November,2020 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
It’s eight days before Election Day as I sit down to write this, and I am, of course, a nervous wreck. I’ve resolved over and over since this endless election season began, and then COVID on top of it, that I would not prognosticate about future events that there is no way to predict. Yeah right. As is my nature, I tend to blow pessimistic. So my teeth are clenched and my stomach is in knots. I think back over the last four years and can hardly bear the thought of four more like them. Or worse.
But first a little more this-and-that about my day here. I’m expecting friends to stop by for a quickie visit. We’ll sit outside—brrrrr—masked, six feet apart. Later I will participate in a Zoom baby naming (joy! in the midst of everything a new baby was just born to beloved friends) and then sit outside again, in the dark this time, to eat take-out burritos with my erstwhile yoga class, with whom, sigh, I haven’t done any yoga in the past eight months. There is remarkably little COVID here on the coast, but I find myself on the insistent end of the spectrum nonetheless, choosing not to go indoors with others when it gets cold, to keep my mask on, keep my six feet distance.
Why, exactly? The chances of my getting, or giving, the virus may, or may not, be fairly small. Today, as it happens, there is one person hospitalized with COVID in the entire county. But even so, it feels like it would be disrespectful to flout the precautionary rules. I think of the places where the coronavirus is rampant, people who are terribly ill, bereaved families and friends, medical workers risking their lives. I think of how it takes a social consensus to protect each other, how we need to build a community that watches out not to infect each other. I think of the message which is communicated when I see a person wearing a mask, or not wearing one.
I think it’s more important to keep my mask on than I do to quarantine my groceries. But even if masking and distancing are to some extent performative (and I don’t know to what extent that is true; there is certainly some risk, even here, of contracting and spreading COVID), I undertake these precautions out of solidarity. Whatever the practical value of masking, I want to communicate welcome and concern for the safety of people I encounter.
Okay, back to the election. These past four years have brought events in the public realm that I couldn’t have imagined in my most pessimistic churnings. As with COVID, I am well aware that many of them have fallen much more heavily on others than they have on me personally.
Along with all the horror, they have brought new experiences of solidarity. Immediately after the 2016 election, the MCJC Justice Group was formed (see Nancy Harris’ account on page 4 of this newsletter). We began by drafting a Statement of Principles, part of which can be seen on the next page.
We commit to the following:
Celebrate ethnic, cultural, religious and sexual differences.
Defend civil rights, the rights of women, immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community.
Safeguard programs for the elderly, for youth, and for people with physical and mental
disabilities.
Support access to a free and fair public education system and advocate health care for all.
Protect the health of our environment.
Speak out against hate speech, bigotry and anti-Semitism.
Work for election integrity.
Promote social and economic justice and criminal justice reform.
Participate in the sanctuary movement.
Take action when support is requested.
Something the Justice Group didn’t spell out in the principles, but which has turned out to be beautifully true, is that we have usually stepped forward in partnership with other groups in our community. Occasionally we have also joined with larger groups, like the ACLU and Reclaim Our Vote, but in every case we have teamed up with the Fort Bragg Adult School Citizenship Class, Safe Passage, the Fort Bragg High School Liberal Club, the Mendo Huddle, the Latino Coalition, Project Sanctuary, the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters, and more. Not to mention with others in our own Mendocino Coast Jewish Community!
Now, four years down the road, there is a strong, principled, committed, bonded circle of solidarity in our local community. We show up for each other’s events, volunteer for each other, celebrate, commiserate, and plan. Beyond these activities, we have made friends, across generations and ethnicities and other affinities. So now there is a web of friendship and commitment here that wasn’t woven four years ago.
Some of what we do with and for each other is performative. We hold the signs, wear the outfits, dance the dances, bake the cakes, wash the dishes, write the checks—not necessarily because we anticipate practical results, but because of what these gestures communicate: welcome, connection, friendship and solidarity, with people in our own community and points beyond.
Here at the end of October, 2020 I’m not as pessimistic as I could be. I certainly hope with all my heart that, in the days and years to come, this circle of solidarity will be turning our attention to acts of repair: towards limiting and mitigating climate crisis, welcoming and supporting immigrants and refugees, equalizing our economy, healing racial injustice, policing and judging fairly, educating children and adults well, being better international partners and neighbors, and so, so much more. Under the best of circumstances, there will be plenty of work to do.
Whatever happens next week, and in the weeks after that, we will be able to meet it with friendship and solidarity. And that means the world.
