Coinciding with Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) organizers, along with many local rabbis, will express opposition to President Trump’s immigration policies by staging an in-person event at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles on Aug. 3.
Dubbed “Our Collective Cry to Rebuild Sanctuary,” the action will feature two hours of Jewish rituals and programming, including a Shacharit (morning) service; the reading of Kinnot, liturgical poems of lamentations that are recited on Tisha b’Av; and a shofar blowing. The event’s cosponsors include IKAR, Pico Union Project, Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles and Challah and Soul.
“As Tisha b’Av approaches, a substantial part of the Jewish community feels this real intense moral objection to what’s happening,” Matthew Hom, the Los Angeles and Santa Monica organizer at CLUE, told The Journal in a recent phone interview. “We’re coming together in solidarity to protect immigrants and everyone in our community.”
The planned action follows the signing of a letter by 550 rabbis and cantors across the country, including 77 in California and 28 in Los Angeles, that denounced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Southern California, as well as the decision of U.S. President Trump to deploy the National Guard in support of ICE agents as they faced heavy protests.
Local signatories to the letter include Rabbis Susan Goldberg and Aryeh Cohen as well as Michelle Missaghieh of Temple Israel of Hollywood and Ron Stern of Stephen Wise Temple.
“It is central to our Jewish values to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Goldberg, founder of progressive spiritual community Nefesh, said in a statement accompanying the letter. “What is happening to our neighbors is cruel and simply reprehensible. It is important that we raise our voices as a Jewish community to stand together with those at the center of this hateful scapegoating and to call out for a world we know is possible.”
“The assault on, and kidnapping of citizens by ICE and other federal agents, coupled with the invasion of our city by the National Guard and the Marines is appalling,” Cohen, professor of rabbinic literature at the American Jewish University, said in a separate statement.
Several retired rabbis from major Los Angeles synagogues—including Rabbis Lisa Edwards of Beth Chayim Chadashim; Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills; Chaim Seidler-Feller, former executive director at Hillel at UCLA; Mel Gottlieb, former president of Academy of Jewish Religion, CA and Karen Fox, formerly of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, among them—also signed on.
The letter states, in part, “We, the undersigned Jewish clergy in the United States…condemn the indiscriminate and violent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids…and the incursion of soldiers under the command of President Donald Trump into Los Angeles.”
It adds, “Our Jewish tradition and values demand that we show up unwaveringly with immigrants, and that we fiercely protect the right to free speech and protest.”
The letter was organized by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, a national rabbinic human rights organization, and CLUE, a movement of social justice-focused faith leaders in Southern California.
Read the full letter here.
