American Jewish History Milestone, Immigration and W O W
Temple Concord
April 26, 2013 ShabbatEmor
Rabbi Barbara Goldman-Wartell
I want to start tonight talking about how we came to this country first in the beginning, then
some other important milestones of this week and what we can do to continue moving forward.
Today is an important date in American Jewish History. D o you know how Jews came to settle
in this country? It wasn't by some great plan. The first Jewish immigrants to North America
came as refugees. In September of 1654, 23 Jewish men, women and children fled from the
former the Dutch colony of Recife, Brazil after the Portuguese re-captured Brazil and
introduced the Inquisition. The Jewish experience with the Inquisition had been terrible:
persecution, forced conversion, torture, expulsion. These were reasons enough for the Jews to
flee.
Their journey was not easy. While sailing toward Jamaica - their ship was overrun by a Spanish
privateer who stripped the Jews of all of their possessions. Homeless, penniless, with nowhere
to turn- the Jewish party landed in New Amsterdam - hoping that the Dutch Colony would be
welcoming. I actually met a man in this community whose ancestor came to New Amsterdam,
a non Jew, on that ship with those 23 Jews.
However, New Amsterdam's governor, Peter Stuyvesant, made it clear that the Jews were not
welcome. Stuyvesant wrote a letter to the Dutch West India Company board - who oversaw the
Dutch colony. He requested permission to expel the Jews, saying: The Jews who have arrived
would nearly all like to remain here, ...., we have, for the benefit of this weak and newly
developing place and the land in general, deemed it useful to require them to depart.... praying
that the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not
allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.
Peter Stuyvesant did not want these refugees, this group of many men with women and children
to settle there. He feared they would be a burden to the Dutch colony. We hear the same
sentiments from many voices in our country today. Immigrants, many of whom are refugees
and can't return safely to the country from which they have fled, are viewed with suspicion and
fear. Our ancestors were viewed that way too. They came with the shirts on their backs, worn
down from their flight. They were strangers, different from the people in New Amsterdam.
They prayed differently, ate differently, may have spoken differently.
Thankfully for us, the Dutch West Indian Company responded on A p r i l 26, 1655 from
Amsterdam. Exactly 358 years ago, their ruling came to Stuyvesant. They ordered Stuyvesant
to allow the Jews to remain in N e w Amsterdam. A n d Despite Stuyvesant's clear anti-Jewish
sentiments, he ultimately complied. This set the stage for the building of Jewish communities in
North America.
Y o u can look this up and how this first Jewish community made N e w Amsterdam its home
alongside others. Our history in the United States is rich and varied, but it started out with very
humble and precarious beginnings. Those first refugees could not have done it on their own;
they would have been turned away with no place to go.
We are now settled in the United States and it is up to us to stand up for the fair treatment o f
new immigrants to this country. We were not only strangers in Egypt as we remembered on
Passover; our ancestors were strangers in this country, too. We need to speak out and support
the new comprehensive immigration reform bill that has been introduced in the Senate.
Contact our Senators Gillibrand and Schumer. Let them know you support comprehensive
immigration reform. The current bill is a good starting place. We need to be concerned that the
waiting time to reunite family members who are separated by immigration issues is
significantly reduced. It can be 7 years for Asian immigrants. Border protection policies
consistent with American humanitarian values and effective against illegal immigration and
security threats is another important component. There also need to be opportunities for hard
working immigrants already contributing to our country to be able to regularlize their status and
over time strive to be lawful permanent residents and eventually U S citizens. The final area is
to have legal avenues for workers and their families to enter our country and work in safe, legal
and orderly ways that also meet the needs of employers.
Can you imagine what it might have been like for those 23 Jewish refugees in New Amsterdam,
waiting from September until A p r i l to learn if they would be able to stay or would have to leave
and search for another place to stay? How was it for your family members when they first came
to North America, to the United States? They had already been through so much. We need to
be caring and compassionate for other immigrants and take to heart and mind our own
experiences as we look at other newcomers.
There was another official decision that came out this week of great importance to us, this one
in Israel. More than 25 years ago, a group of women started to meet to pray together on Rosh
Hodesh at the Kotel, the Western Wall of the ancient holy Temple in Jerusalem. The group
Women of the W a l l has met with great resistance, especially from the ultra Orthodox
administrators of the Kotel area. Over the past couple of years, women have been detained by
police for wearing a tallit, holding a Torah and praying prayers out loud in a group at the Kotel.
There have been cases in the court system and mixed groups of men and women are allowed to
pray together at an area south of the holy Temple known as Robinson's Arch, still an
archeological site and not set up like the Western Wall. Women of the Wall has continued to
gather at the Kotel, a group of women to pray on the women's side of the divider at the Western
Wall. New developments have moved quickly since the beginning o f this month, lyar, when
the women who were detained were taken to a local court and the judge stated quite clearly that
they had not "disturbed the peace by their praying out loud or wearing at tallit. The judge ruled
the police had no grounds for detaining the women or arresting them. This was a ground
breaking ruling. This week the appeal of the police came to a higher court and strengthened
religious pluralism in Israel, a victory for all o f us Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and
other non Orthodox Jews throughout the world. The Landmark ruling restores the Western
Wall's status as a national symbol. The judge's reasoning in the Women of the Wall case leans
on understanding Judaism as a pluralistic and inclusive religion.
In 2 weeks, Jerusalem will commemorate the 46* anniversary of the Six Day War and the
capture of East Jerusalem and with it the Old City and the Western Wall - the Kotel.
Ceremonies will be held in memory of the IDF paratroopers - "liberators of the Kotel." A s of
this past Thursday District Court Judge Moshe Sobel can also deserve the distinction of being a
liberator of the Western Wall following his landmark ruling in the case o f the Women o f the
Wall. His ruling heralds no less than a revolution in the way the Western W a l l is run.
Judge Sobel's ruling that the "local custom" regulating behavior by the wall is not according to
an Orthodox interpretation but a "pluralistic-secular-national" one is a total rejection of the
status-quo and restores the Western Wall's status as a national symbol - one that belongs to
every Israeli citizen and every Jew from around the world.
His ruling also says something wider about Israelis in public life. While it is generally
understood that the state religion of the Jewish state is Orthodox rabbinical Judaism, this has
never been set in law. Not only is it not ground to arrest women who want to respectfully pray
wrapped in prayer shawls, this ruling also gives some heft to claims by the Reform and
Conservative movements that their communities are discriminated against in budgets and
government appointments.
The origins of the "local custom" concept is in religious Jewish law (minhag hamakom) but
Judge Sobel, himself a religious man whose children study at National-Orthodox schools, has
decided that the local custom in Israel is one that does not exclusively conform to any religious
definition but should be shared by an entire nation.
This is exciting and encouraging to us as Reform Jews in the United States. We live and
breathe religious pluralism and diversity, so having this forward movement in Israel is
heartening to us. It didn't happen in a vacuum. Just as it took those 23 Jewish refugees
coming to New Amsterdam to open the way for Jews to be able settle in this country, so it took
a dedicated group of women who met for more than 25 years for every Rosh Hodesh , often
with great impediments, even to be arrested, to get to this point.
We need to stand up and speak out for what we believe in, to work to be heard and understood.
We can do it! We can Perservere! Shabbat Shalom!
(Special thanks to Rabbi Asher Gottesfeld Knight, Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz and the people of Women of the
Wall.)