]  And let’s commit to actually doing the work needed to create a community of interracial and multicultural unity, respect, peace, and equality.

I think that the first step to doing this might be to acknowledge where we are.  We may think we are in the City of Fremont, in the State of California – and in some ways that’s true.  However, there’s a deeper truth.  We are on Ohlone land.  The Ohlone people were the stewards of this land for generation upon generation before any Europeans or Asians or Africans arrived here.

That deeper truth makes me wonder, what do you know about the Ohlone people?  I can tell you, I know next to nothing.  And I want to change that.  So this is my Thanksgiving homework assignment:  learn more about the Ohlone people, their history and culture, the injustices they suffered historically and the injustices they continue to suffer.

My other Thanksgiving assignment (and you’re welcome to take these as your homework assignments, too) is to continue to give thanks.  In fact, we could start tonight.  Would you turn to a person next to you, look them in the eye, and tell them, “Thank you for being here tonight”?  The other side of this is to let someone look you in the eye and say, “Thank you,” and to accept that thanks as a gift, no strings attached.

What a blessing it is to be in this community, to sit among people of so many religious and spiritual traditions, gathered for the purpose of giving thanks.  This action is, I believe a way we build the community the Thanksgiving myth pretended we once were.  Let’s build this world together.  Amen.

_______________
[1] There are many sources that will clarify fact from fiction. One I used was Maya Salam, “Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/thanksgiving-myths-fact-check.html (posted and accessed 21 November 2019).

[2] Sean Sherman, “The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a Native American, I’ve Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday,” Time, https://time.com/5457183/thanksgiving-native-american-holiday/ (posted 11 November 2019; accessed 21 November 2019).

[3] Ibid.

A talk given by Jim McGarry at the Tri-City Interfaith Council’s annual Yom HaShoah service at Temple Beth Torah, May 5, 2019. © 2019 Jim McGarry
 
“Every Knock on the Door is a Blessing from God” 
-Hamid and Xhemel Veseli, Albanian Rescuers
 
As a teacher for almost 40 years now, I have learned to ask my students what at first seems like an absurd question. I ask it anyway: Could the United States have taken in 9 million Jewish refugees in 1938? 
 
They look puzzled. I ask it more subtly: Could we have dramatically reduced the number of victims of the Third Reich if we had altered our immigration quotas and refugee policies in the late 1930’s and early 40’s? But then I ask it again in its seemingly absurd form: Could we have taken in 9 million Jews? And could we have added a million others to make it an even 10 million? Roma and Sinti, Homosexuals, the developmentally disabled and others deemed “racially inferior...those deemed genetic dangers to the Master Race?”
 
As the students get busy collecting their personal knowledge about history concerning immigration quotas, the Great Depression, the the rise of Nazism, I remind them about the tipping point occurences of 1938; that is, the Evian Conference of July, and Kristallnacht, the pogrom, of November. As they make their final list of the reasons why we could or could not have done the large scale act of rescue of 10 million people, I insist that they remember and factor in the lost recognition that Hitler actually wanted to solve the Jewish Problem, especially regarding German and Austrian Jews, through emigration. He simply wanted them to leave, albeit stateless and penniless. His plan failed because there was no one, no nation, to take the Jews in. Even the refugees who escaped westward got caught when the Reich defeated France and swept through Belgium and Holland. This was Anne Frank’s fate, for example.
 
When the conference on refugees was convened at Evian, France in July of 1938, all the countries present, with a few limited exceptions, proclaimed their version of “the boat is full.” No one could take in any refugees, pleading domestic and economic troubles of their own. The Australian delegates infamous statement is perhaps fundamentally true of all the nations’ excuses. When asked if Australia could take in any Jews, their official replied "... we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” Doors closed. Hermetically sealed by racism. 
 
I go on to teach my Catholic school students about Fr. Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest, who was a propagandist of great skill---not in Europe, but on our own shores. Coughlan’s weekly radio address--broadcast across the United States every Sunday--the Christian Lord’s Day--spewed hate in classic anti-semitic terms, accusing Jews of being both rapacious capitalists and insidious atheistic communists, job stealers and trouble makers. Coughlan’s anti-immigrant, anti-semitic message fit perfectly with those notes sounded by others in America at the time. This screed was sounded all in the context of an insistent isolationism, intending not only to keep the U.S. out of war but to keep the refugee crisis at a long arm’s length. Very few of Europe’s desperate people were let in. 
 
