Rosh Hashanah

L’Shanah Tovah

The JN invited local rabbis to share a holiday message with the community.

Turning & Returning

T

Rabbi Aura
Ahuvia

16

his summer, for the first
time in my life, I was
arrested. I participated
in the Poor People’s Campaign,
six weeks of marches in Lansing
and across America to bring
attention to social and political
issues. Thanks to the efforts of
Rabbi Alana Alpert, among oth-
ers, several clergy and activists of
all religions received specialized
training in how to risk arrest
through acts of civil disobedi-
ence.
Risking arrest requires special
preparation, such as securing
“arrest buddies” to hold our
things and learning to comply
with police arrest instructions to
avoid committing a felony.
Certain moments of prepara-
tion caused me personal con-
sternation. For instance, we had
to tie fabric bands around our
upper arms so our “arrest bud-
dies” could find us in the crowd.
Personally, this stoked feelings
of fear because it was reminis-
cent of being a target, just as my
grandparents were in pre-WWII
Austria. What is more, we had to

September 6 • 2018

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write the phone number of our
pro-bono lawyer on our arm in
permanent marker. Writing that
number on my arm, of my own
volition, gave me chills. I thought
of the great-grandmother I never
knew, as well as my great-aunt,
uncle and cousin, all of whom
died in Auschwitz with tattoos
on their arms.
My father once told me a
story about his mother standing
on a milk crate in the market
square, denouncing the local
folk for complying with increas-
ingly frequent arrests of Jews
in her hometown of Vienna.
He was a young boy, perhaps 8
years old, and all he could recall
was his fear that his mother
might be stoned or arrested
on the spot for speaking up.
Indeed, he was a fairly silent
man in his maturity — I’m not
sure he ever recovered from
that moment of fear or the
many that followed it.
On the day that I was
arrested in Lansing, along with
30 others, I remember feeling
visceral fear. While I wanted to

be fully present to the protests
at hand, I was also aware that
deep inside, part of me was
relating to my grandmother on
her milk crate, risking every-
thing for the sake of righting
society’s wrongs. How brave
she must have been. How I
wish I could have talked to her
about it.
The Hebrew word for repen-
tance, teshuvah, contains with-
in it the word “turn” or “return.”
But return to what? My inten-
tion in protesting on that hot
day in Lansing was to turn my
privileged place in American
society to the good. I see peo-
ple, including our elected lead-
ers, turning away from people
in need. Perhaps teshuvah,
turning, also means returning
our attention to those who
need our help the most.
May your turning and return-
ing this year be for the good.
For a sweet and renewed year,
L’shanah tovah u’metukah. •

Aura Ahuvia is a rabbi at Congregation
Shir Tikvah in Troy.

Mind The
Mile Markers

I

t’s hard to imagine the convenience
of road trips today before highways
and cruise control. Interstates get us
where we want to go; all we need to do
is set the GPS, initiate
cruise control and we’re
off. With the lull of the
highway, we arrive at
our destination almost
by instinct and wonder
how we got there. Mile
after mile, though alert,
we’re in a zone where
Rabbi Azaryah
our minds wander and
Cohen
we’re on autopilot.
So, here we are again!
It’s the High Holiday
season and we’ve
cruised through another year. It feels
like we say this every year, but every
year it rings true that time flies by and
life seems like a blur. You’re likely to
remember the time spent with fam-
ily and friends, but you might have