June 14 will be America's Day of Judgment. For Jews it will be Shabbat - but for everyone it will feel like Yom Kippur.
The fact that Shabbat can be overridden in matters of life and death has never been so relevant as this week. Our peaceful protests will save lives. Third of a 3-part series leading up to June 14.
But before we begin……
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This is what the map of (1500 +) No Kings protests throughout the US will look like on Saturday…
And this is what Washington DC looks like right now…
This is the third of a three-part series anticipating the historic events of June 14 from Jewish and religious perspectives. The two prior posts:
What June 14 will mean for America: focusing on how a military parade in Washington D.C. will desecrate our nation’s most sacred spaces.
"No Kings" misses the point. Trump doesn't think he's king - he thinks he's God - Why the Torah rejects kings - especially those who behave like Trump - along with the mass psychosis1 generated by false messianic claims.
Along with millions of other Americans, I’ll be joining a local “No Kings” protest this weekend, and I’ll be violating the Sabbath to get there. But in doing so, I’ll be fulfilling the greatest of Jewish religious duties – one that supersedes even the Shabbat: saving lives.
Yes, this protest is so important that I – a rabbi – am going to blatantly disrupt God’s holy Sabbath. But if the ancient rabbinic sages are to be believed, that’s precisely what God wants me to do, for doing so declares in action beyond word that America is at a place of existential extremis right now - hovering between life and death.
The obligation to save lives overrules virtually all other Jewish laws, and these protests, if successful, will surely save lives, and could help save America. I can think of no better way to dramatize both the historic magnitude and the religious significance of this moment than to hop on the Shab-bus.
Countless lives are hanging in the balance, here and around the world. We need a massive nationwide demonstration to counter the authoritarian blitzkrieg that has marked the opening months of Trump 2.0, and that will require my “working” on Shabbat.
While for Jews it will be Sabbath, for America as a whole this Saturday will be our Yom Kippur, when our fates are sealed for life or for death, not by God, however, but by our own actions. More than any time since World War Two, our democracy is on the line this weekend. We need to choose wisely, act courageously and protest peacefully, in the face of Trump’s threats against protesters.
Since this Saturday will be the equivalent of an American High Holiday, it’s appropriate to include one of the great prayers in American history.
On D-Day, President Roosevelt went on the radio and recited a prayer to steady the hearts and resolve of the American people at a time of unprecedented anxiety. At that time the fate of the world lay in the hands of simple men and women - hundreds of thousands of them, crashing through the waves into the fire. It’s a great and heartbreaking irony that parts of FDR’s prayer could be recited verbatim right now and fit perfectly:
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world, unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
That is my prayer for America!
Why will this Saturday be America’s Yom Kippur?
In ancient times on that day, the high priest would enter the most sacred spot in the cosmos, the Holy of Holies, with the utmost of care and purification. In contrast, the military parade is an abomination, desecrating many of our holiest national shrines in one fell swoop. As I wrote in my prior pieces about our sacred spaces:
The route begins with the Lincoln Memorial itself, and passes the Vietnam Memorial Wall, the MLK Memorial on the other side of the Reflecting Pool, the World War Two Memorial, and the Korean War Memorial. It will end right in front of the African American Museum and across the Mall from the Holocaust Museum. It will also pass within view of the Watergate, and the Kennedy Center, which has already been desecrated, spiritually contaminated like the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was in 168 BCE, when Antiochus Epiphanes brought in a pig to replace the daily sacrifice.
This autocratic march will spit on these symbols of America’s most painful moments, - and then end right where that most treasonous of rallies took place - will both be an insult to those heroes and an inspiration for us to master this current moment.
On the High Holidays, Jews proclaim the sovereignty of God and simultaneously our humility. God is mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103).2 All people are equal before God. The No Kings protests drive home the essential theme that America has zero tolerance for a monarchy and the mass psychosis of false messianism and we are willing to show up to defend our Constitution.
As I wrote in my No Kings posting:
And if anyone who presumes to lead this country, or any country, assumes the mantle of divine authority and blessing, that notion must be emphatically rejected by the people. No American president has so coldly identified himself with messianic salvation since the founding of this nation. People of faith need to band together to proclaim, “No Kings - and No Messiahs too!”
I believe with a complete faith, that WHATEVER TRUMP IS TRYING TO PULL, GOD DOES NOT WANT THIS.