The infamous case of the ship the St. Louis symbolizes that betrayal. In mid-1939, unable to discharge  over 900 of its Jewish passengers (who had thought they could land safely in Cuba,) the ship floundered off the coast of Florida until the Secretary of State in the Roosevelt Administration, Cordell Hull, prevailed upon the president, to deny entry. This denial was over the insistence of Eleanor Roosevelt that the ship be allowed to land and the threatened passengers given sanctuary. A third of the Jewish passengers on the St. Louis lost their lives after returning to Europe.
 
To mention Eleanor Roosevelt  is to begin to introduce the notion of conscience. She was so incensed by her husband’s decision to turn away the St. Louis, that when she heard a year later of another ship with Jews approaching in September of 1940, this one named the Quanza, sailing from Portugal, Eleanor intervened and insisted on asylum. Eighty Jewish passengers were allowed to disembark in Norfolk, Virginia. My friend Kathy Rand’s father was one of them. He was a Czech Jew who immigrated to France, who then fled south across the Pyrenees just ahead of the Nazis.
 
Eleanor Roosevelt’s courage perhaps inspired others within the Roosevelt administration who became active in working against the stream of apathy and prejudice to rescue Jewish refugees. Notable among these was Josiah DuBois, a Treasury Department underling who gathered evidence that officers in the Departments of State and Treasury who were obstructing efforts by the American Jewish community and their allies to finance and facilitate the rescue of refugees. DuBois’ whistle-blowing, 18-page memo was one of the catalysts for the creation of the War Refugee Board, which, among other late but meaningful achievements, provided financing of Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg, along with his team, is credited with saving over 100,000 Jews in Budapest in the Nazis final days. 
 
To mention Raoul Wallenberg is to mention another exemplar of conscience. He was a member of the Swedish Embassy staff in Budapest and, using funds channeled through the American connections of the War Refugee Board, was, in the final months of the war, able to fund safe houses for Jews, and provide Swedish protective documents to them. According to witnesses, Wallenberg was even able talk down the German officer in charge of the final liquidation of the Budapest Ghetto, pointing out to him his fate being on the losing end after the war. Wallenberg’s skills were seen as either so threatening or so intriguing to the Soviets that he disappeared somewhere in the their vast Gulag and we still do not have the details of his fate. The example of his conscience remains to inspire us. 
 
My friend Livia Grunfeld is eternally grateful to Wallenberg for her life. She came to Mercy High in January to speak about her experience with him in those harrowing “last days” in Budapest and described in detail her rescue by Wallenberg and his team. Her gratitude to them is immeasurable.
 
There were many other righteous diplomats during the war. They include the names Sugihara, Lutz, Bingham, Fry, Perlasca, Duckwitz, Rota, Vohich, Radagales, Ulkumen. These were men who were representing their home countries (some unofficially)  in Nazi occupied Europe who, usually against orders, used their ability to issue official paper--transit visas, protective orders, passports, etc. to save thousands. With my students, I call them “Paper Weapons” and they become part of our exploration of how non-violent weapons were and could be effective against the Nazis.
 
 A diplomat rescuer whom I have not mentioned but to whom I am particularly drawn is Aristide de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. Thousands of Jewish and other refugees made their way into the southern zone known as “Free France” which was of course controlled from the city of Vichy by a collaborationist government--it was not a safe place for Jews to stay. De Sousa Mendes, after a weekend of solitude and discernment in the Bordeaux consulate, open his office to 30,000 emergency visas to people fleeing the Nazi’s, at least 10,000 of them Jews. He was assisted by Rabbi Chaim Kruger, who collected and bundled the Jewish refugees’ documents to assist the consul’s office. De Sousa Mendes was disobeying the direct order of the fascist Portuguese head of state, Antonio Salazar. Summoned back to Lisbon by the dictator, de Sousa Mendes was stripped of his position and banned from all employment, including the law, for which he was trained. His 15 children were barred from attending universities in Portugal and the family lived in poverty, helped only by the small Jewish community there who provided the family food and paid their medical bills. 
 
My friend’s father whom I mentioned earlier as landing with the Quanza in Norfolk, Virginia, was carrying a passport signed by Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
 
After we have wrestled with this historical analysis, it is pretty clear to my students that yes, we the United States, and certainly other nations of the world, could have taken in 10 million people or more. Most of them have come to see clearly that our closed doors were more about closed--even poisoned-- hearts. We study how immigrants have always added to rather than subtracted from their communities. Our hatred of immigrants was irrational and biased.
 
