Elliott T: I was at a meeting, and the possibility of being a sanctuary congregation was raised up. The facilitator said, "So who thinks their congregation could be a sanctuary?" My hand just shot up. Then, I walked out the door and I said, "How am I going to do this?" Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. I'm so happy to welcome today my guest, Rabbi Elliott Tepperman, my friend and colleague. Elliott serves as the Rabbi of Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist congregation in Montclair, New Jersey. I've asked Elliott to join us today, so that we can talk about the sanctuary movement. Bnai Keshet recently made a decision to serve as a sanctuary. I wanted to talk about the principles behind the sanctuary movement and the Jewish values that motivated the congregation to make this decision and the process that they went through and what it's been like as they've moved into this stance, as they've made themselves available this way. Welcome Elliott. Thanks for being here. Elliott T: It's really my pleasure. It's great to be talking with you, Deborah. Deborah Waxman: Let's start with what is sanctuary? What does it mean? Elliott T: In this context, what it really means is creating a safe place for somebody who does not have legal status in the United States, who is undocumented and is facing deportation, to reside while they try and resolve their status in a way that will allow them to stay. There has been a longstanding policy on the part of the Immigration Department to not detain people or arrest people who are on the premises of a church, a synagogue or a mosque. There's no law that protects anybody, but because of the moral authority that comes with being a house of worship, ICE recognizes that the optics of that would really be bad and would not serve them. It creates this little bubble of potential safety. A congregation can ask somebody or it can make itself available for somebody who has run out of options temporarily as a safe haven. Deborah Waxman: I'm struck by a lot of the topics that we talk about on this podcast are Jewish teachings or Jewish practices. There's certainly Jewish precedent for sanctuary. We read about sanctuary cities in the Bible, in the Torah. A lot of what we reflect on here are things that individuals can do on their own, or sometimes in the context of community since Judaism and Jewish practice is so communally focused. What you're talking about can only be done by a community. Elliott T: Yeah. I mean when we were talking about this question, some people said, "Well why don't we just let the people who care about this do this on their own? People can take in somebody to their house." The truth is that someone who is facing deportation is no safer in a congregant's house than they are in their own. Whereas we have this particular ability, as a community and as a house of worship, to offer something that we could not do as individuals. Truth be told, when a person seeks sanctuary, it means that for as long as they're in sanctuary, they only get that buffer of safety as long as they stay on the campus of the congregation. It's a little bit like voluntary house arrest. Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Elliott T: To help somebody live through that experience, you also couldn't do that alone really. Deborah Waxman: Right. Elliott T: I mean you need people who can do shopping, who can bring food in, who can make sure a doctor comes if a doctor is required. I mean all the things of life shrunk down to the space of a single congregation. Deborah Waxman: I've been following Bnai Keshet's process for a while. It seemed to me that the best time, a rich time, to have this conversation with you was in the season of Pesach, of Passover, which is certainly a story of narrowness. In Hebrew, the Hebrew term for Egypt is Mitzrayim, "narrow place" -- so certainly a place of confinement. It's a story of the Israelites moving from that place of narrowness into a place of expansiveness, into liberation. This seemed like the ripe season for having a conversation about sanctuary. Can you share what were the Jewish values and the Jewish ideas that motivated you and the congregation to consider this at the outset and, ultimately, come to this decision? Elliott T: To start with the themes of Passover, it's important to just note that that is our theme. I mean that is the narrative of Jewish life is what it meant to be a stranger and to be freed. I want to offer one quote. From Deuteronomy, chapter 10, it says, "Cut away, therefore, the thickening of your hearts and stiffen your necks no more for God. Adonai upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger. Providing food and clothing, you too must love the stranger for you are strangers in the land of Egypt." I feel like in that quote, it's just all summed up. It's just really simple: quit being callous. Open your heart, let go of stubbornness and self-centered pride and your need for security. Look around at those who are mistreated, people who are in danger, and help them. That's what God does, and that's what we're commanded to do. If