Zoe Bell and Andrew Guckes | Staff Writers

More than a dozen area synagogues co-sponsored a Tisha B’Av demonstration outside the ICE Baltimore Field Office for the second consecutive year on July 23, with attendees using the Jewish holiday that mourns the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and other tragedies to protest ICE.

Local rabbis led a Mincha service at the event sponsored by Jews United for Justice, with Rabbi Marc Israel of Tikvat Israel Congregation serving as gabbai. This year, dozens were in attendance despite the protest coming at the end of the day on a Thursday.

“On Tisha B’Av, we call out in grief and distress over the loss of family and community, and the brutality with which our people were treated during calamities throughout history,” Rachel Kutler, JUFJ’s Baltimore director, told Washington Jewish Week.

“It reminds us of the brutality of the efforts being carried out in our names and in our communities, targeting the immigrant community, those who are identified as ‘strangers.’”

Last August, hundreds of community members protested at the same building for the same cause on Tisha B’Av. Kutler, who organized both demonstrations, said this event is just as necessary a year later.

“For over a year now, the federal administration has been targeting immigrants for deportation with cruelty and violence and without due process or regard for constitutional rights,” Kutler said.

Additional incidents involving ICE agents and other federal officers have made headlines since the federal immigration crackdown that inspired the August demonstration, including the fatal shootings of 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

In the span of a week in July, ICE agents fatally shot 26-year-old Joan Sebástian Guerrero in Maine and 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.

“It hasn’t gotten any better since a year ago, and unfortunately, we feel like we have to continue to demonstrate,” Kutler said. “We felt like we had to do this event again to demonstrate our collective outrage and mourn and demonstrate Jewish communal resistance to the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities.”

Betsy Krieger, an attendee, went to a vigil Thursday morning in Pikesville for Sebástian Guerrero and Salgado Araujo, saying that it’s important to do so in part because it is a reality that hits close to home for Jews.

“We’ve experienced the worst [as Jews], and now people are experiencing something that’s related,” she said.

Susan Gewirtz, another attendee, echoed this idea.

“It’s a Jewish value to be paying attention to those who are ostracized and treated inhumanely, particularly in our own country,” she said.

ICE activity has also upended lives close to home. The Baltimore ICE field office is the site of many detentions. Federal immigration agents arrested two people outside a Baltimore elementary school in June.

The demonstration ties into the themes of Tisha B’Av, according to the co-sponsors and Am Kolel Jewish Renewal Community’s Rabbi David Shneyer, who opened and closed the program by singing “Olam Chesed Yibaneh” — “I Will Treat This World With Kindness.”

“I feel it’s so, so important that members of the Jewish community show up and cry out against the injustices and against the terrible, terrible things that ICE and this present administration is doing to people and to this nation,” Shneyer said. “If we can’t empathize with others who are suffering, then I think we’re missing the point of Tisha B’Av.”

“As we mourn those whose lives were stolen [by] ICE, whether through detention centers, wrongful deportations, or outright killing, we include these tragedies in our observance of Tisha B’Av, our Jewish day of mourning,” Kehila Chadasha’s Rabbi Ariel Tovlev wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week.

While attendance was lower compared to last year’s protest, which fell on a Sunday, 17 synagogues co-sponsored the demonstration — up from 14 participating synagogues a year ago. Returning from last year were Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Am Kolel and D.C.’s New Synagogue Project. Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase and Kehila Chadasha in Montgomery County also co-sponsored the July 23 demonstration.

“I think it really just shows that this issue of immigrant justice is felt deeply in the Jewish community,” Kutler said.

Ruti Kadish, an attendee, said that Jewish history shows us that we need to stand with communities at risk, because you never know who is next in line.

“We know very well that if it’s not us this time, it’ll be us next time,” Kadish said. “But not even [just] because of that — because it’s the right thing to do.”

Over the past year, JUFJ has worked with its partner organizations — We Are CASA and ACLU of Maryland, among others — to pass immigrant justice legislation and reforms at the city, county and state levels, Kutler said.

“We’ve seen a real powerful movement, since Tisha B’Av last year, of organizations coming together to fight for more immigrant protections,” she said, citing community trust acts.

Though Kutler hopes that this same demonstration won’t be necessary next Tisha B’Av, she and JUFJ are prepared to organize for as long as it takes.

“I hope we will have ended attacks on the immigrant community by this time next year,” Kutler said.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com
aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com