 I then ask my students: “And what about now? How many can we take in?” Then we begin the analysis of what relevance this Holocaust history has to the people from Central America, like the ones on caravan to the border. What light does that mostly dark time shine on the splitting up of families, the children separated from their parents, on the asylum aspirants waiting like criminals in jails today? These immigrants from countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala where we Americans, through our Cold War and other manipulations, supported violence and created chaos which is still gripping those countries and devastating those homelands from which they now seek to flee. Then we see these hounded, desperate people facing a country al norte, the United States, that looks a lot like the faces of the world at the Evian Conference in 1938. Our current president recently even used the language: ‘We are full’--flatly stating there is no room for those requesting asylum. The current administration has added to that refusal the threat to charge refugees money that they do not have to apply for asylum? Can betrayal have a more sinister countenance?
 
Beyond our borders, on other shores, what does Shoah history say about the refugee crisis where today we have more refugees in the world than even during World War II? How does the history of the Shoah interpret the closed doors in Europe, where more and more countries are rejecting the most desperate of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, East Africans? And what does Shoah history suggest to us about the persecution of Muslims in Asia, from Rohingya in Myanmar to the Uighurs in China to the Muslim minority in India?  As we must chart the real resurgence of antisemitism in our world, do we not also have to acknowledge that hatred of Muslim by Hindus and Buddhists in Asia, as well as by many populists in Europe, Australia and the United States--is an equivalent menace across our globe? In our focus on extremist Islamists, only a fraction of Muslims in the world, we have succeeded in demonizing all Muslims everywhere. And Muslims are paying often with their lives for our demonization of them. They are increasingly victims of our betrayal of them, and are force to languish in limbo as persecuted ones desperately seeking safety on shore they will never reach.
 
Speaking of Muslims, perhaps the most dramatic story of righteous rescue of Jews during the Shoah was achieved in the majority Muslim nation of Albania.  Allow me for a few minutes to take you across the thresholds of the homes of the Muslims and Christians of Albania, where  up to 2000 Jews were beneficiaries of the tradition of radical hospitality, the “promise” known in that culture asBesa. Albania embodies a form of rescue done not in government halls or at the desks of diplomats, but in homes. 
 
Albania at the beginning of World War II, had a Jewish population of 200. At the end of the war, the Jewish population was close to 2000. This is the great reversal of the “Devil’s Arithmetic,” a term used to describe the record keeping of the Gestapo and its executioners as they sought to account for the ending of every Jewish life. The astounding ten-fold increase in Albania could be labeled then “Angels Arithmetic,” but that would be misleading because these mostly Muslim, mostly poor, in all ways marginal, Albanian rescuers were very, very human. Their humanity is staked on one measure: hospitality. They had a radical ethic of hospitality; any stranger that came to your threshold was welcomed to the point of defense of their life. You crossed into an Albanian home and you were fiercely protected as family. This is the tradition of ‘Besa’ which can be inadequately  translated as “fidelity” but includes a degree of startling inclusion that the world rarely gives to the stranger. They did not pass through these homes after a meal and a night of rest. They stayed. They were not hidden behind walls or in basements but they were given Albanian names, wore Albanian clothes, ate Albanian food, slept in Albanian beds, and learned Albanian words to protect them. 
 
The Nazis directly occupied the country and tried to round up the Jews they knew were hiding there but the network was close to airtight. Angels’ Arithmetic: 200 to 2000, definitely the only country in Europe to have more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning.
 
As an interfaith group like yours can appreciate, there is a faith journey behind the powerful interpretation of this Besa ethic. Albanian Muslims are Sufi, specifically a Sufi group founded by a monastic order called Bektashi. Their origins are in Turkey where they were persecuted by the religious establishment in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and into the early 20th Centuries. The Bektashi leadership fled west and found refuge in Albania among Sufis who had come earlier. These Muslims were ready to put their history of persecution alongside the persecuted Jews, ready to apply the best of their Muslim faith, now wedded with Besa, this ancient hospitality mandate of Albania. These Muslims were ready to perform the most extraordinary righteousness of all: a fierce rescue of the despised that inspires all of us to carry out this radical hospitality towards those on the margins in our own lives times.
 