you look at the Torah, it's just obsessed with the stranger. I mean it's not just a commandment. Deborah Waxman: 36 times. Elliott T: Yeah. It's repeated over and over and over again. Deborah Waxman: Remember the stranger, because you were once a stranger in Egypt. Elliott T: Yeah. Love the stranger. It's also one of the only commandments that's both a positive and a negative commandment. We're both supposed to love them and not neglect them. Don't ignore them, don't stand by. It's a really unique commandment. I think there's also something in the Passover experience, which is worth noting, which is that the name that we are called by the Egyptians is Hebrews, in Hebrew pronounced "ivrim". That word has a connotation of being transgressive. Some theory about that word is that the reason we were called that by the Egyptians is because we were border crossers. Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Elliott T: It was like calling us "illegals". I think it's really worth noting that how that name has served us, as Jews. It was used in that moment in a derogatory way, I think. Being willing to cross boundaries and to find safety and to search out security even when it's dangerous is something that has served us throughout our history and part of our survival. Deborah Waxman: I think that's exactly right. Now, at this place in time in America where it's both less stable and less secure than maybe we thought it was and yet, for the most part, many Jews and most synagogues have a degree of stability, have a degree of security to enact this mitzvah, to enact this commandment -- I feel like, as Jews, we know from our lived experience that we are only as strong, we are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. Elliott T: I think that is true. I think that we're in a unique position of both feeling secure and having a lived memory of insecurity. Deborah Waxman: That's right. Elliott T: As part of this process, I spent a lot of time asking congregants to think about their own story for their families' immigration. Our listeners might want to do that right now. Think for a moment about who is it, when you think of your own family's story, that came to the US? When did they come? Deborah Waxman: Oh do you want to share yours? Elliott T: Sure. I'll share mine. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Elliott T: The story anyway that I'm most familiar with is the story of my grandfather, Eddie Tepperman, who came to the US in 1912. His parents had come ahead of him, because they didn't have enough money to come all at once. He and his sister, he was 13, she was 15, they sent the money and they made the trip by themselves. While they didn't have to come into the US illegally, to leave Russia, they had to pay a smuggler to be smuggled across the border. They had to leave illegally. I just think about the stakes for my great-grandparents, their parents, that they would be willing to take that kind of risk to send their young, teenage children on that kind of a journey for the hope of what it might mean for them to be in the United States. Deborah Waxman: That's so powerful. I want to share my Bubbe, my parental grandmother, who I was really lucky to have until I was 38 years old and spent most every Shabbat of my childhood with. I never knew my Zayde, but my grandmother, she was one of four girls, four daughters. Her father died young, and they were incredibly poor. Her mother brought her own four daughters and a fifth girl, a childhood friend, a neighbor, who ... One of the things that the immigration officials would check for would be trachoma and eye disease. If you had it, if you had the condition, they wouldn't let you in. They knew that when her family left, she had the trachoma. They spent her passage money to get her treated, and then sent more for her to come over with my grandmother's family. My great-grandmother smuggled them out of Russia and they came over. They left from Holland, and they came over. I said to my grandmother, "How did you get the money?" Apparently my great-grandmother bootlegged. She sold illegal liquor from her basement in order to raise the funds to take these five girls. I just think about that ocean crossing. My grandmother tells the story that the first time ... They had rich cousins in Romania. Somehow, they were on the border with Romania. That was the first time she saw electricity. My grandmother came over later than your ... Did you say grandfather or great-grandfather? Elliott T: Grandfather. Deborah Waxman: Grandfather. It was 1921. It was after World War One, so there were already significant immigration restrictions. She says that when they were in Romania first, they got over and they were among the last who went through Ellis Island. It was no longer the open immigration from before World War One. There were these serious constraints and these serious restrictions. Elliott T: 1921 was a really important year. That was the year that immigration, really draconian immigration standards got put in in this country. Deborah Waxman: '24 is when it got shut down completely. Elliott T: Is when it got shut down. