A Rabbi Live from Minneapolis

(As I write this week are on lockdown in a church. ICE abducted someone a few blocks away. Protesters are hurt. I am safe. And I am unafraid.)

Primary learning:

No one is coming to save us.

No one is going to tell us what to do.

There is no one in charge of the resistance.

Each person must act according to their own conscience and their own abilities.

There is no cavalry coming.

So we must prepare — morally, communally, practically.

It is –16 degrees outside today in Minneapolis.

The cold is cruel. Bitter. The harshest of urban winter climates — the kind that immobilizes a city and turns ordinary movement into danger.

This extreme climate mirrors another extreme climate here: ICE’s reign of terror.

A secret police.

Targeting Black and brown people — in schools, hospitals, workplaces. Families are living in hiding. Mutual aid groups are delivering food to hundreds of people who are afraid to leave their homes. Life has slowed, narrowed, and in some cases stopped altogether for fear of capture.

This is how terror works.

Not only through arrests, but through fear that freezes daily life.

In back rooms.

Away from windows.

If someone must go out, there is no certainty they will return.

We know this terror as Jews.

We know what it is to be hunted. To be stripped of rights. To have society turn on you. To realize there is nowhere left to run. Jewish history teaches us that these moments do not begin with camps. They begin when fear governs daily life — and when neighbors decide this is not their responsibility.

Do we believe Americans are immune to this kind of cruelty?

History suggests the question is not about nationality. It is about how many resist, how many comply, and how many look away.

I am here to witness, to learn, and to act, because what is happening in Minneapolis is not isolated. It is already happening in Washington and across this country.

Judaism is unambiguous: do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.

Do unto others. This is not a slogan. It is central. It is binding.

As Jews, shaped by memory and commanded by conscience, we cannot turn our backs on our neighbors — not now, not ever.