In this op-ed for the Washington Post, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg talks about her experience being arrested a week ago alongside 18 of her fellow rabbis as they protested the Trump administration’s policies targeting refugees and immigrants including the ban on travel from seven mostly Muslim nations.
In the piece she writes:
“The Jewish tradition commands us to speak out against injustice, and Jewish history teaches us how imperative it is that those not targeted by hate stand up for those who are. It was, we believe, the largest mass arrest of rabbis in U.S. history…
The offering I made Monday night was symbolic, if no less physical. I chose to allow my hands to be cuffed, my body to be put into a jail cell. I chose to use my privilege and my position as a clergyperson — regarded in our society as having a special kind of moral authority — to send a message to the public and those with institutional power that this assault on human safety and dignity is unacceptable.”
Danya Ruttenberg is a rabbi in residence at Avodah, and author of “Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting.”