Two weeks ago, on April 23rd in Washington DC, a Jewish congregation, Adas Israel, hosted two women who are descended from an Albanian family that rescued two Jewish families in their homes. The Albanian Ambassador to the United States was also there. The Jewish periodical, Moment,co-founded by Elie Wiesel, describes this event in commemoration of Yom HaShoah, which also was organized to gather support for a Syrian refugee family, whom Congregation Adas Israel is sponsoring. These Albanian children of rescuers said: 
“Our parents were devout Muslims and believed, as we do, that every knock on the door is a blessing from God. We never took any money from our Jewish guests. All persons are from God. Besa exists in every Albanian soul.”
 
In the refugee crisis we face today, this is a resource upon which we can draw. Each one of us has full possession of it, though it often lies dormant unused. Yet it is the surest of all gifts; it is our version of Besa. It goes by the name of conscience.  The Catholic tradition, as it renewed itself in the Second Vatican Council, articulated a profound understanding of conscience. In the document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope,) the Council says:
 
In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths.
 
This compelling description bears repeating at least in part and with inclusive language. We listen to it with people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Josiah Debois, Raul Wallenberg, Aristide de Sousa Mendes and the Albanians in mind:
 
Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a [human being.] There [one] is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in [one’s] depths.
 
In this voice, we heara call to open our hearts and hearthsto those the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus called: “....the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free.” This Yom HaShoah, may the memory and the call to conscience of Eleanor Roosevelt, Josiah DuBois, Raoul Wallenberg, Aristide de Sousa Mendes and all the precious people of Albania who practiced Besa, be a blessing to us all. 
 
May we close with the words of de Sousa Mendes: “I would rather stand with God against Man than with Man against God.” May we all find where that standing place is. And then act from there.

Rosh Hashanah Morning 5778 – September 21, 2017
Temple Beth Torah – Fremont, California 
Preached by Rabbi Avi M. Schulman 
 
 
            I experienced anti-Semitism for the first time when I was nine years old.
During the early 1960s, in Long Beach, California the public school system allowed two hours every week for children to receive religious education.  During “release time,” my Christian classmates left school for Catholic or Protestant instruction.
Out of 25 students in my 4th grade class, only 2 of us remained behind.  Both of us Jews.    Beverly Gerber and I.
 
            I have no recollection of what Beverly and I did during those two hours while our classmates were away.    But I do have a burning memory of what happened one day when I was walking to school.   Kids I knew, my classmates, were lined-up along the fence and they were screaming at me that I was a Christ-Killer.
 
            I was terrified by the hatred I saw in their faces.  I was stunned that my classmates, most of whom I had known for years, were accusing me of a crime I did not comprehend.
 
            I turned and ran home – which didn’t take long since my family lived across the street from Prisk elementary.
 
            My mom was in the family room.  After tearfully telling her what happened, she looked at me and said, “Don’t try and fight them.  You just have to be better than them.”
 
            By the time I went back, class had already started.  I got a tardy slip from the teacher.  The shouting at me went on for a few more days, until something happened that put an end to it.  I will share why the harassment ended later.
 
            What I will tell you is that being screamed at for being a Jew made a searing impression on my soul.  For a long time, I felt insecure about whether I fit in with everyone else in America. But as I grew older, that doubt got buried as I constructed an active and proud Jewish identity.   I studied Jewish history in part to learn about anti-Semitism and the conditions that fed it.  I committed myself to Jewish communal activities that asserted our rightful place in American life.  I became a rabbi and aligned myself with progressive Jewish causes that espouse an America that is tolerant and diverse and accepting not only of American Jews but also people of all races, religions, and sexual orientations. 
 
            If you had asked me only a few years ago:   Do I think anti-Semitism is a threat to America’s Jews?   I would have emphatically said:  No.  Of course I was aware of occasional anti-Semitic acts.  But I had become desensitized to sporadic hate crimes against Jews.  Though I knew about acts of vandalism such as windows broken in a synagogue or tombstones overturned in a Jewish cemetery, I did not view these manifestations of anti-Semitism as serious threats. 
 
            But in the past year, something has fundamentally changed.  Vicious voices of Jew hatred have seeped out of the dark recesses of America. Representatives of the alt-right continually spew noxious streams of anti-Semitism.  In the past year, journalists who are Jewish have been savagely attacked online.   According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic vandalism and bullying at public schools have more than doubled this year compared to last and there are still three months remaining in 2017.  Swastikas, that most potent symbol of hate, as well as other acts of anti-Semitism have taken place here in Fremont at Irvington High School and Horner Middle School.
 