The fact that Shabbat can be overridden to attend these rallies is a demonstration that this is indeed a matter of life and death, not just for Jews who observe Shabbat, but everyone. Yom Kippur is an actual rehearsal of death - through denial of the basics of sustenance, food and drink, and pushing away all normal activity for 25 hours.
The religious obligation in question, which demands that even Shabbat (or Yom Kippur) must be overridden to save lives, is called, in Hebrew, Pikuach Nefesh and is derived from Leviticus 18:5, which states, “You shall keep My laws and rules, by the pursuit of which people shall live; I am the Lord.” Other biblical verses reinforce the message that laws are intended to sanctify and preserve life, not to cause undue risk of death.
FDR’s D-Day prayer is mine for America today:
With thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world, unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Judaism has always promoted a culture of life (it bears noting that in Jewish sources, human life is defined as beginning at or about the time of birth). The Talmud states that to save a single life is equivalent to saving the world.
The last time I protested on Shabbat it was for the March for our Lives after the Parkland massacre. The children at Sandy Hook and teens in Parkland, along with the slain of Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Orlando and so many other places, add up to tens of thousands of victims of gun violence per year – tens of thousands of worlds destroyed. These unbearable and intolerable losses fueled my decision to become a one-time conscientious objector toward Sabbath rest. If so many victims are not resting in peace, how could allow myself to rest at all?
I believe that same justification holds true this weekend. Trump’s agenda will make Americans less safe from guns, and from so much more. He is obsessed with his ongoing persecution of the weakest among us, most especially migrants.
According to the NBC Deportation Tracker, the vast majority of those detained thus far are not convicted criminals.
“No Kings” is a response to the inexcusable provocations that are being perpetrated by ICE and the Administration in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
But it is not just about immigration policy. We’ve seen a whole panoply of abuses and dangers, and each one has cost lives.
Boston University calculated the loss of life from USAid cutbacks. Here’s what it looked like as of late March:
See also: Trump’s Legacy Will Be the Countless People Killed by His Policies (The Nation) “Millions across the world could die because of the choices Trump has made in his first 100 days.”
See also: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency (Pro Publica) : “One million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos estimated. The programs were cut anyway.”
And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the million-plus Americans who died of Covid. It’s clear that many of those deaths could have been prevented by a better response from the clueless Trump White House. More pandemics could be just around the corner and Trump and RFK have rendered us totally defenseless.
So there are lots of lives at stake right now, including potentially yours and mine, given the deliberate trashing of the scientific and medical communities and defunding of universities. Draconian times require draconian actions. Overriding Shabbat is, for observant Jews, one of the most draconian acts imaginable. This week requires it. We need to demonstrate the urgency of the moment. Both the life of our democracy and literally our very lives are on the line.
The Talmudic sages taught that one who is vigilant in saving a life on Shabbat is praiseworthy. The Talmud presents several scenarios involving permissible Sabbath violations, including rescuing a child from a pit or saving someone drowning in the sea. The rabbis applied the principles of Pikuach Nefesh to saving the lives of both Jews and Gentiles and made it clear that the risk of death did not need to be certain or immediate.
While for Jews it will be Sabbath, for America as a whole this Saturday will be our Yom Kippur, when our fates are sealed for life or for death - not by God, however, but by our own actions. More than any time since World War Two, our democracy is on the line this weekend. We need to choose wisely, act courageously and protest peacefully, in the face of Trump’s threats against protesters.
Pikuach Nefesh was most notably applied in the second century BCE, after Seleucid armies adopted the strategy of attacking Jewish renegades on Shabbat. The Jews offered little resistance and were slaughtered. In 1 Maccabees, the Hasmonean patriarch Mattathias rejected that blind piety, stating, “If anyone comes against us on the Sabbath day, we shall fight against him and not all die as our brothers did in their hiding places.”
The most famous case in modern times occurred during a cholera epidemic in 1848, when the great Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Salanter stood before his community on Yom Kippur and encouraged them to end their fast prematurely. He dramatized that plea by eating and drinking in front of them.3
In an account written eight decades later, Salanter is said to have stated, “There are times when one must turn aside from the Law, if by doing so a whole community may be saved. With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give leave to eat and drink on the Day of Atonement.”
Salanter’s snack did not directly save any lives, and in fact, contemporary opponents noted that many thousands of Jews in those same lands who disregarded his gesture survived. But it is conceivable that some who were in a weakened state would have become sick without their midafternoon energy bar, or whatever Salanter cooked up for them (presumably not a ham sandwich). The mere chance that his life-affirming act could have limited the spread of that deadly disease was sufficient to warrant his gesture.
