--Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer

On January 3, 2000, I stood outside the Federal Court in Brooklyn, NY in unlikely company. There to call for justice for police torture victim Abner Louima was a lesbian Reform rabbi; an activist African American minister; a former gang member and Latino civil rights activist; one of the most controversial and outspoken leaders of the African American community; and a suburban Jewish mother whose ba'al t'shuvah (newly Orthodox) son had recently been murdered by the police. We were there together in large part because of the activism of the organization where I work, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ). Our presence reflects some of the most pressing challenges facing Jewish social justice activists--and indeed a revitalized grassroots movement for civil rights--in this next century.

State violence is no stranger to Jewish experience. But in my multi-ethnic city, by and large, the experience of most Jews with our police force is an amicable one. Most Jews here, and particularly the public face of the Jewish community, experience and affirm that the police serve and protect. However, increasing numbers of immigrants, young people, communities of color, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender people and economically disadvantaged people do not share that experience.

In recent widely publicized reports in the New York Times, for instance, a high percentage of the Black community expressed distrust of the police--distrust based on frightening, violent, harassing encounters that they, their loved ones or friends have personally had. Sadly, in the last few years, the number of brutal confrontations between NYPD officers and our citizenry has grown and attracted worldwide attention. How many readers of this article outside NYC will recognize one or more of these names: Anthony Baez, Eleanor Bumpers, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Gary (Gidone) Busch, all victims of police murder or assault?

This epidemic of police misconduct-and the attendant culture of police immunity that many in our city's leadership, including Mayor Giuliani, have helped foster-is an affront to racial harmony and a threat to personal liberty. It is an enormous and pressing social problem. Many people who have directly experienced this problem have spoken out about it and called for change.

At JFREJ, we believe that this is also a Jewish issue. In a city where most Jews are middle-class or affluent, and where the vast majority of Jews are white, the treatment of our neighbors, the climate in our city itself, is just as important as what we personally experience. For us, state violence is a Jewish issue, not just because of Jewish historical experience--from the Inquisition to the Holocaust to the Rosenbergs--but also because of what Rabbi Meyer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke so passionately about. Police brutality is a Jewish issue because we are interconnected to and responsible for everyone around us. How can the Jewish teacher who hears that her Puerto Rican and Asian students have been arrested and harassed by the cops decline to act?

Deciding how, when and with whom to act is not easy. In our struggle to mobilize Jewish participation in the justice movement, we have faced a lot of criticism, hesitancy, and opposition. Isn't ridding our streets of crime a higher priority, people have argued? And what about the sordid political pasts of some of the folks who have been most outspoken on this issue? Which kinds of compromises are acceptable when working in coalition, and which are not?

In the fight to make our city a better place for everyone, we've learned that ethical choices won't always be comfortable ones. Building relationships with people whose experience is different from ours requires not assuming that we know more than they do, and committing for the long-haul on an issue. We need to be willing to take risks and challenge our own community about its mandate of tikkun olam.

In New York City, JFREJ members have often been virtually the only Jews speaking out about a problem, and have frequently been ostracized by others in the Jewish community when we dissent. We've struggled to make choices about working with people and communities with whom we might not always see eye to eye, but with whom we share a vision about a particular issue. We have to weigh when we, as Jews, can strategically make a difference, and what kinds of tactical choices are not possible for us. We try to be humble and brave, and willing to confront power and intolerance--and challenge ourselves.

Last spring, we organized a day of civil disobedience to protest the killing of an unarmed immigrant, and I was full of last minute worries the night before. What if the risk we were taking together--as secular and observant, young and old, gay and straight Jews-was too great? Would it cost us too much in our connections to other Jews across the city? Would it be a difficult legacy for JFREJ? And what would it mean for race relations in our city? Could our actions--or lack of them-make a difference?

The next morning, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis linked arms with Reverend Al Sharpton--who has been criticized for insensitivity to Jewish issues in the past. A throng of secular and radical and outraged Jewish teachers, students, social workers, writers, artists, and parents stood side-by-side with other New Yorkers from all walks of life. Together we said, "not in our name."

I thought of Muriel Rukeyser, the great Jewish poet and thinker, who wrote: "In times of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness. And then we turn; for it is a turning that we have prepared; and act."

The kind of courage that we had to have that day outside police headquarters is, for me, a symbol of what it really means to be responsible for our society, to be our brothers' and sisters' keepers. Working with the understanding that our plight is inextricably intertwined with everyone around us, whether or not our lives are the same, is what guided the years of coalition building, connecting and struggling that poised us to mobilize our Jewish community after Amadou Diallo's death. The stakes and the situations won't be the same in every Jewish and American community, but the questions we have to ask ourselves will be. We must ask ourselves not only, "What does it mean for us to engage?" but also "What does it mean for us not to?"

JFREJ had been working on the issue of police brutality long before it made the headlines, reaching out to communities who were the first to identify this problem. That poised us to deepen our ties to others in the city, when, sadly, our Jewish community was later rocked by the same issue when Gary (Gidone) Busch was murdered in an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn.

As I linked arms with his mother that afternoon a few weeks ago outside Federal Court, I reflected on how JFREJ had helped link her and her family to a broader civil rights movement. We'd been able to do that precisely because of our outspokenness long before--and without any anticipation that--this problem would directly touch our Jewish community. The imperative for us as Jews, to see beyond the complications that can serve to divide us from our neighbors to a vision of justice, was never so clear.