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February 2, 2012
In this Issue:
Meet the Human Rights Rabbi of the Month: Rabbi Eric Solomon
Each month, one of our bi-weekly e-newsletters will feature a rabbi or cantor who is a chaver (affiliate) of RHR-NA who is doing courageous human rights work in his or her own community. Please send nominations for the human rights rabbi/cantor of the month to humanrightsrabbi@rhr-na.org. In your e-mail, tell us why your rabbi/cantor is a human rights hero, and send us any relevant press links.
 This month, meet Rabbi Eric Solomon of Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh, NC. Rabbi Solomon is a leader in an interfaith coalition that constructed billboards that aim to put a human face on immigration and to curtail rhetoric that dehumanizes immigrants. "Once they’re here, the question for me is not about whether they’re legal, documented, undocumented or illegal. That question is complicated and has its own conversation," Rabbi Solomon told the Winston-Salem Journal. "The issue is when they’re here, do we welcome them with the highest values that America and my Torah teaches us in terms of welcome and love of the stranger, that every person is made in God’s image." Solomon has also partnered with a conservative Christian minister to oppose a North Carolina amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples. Within the Conservative Movement, he leads the Food Justice subcommittee of the Rabbinical Assembly Social Action Committee.
Kol hakavod to Rabbi Solomon for his leadership in North Carolina and beyond.
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RHR-NA is celebrating Tu Bish'vat by supporting our partners at Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel as they plant trees on both sides of the Green Line. In the West Bank, the 3000 olive trees that RHR will plant this year replace trees destroyed by settler violence. In the Negev, the trees will take root in communities of Bedouin Israeli citizens fighting the demolition of their ancestral villages.
Plant Two Trees
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RHR-NA's new Planting Justice: A Human Rights Seder for Tu Bish'vat focuses on human rights issues in both Israel and North America, and includes a full seder with traditional and contemporary blessings, texts for discussion, readings, and meditations. If you do use this seder in your community, please e-mail us to let me know how it went.
Download Haggadah
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Follow #TomatoRabbis on Twitter this Monday through Wednesday, as a group of RHR-NA rabbis travel to Immokalee, FL to learn about modern-day slavery and other labor abuses in the tomato fields. Watch Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei, who participated in the fall mission to Immokalee, speak to his congregation about the importance of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their fight for just tomatoes. And, join us next weekend, as rabbis will be speaking at rallies in support of migrant workers' rights across the country.
Find an Event Near You
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Join with hundreds of other rabbis and be publicly counted as a “Rabbi for Human Rights Chaver/a.” Learn about how you can become more involved in the work of RHR-NA and how to get invitations for special programs, conference calls, and tours to see human rights issues on the ground.
Become a Rabbinic Chaver/a Today
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D'var Torah for Parshat Beshallah 2012/5772 by Rabbi Ron Aigen, Congregation Dorshei Emet, Montreal
At the climax of the Exodus story we find the theme of reversals introduced as both a positive and negative feature of the path to freedom. Pharaoh has a change of heart (vayehefah levav) about having let the Israelites go: “What is this we have done, releasing Israel from our service?” Ordering his army to pursue them, he sets the stage for the miraculous splitting of the Sea through which the Israelites will pass “on dry ground” while Pharaoh and his army are drowned.
Pharaoh’s fatal reversal comes about when he learns that the Israelites also had a change of heart. Rather than go on the three-day journey to worship their God, they instead set out on what will be a much longer journey “lest they change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” According to the Torah, this longer route is a preventive measure in case the people don’t have the courage or strength of conviction to withstand the hardships of battle that freedom entails...
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