If this is not an act of Pikuach Nefesh, I don’t know what is.
Click here for a source booklet I put together on Pikuach Nefesh, including a detailed discussion of Rabbi Israel Salanter’s gambit during the cholera epidemic.4
I was speaking with a veteran of the ’60s Vietnam protests, who shared the observation that when she was in college and she and her classmates marched against the war, it saddened her that no adults marched with them. Given what we now know about how successive administrations systematically lied to the American people about Vietnam over the course of decades, leading to the senseless deaths of over 50,000 American soldiers and many more innocent civilians, one wonders if things would have turned out differently if more adults had turned against the war sooner, rather than just shrugging and saying, “Kids these days…”
More should have joined the march then. Given the terror that immigrants, students, LGBTQ Americans, Jews, Muslims and so many more – not that different from that fear felt by students of draft age in the ’60s – I will not let any potential victim march alone this time. As Martin Luther King said about Vietnam in a famous speech delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly a year before he was gunned down, “A time comes when silence is betrayal, and that time is now.”
At Selma, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched alongside Martin Luther King, remarked that he felt like he was praying with his feet. On June 14, I will be praying with my feet too. And while I walk, I’ll be praying that, in some small way, I’ll be saving lives, and thereby, just maybe, helping to save the world.5
If anyone accuses you of Trump Derangement Syndrome, point them to this article about mass psychosis and ask who in fact is truly deranged by Trump: Our False Messiah: Why Trump’s cult of personality is danger to both America and democracy (Milwaukee Independent) - “Donald Trump has built a cult around himself. This is dangerous to America and dangerous to democracy. Cults of personality in governance are broadly incompatible with democracy. They usually erupt in dictatorships where the Great Leader’s face and sayings are splashed all over public places. Think Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Kim’s North Korea.”
From the High Holidays liturgy (taken from Machzor Lev Shalem):
Read all the details about the Salanter cholera on Yom Kippur on pages 9-16 of this packet:
For those who seek more info, here’s a quick video explaining the concept quite well.
After I used some of these same arguments to explain why I’d be joining the March for Our Lives, Rabbi Jennifer Singer from Sarasota posted this for her congregation:
March for Our Lives
I have been grappling with a conundrum. Do I suggest to you that we march this Saturday morning at the March for Our Lives, even though it's Shabbat? Or do I suggest that you stay home because it's Shabbat?
The march was organized by teenagers to push legislators to enact sensible gun laws. There will be a massive march in Washington, DC on Saturday, and in hundreds of communities across the nation, including ours.
It doesn't conflict with our services; we have a service every weekend, alternating between Friday and Saturday, and this weekend it's on Friday night. But Saturday is still Shabbat, even if we're not praying together. So I asked the editors of the congregational newsletter to omit it from this week's issue.
But I have been uncomfortable with that decision; after all, gun violence is something about which I am passionate, as you know since I write and speak about it often.
Therefore, I have decided to follow my conscience, and tell you that I will be at the march in downtown Sarasota at 10:00 am this Saturday morning to stand with the teenagers who are marching for sensible gun laws. I invite you to join me.
I do this because too many lives have been cut short and too many more lives are at risk.
I do this because Judaism teaches that pikuach nefesh, saving a life, takes precedence over the laws of Shabbat.
I do this because I am disgusted by our nation's tolerance of excessive gun ownership, especially when it comes to weapons that I believe do not belong in the hands of civilians.
I do this because I wish to emulate Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said that when he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King, Jr. he felt that he was praying with his feet.
I do this because giving money to The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is no longer enough for me.
And I do this because just this week there was another shooting at a school. It happens again and again and again, and if our legislators aren't going to do anything about it on their own, I feel obligated to do my part to force them to act.
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman wrote an op-ed in the Times of Israel about his decision to participate in the march, and said this: "The obligation to save lives overrules virtually all other Jewish laws, and this march, if successful, will surely save lives. I can think of no better way to dramatize both the historic magnitude and the religious significance of this march than to hop on the Shab-bus."
I agree wholeheartedly, and will proudly march on Shabbat, wearing a tallit and kipa.
If you wish to join me on Shabbat morning here in Sarasota, I will be proud to march with you
Thank you for this message. My husband and I will be marching in Philadelphia. I particularly liked the idea of praying with our feet.
Thank you for your willingness to protest. I will pray for your safety.