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, yeah. Elliott T: Anybody who came in after that, if you ask, if you find anybody, almost all of them will have a real story that basically is not perfectly legal. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Elliott T: I've had easily half a dozen stories of people who snuck across the border, who came on a visa and then overstayed their visa. Had one story of a family, a man named Henry Green who, after overstaying his visa, after getting married, after having a baby, was woken up in the middle of the night and deported to Poland in 1938. Deborah Waxman: Oh my God. Elliott T: [crosstalk]... legal status. He snuck back in again. Thank God. Deborah Waxman: He got in. Somehow he got out. Yeah. Then, we have a colleague here, one of our teachers here, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, his parents were survivors from Poland. His sister was born in Poland. His father came into America on a student visa after World War Two, and then his parents tried to get pregnant so that he would be an anchor baby. He is essentially a Dreamer. He tells a story that the relatives would stand outside their door when his mother was ovulating and his parents would have sex, because everyone was praying that they would conceive so that they could stay in America. It worked. Elliott T: Yeah, no. I mean my grandfather came to America as an unaccompanied minor. Deborah Waxman: That's unbelievable. Elliott T: You know what I mean? These are not foreign stories to us. We don't always think of them that way. I think Jews like to tell a narrative of like, "We came the legal way through Ellis Island." If you just scratch below the surface, that was never perfectly true. Deborah Waxman: Oh it's right. Elliott T: We live in a world where people who are in danger are going to search for a path to safety. Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Elliott T: We know that's true, because our great-grandparents or parents or ancestors took extraordinary risks to find a place that would be safer. That's why we know that no wall is going to stop that. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Elliott T: There's always going to be a path. People are going to move just like everything else in the world we have now, whether it's commerce or ideas, moves. Deborah Waxman: "Ivrim", crossers, as you said. Elliott T: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: I feel compelled to interrupt myself to share with our listeners that, even as we're talking about sanctuary for immigrants, that Bnai Keshet has offered sanctuary to a nearby synagogue whose pipes burst and their preschool is ... You can hear their kids in the background. We apologize for the background noise. Will you tell me a little bit about the process that the congregation went through to come to this decision? Elliott T: Sure. I will just admit that I started this process in a pretty non-Reconstructionist way, that I was at a meeting and the possibility of being a sanctuary congregation was raised up. The facilitator said, "So who thinks their congregation could be a sanctuary?" My hand just shot up. Then, I walked out the door, I said, "How am I going to do this?" I mean I have some leadership potential. I mean I am the leader of the synagogue, but we have a process. Then, we kind of cycled back to that process. We spent probably three or four months with a team that was really investigating what it would mean, what the legal implications were. We had a congregational meeting where people spoke about how this was important to them, about the values it represented for them, about the reverence that it had for them, both about acknowledging that this is not the Holocaust, that we're not taking the risks that righteous Gentiles took. We are not protecting people who are necessarily at the same place of danger. They're not necessarily facing genocide, although some people might be facing similar things. Then, nonetheless, that we're aware that the people who stuck their necks out for us were taking risks, and that we weren't going to be able to move forward in a completely safe way. It took us a while to think through that, because the team who was ultimately making this decision was our board. They felt a desire to act on these values and to make sure that they didn't risk the synagogue, which brought us all together by putting us in a position where we'd be acting potentially illegally. We figured out a path, we consulted with lawyers, and a path for what it would mean for us to offer sanctuary. When the board approved it, they said, "We approve it, but we have to find our own lawyer. We have to come up with a plan for under what circumstances we would accept somebody to sanctuary. We have to build a team that's ready to do the work. We have to make sure that we know how to articulate a thoughtful [inaudible] with potential guests, so that everything about what we really can do." Once we were able to articulate that, there was a unanimous vote of the board. Deborah Waxman: That's great. Sounds like you're really in touch