            Harassment and bullying are serious concerns.  Bomb threats and cemetery desecrations are despicable acts.  But against this backdrop of growing concern, what took place five weeks ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, was utterly shocking.  This college town, home to the University of Virginia, had been a bastion of tolerance.  But over the weekend of August 11 & 12, it became a howling center of aggression and violence by right-wing extremists, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan.   They marched through the town proclaiming the purity of the white race and chanting:  “Jews will not replace us.”  Marchers displayed swastikas on banners and shouted slogans like “Blood and Soil” a phrase derived from Nazi ideology.  They also posed a direct threat to a Charlottesville synagogue. 
 
            The president of Congregation Beth Israel, Alan Zimmerman, offers an eyewitness account of that horrible time.  He writes, “On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services. . . Forty congregants were inside.
 
            For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either.  Perhaps the presence of our armed guard deterred them. Perhaps their presence was just a coincidence, and I’m paranoid. I don’t know.

            Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, ‘There's the synagogue!’ followed by chants of ‘Sieg Heil’ and other anti-Semitic language.”   Mr. Zimmerman went on to state, “Soon, we learned that Nazi websites had posted a call to burn our synagogue. I sat with one of our rabbis and wondered whether we should go back to the temple to protect the building. What could I do if I were there? Fortunately, it was just talk – but we had already deemed such an attack within the realm of possibilities, taking the precautionary step of removing our Torahs, including a Holocaust scroll, from the premises.”

            He could not believe that “This is in America in 2017.”

            In Charlottesville, the most virulent Jew hatred in memory burst out of the dark.  There were other casualties that weekend.  A car driven by a white supremacist plowed into a group of anti- Nazi protestors and Heather Heyer was killed.  Two police officers, Berke Bates and H. Jay Cullen, died in the line of duty when their helicopter crashed.

            In the aftermath of Charlottesville, the president of the United States failed to unequivocally condemn the anti-Semitic extremists. In drawing a moral equivalence between the alt-right and those who stood against them, he proclaimed that “there were some very fine people on both sides.” In my view, the president gave credibility to the perpetrators of bigotry.   For white supremacists, Charlottesville is a victory.   

            But for America’s Jews, Charlottesville should be a wake-up call.   We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.  Elie Wiesel, of blessed memory, warned us “We must take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.  Sometimes we must interfere.”
 
            On this morning of Rosh Hashanah, the blasts of the shofar call us to attention. Wake-up Jews from your slumber!   The ancient sounds of the shofar rouse our souls.  Tekiah – listen to the blast of hatred spreading across our country. Sh’varim – heed the calls of those broken by a society that cares not enough for the poor, the uninsured, and the weak in our midst.  Teruah – sound the alarm, fear is rising in the land.  Sound forth a Tekiah G’dolah so that we commit ourselves to righteous deeds that will last throughout the coming year.
 
            On this morning of Rosh Hashanah, let us commit ourselves to not be silent. Let us heed the sound of the shofar calling us to justice.  Let us state loudly and clearly:
            Anti-Semitism is evil.
            Hostility toward Muslims is evil.
            Hatred of immigrants is evil.
            Bigotry against gays and lesbians is evil.
            Violence against people who are transgendered is evil.
 
            Jews across America are hearing the sound of the shofar this Rosh Hashanah calling us to action.  Take heart in knowing this.  We are not alone.   Our Reform congregation is linked with 900 others throughout North America. As progressive Jews, our understanding of Torah commits us to the same core values:   the sanctity of every human being created in the Divine image, a profound commitment to Tikkun Olam, repairing the breaches in our society in which the poor and the disabled and people of color face injustice.  As Reform Jews we embrace the full inclusion in our community of people who are LGBTQ.  We feel responsibility for Jews in the United States and around the world.  We fully support a vibrant Jewish state in the land of Israel. 
 
            Temple Beth Torah is not isolated as a Reform congregation.  We find strength when we align ourselves with the one and a half million members of the Reform Movement.   We are imbued with a vision of a more just society.  We stand with our Movement’s efforts to protect immigrants and to reform the criminal justice system.    At last week’s meeting of the Temple’s Board of Directors, the officers and members committed our congregation to focus our social action efforts this year on protecting the environment and safeguarding transgender rights.
 
             In addition to the strength we find as members of the Reform Movement, we also should take heart that as a minority religious community in Fremont, we are not alone.  Earlier this year I had an incredibly heartwarming experience.  It came during a time when there were bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers across the country.  During this trying time, I received not one, but numerous phone calls and emails from local Muslim leaders who expressed their concern for our members’ well-being.  They offered their support and reassurance that we did not stand alone but they stood with us.
 
            Here all along, I thought it was our job as Jews to stand with others.  From our position of privilege and power in America, it was our responsibility to reassure those who felt vulnerable.   It was both a surprise and a relief to know others had our backs.
 
            When we are isolated, there is defeat.  When we stand together, there is strength.  E Pluribus Unum.   Out of many, is unity.
 
            “Let us never grow numb to brokenness, but let our pain fuel our vows to respond – with peaceful protests, and with public calls for healing, by building alliances and by speaking in unison with other minorities and faith communities.”1  We have an opportunity to do so every month by participating in a Vigil that is held in Fremont the fourth Thursday of every month.  This Vigil is co-sponsored by the Tri-City Interfaith Council.   People of all faiths and backgrounds stand in solidarity to celebrate our diversity as well as our unity.  I know that a growing number of Temple members are participating in the Vigil.  Come join us a week from today at 5pm.  Flyers with information are located in our hallway.   
 
            I began this sermon by telling you of a story of when I was a boy and I faced virulent anti-Semitism.  After running home crying to my mother, she told me to return to school and show that I was better than those haters.  I did go back.
 
            For many years I have thought about what my mom told me and I do not think she gave me the best advice.  Her basic message was for me to be passive - to not engage those kids who were screaming at me that I was a Christ killer.  My mom’s advice to me was that I should be silent in the face of their hatred.
 
            I wish Mom had said something different to me that day.   That I should be proud of being Jewish and that I had nothing to be ashamed of.  That I should go directly to my teacher and tell her that I was being bullied.  And that my mom, along with my dad, would speak with Mr. Williams, the principal, and let him know that their son was being harassed at school and that this was completely unacceptable.
 
            In America in the early 1960s, in the growing city of Long Beach, it’s easy to rationalize how a Jewish mother might advise her son not to stick up for himself.  Maybe she feared what would happen to me if a group of boys assaulted me.  Maybe she was timid about going to school authorities and saying this was wrong.  Maybe she thought this was just a temporary difficulty her son faced and it all would soon end.
 
            In part, she was right.  The harassment did end.  But the reason why it stopped was because I got into a fight with one of the boys who stood at the fence shouting at me.  Paul Smith was the ringleader of the group of kids at the fence.  When he called me out to fight after school, I really had no choice unless I wanted to be a complete coward. 
 
            When school let out that day, the boys formed a circle and Paul and I squared off.  Believe me, it was no boxing match.  We were nine year old boys.   We mostly wrestled on the ground, neither one of us getting the better of the other.  Minutes later, a neighbor came out and told us to break it up.
 
            And we did.  The next day, the yelling and the screaming at the schoolyard stopped.
 
            What is the lesson of this story?
            It is that standing up for yourself takes action.
            It is that sometimes the right way to respond is through words.
            It is that sometimes you have to be willing to fight for what’s right.
 
            Sometimes we have to fight on our own. But we are stronger when we stand with others who share our beliefs, our values and our principles.
 
            On this day of Rosh Hashanah, let us commit ourselves anew to standing-up for what is eternal in our sacred heritage.  As proud Jews and proud Americans let us rise up and say in this country you cannot “dehumanize, degrade and stigmatize whole categories of people in this nation.  Every Jew, every Muslim, every gay, transgender, disabled, black, brown, white, woman, man and child is beloved of God and precious in the Holy One’s sight.  We the people, all the people, are created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of the Divine.  All people are worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”(2)
             
            Our Torah says, Behold God places before us the blessing and the curse, life and death.  So let us choose life and blessings in this New Year. 
           
            Let us feel called today
            To give our gifts
            To listen to the heartbeat of a broken world       
            To heal the fragmentation of a people and planet.
            Let us feel called today
            To participate in the work of our time
 
            Let us feel called today
            To be at one with the universe     
            To be touched by God
            Let us feel called today(3)
            To begin this New Year with abiding love and enduring hope
            Let us work toward the day when the shofar of freedom will be heard across
            the land and justice and peace will embrace all the inhabitants of the earth.

1. From One Voice for the New Year, 2017 co-authored by Rabbis Elka Abramson and Judy Shanks
2. Ibid. 
3.  Adapted from poem, “I Know,” by James Conlon, Mishkan HaNefesh for Rosh Hashanah, page 283.