with the vulnerability, and trying to both acknowledge it and move beyond it and are aware that it's going to come up again and again and again. Elliott T: Right. Think about the fact that the very first Jew ever is an immigrant. The very first commandment ever is for Abraham to go someplace new. The story didn't have to start there. I mean why couldn't Abraham have stayed in place? Or if he needed to move, why not just start once he's already in Israel? We don't start at the beginning of his birth. It's -- to me, it feels like there's something essential in the willingness to go some place new, and the kind of vulnerability that it creates, that our text is trying to point us towards. That keeps coming up in our process. We have such love and concern within our leadership for making sure that we protect the assets of the synagogue, that we protect our ability to serve as a community and be a synagogue that sometimes we'll try and prepare for every possible contingency. Every time we do that, we bump back into the truth that when we are asked to be a sanctuary, it's not going to be with some ideal perfect candidate. It's going to be with a real person with a challenging, imperfect story and we're not going to be able to solve everything. We're going to have to enter into it ultimately taking some real risk, and that part of the learning is that all the people out there who are living lives as undocumented individuals, they're living in that vulnerability all the time. Deborah Waxman: I understand you've had some inquiries. You're committed, but not yet enacting. That you're prepared, but not yet living this through. Elliott T: Right. What that has given us the opportunity is to meet with those individuals and to start to hear their stories and to hear ... One was a woman who had come over from Honduras really seeking a better life from her family and seeking an escape from poverty, and who had come over illegally, was detained. Though she was released on her own recognizance, never went back because she knew that that would just lead to her being deported again. Another woman had already ... Her husband had just been deported, and she was living with three kids all in different status of being ... One was a Dreamer, one was born here and one was not even - [didn't] have DACA status -- and trying to decide what to do, whether she should go back to her husband in Bangladesh. Or whether she needed to stay here with the kids to try and make this a place that they could stay. Deborah Waxman: We're going to start to wind down, but I'm just wondering how do you think this process has changed you, as a person and as a Jew and as a Rabbi, and how do you think it's changing your congregation? Elliott T: I think that for congregations to be successful today, they have to be really clear about their purpose. For all the lovely things that come with being a part of a community, there's also some obligation and some purpose. More people have volunteered to be engaged in this than almost any project we've had for years. I'll say for myself, I feel like it is the culmination of why I became a rabbi. I became a rabbi to take what is central about Jewish life and enact it within the world. It's really clear that this is just the beginning of the journey. Things are continuing to look really dark in the United States. It seems likely we will be asked to offer sanctuary to somebody. When we do, there's a million things that are going to come up from that experience that we can't anticipate. The most important one is we're going to build a particular relationship with an individual or their family, and that's going to change them and change us. Deborah Waxman: It's beautiful. Here we are in the season of storytelling, remember you were once a stranger, and we're asked at Pesach to tell that story. We tend to, especially we Rabbis, we tend to talk about it in the grand with the Israelites and with the Jewish people. You are distilling it down to my story, our story, your story, the stranger who will become part of your community in a very, very central way. It's very beautiful. It's very holy. It's very scary. It's very powerful. Elliott T: I mean most years when we say, "We're going to open the door. Let all who are hungry, come and eat," it's just meant as a nice metaphor. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Elliott T: This year, we painted a room. We've put a bed in that room. We can say that with a whole heart, knowing that we mean it. Deborah Waxman: Ah, ah. That's a beautiful way to end. I wish you so much luck. I can't wait to hear how it unfolds, and on behalf of the Reconstructionist Movement, whatever support we can offer you. To be continued since it is, I think, the beginning of something ongoing. I would like to thank my guest, Rabbi Elliott Tepperman, for our powerful conversation on sanctuary and a little bit on Pesach. For more information, you can look at our website, Hashivenu.fireside.fm. You can also find more resources on this topic on ReconstructingJudaism.org and on Ritualwell.org. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience.