December 29, 2017 | 11 Tevet 5778
Photo Credit: Ted Polumbaum/Newseum collection
An Improbable Sanctuary
by Roger Price

By the summer of 1966, the President of the United States had decided that the time had finally arrived to fulfill the Supreme Court’s 1954 mandate to end school desegregation with all deliberate speed. On his order, the federal Office of Education assembled a group of young law students whose task was to create and implement desegregation programs for schools in the South. I was one of those students.

One of the states to which I was assigned was Mississippi, the infamous scene of several racially motivated murders of civil rights workers and others during just the previous three years. The victims were black and white, Christian and Jewish, native Mississippians and visitors. Their names were well known in America back then, and should be remembered today: Medgar Evers, Louis Allen, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, James Earl Chaney, Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer and Ben Chester White.

My team’s arrival in the Magnolia State was not met with open arms. The black community and its leadership, mostly preachers, were split. Some saw desegregation as necessary to further educational and social progress. Others were more wary, either sad at the prospect of losing traditions developed over the generations at the black run schools or concerned about anticipated treatment at a mixed race institution controlled by whites or both. It was easy, they said, to dissolve the current arrangement and create a desegregated system, but they were the ones who would have to live in that new world order, not us northern law students. And when we left, what? 

The viewpoint in the white community, and among its political leaders, was more uniform -- and hostile. White residents did not want to share their schools, or much else, with “them.” No “atta boy”s, or “about time”s, from those folks. At best, it was a series of cold, angry stares at the federal intruders.

Toward the end of one very hot and muggy summer day, I was visiting a black community leader, who worked as a sharecropper. We met at his home, a wooden shack at the edge of the field he tilled. We were sitting on his porch talking, when suddenly he suggested we move inside for some lemonade. I declined figuring the air inside would be even more stifling than the air outside. But he repeated his suggestion with some firmness and raised his eyes toward the road nearby. I looked over and saw a car sitting not too far away. There was something shiny on the side of the car. It didn’t take too long to figure out that the glint I saw was the reflection of sunlight off the muzzle of a rifle. And just like that, I got a powerful taste for some lemonade.

My team completed its work and prepared to leave Mississippi. We had one last task. This group of two white Jews, one black male and one black female had to get out of Mississippi safely. Rather than seek an airport in that state, we decided to cross the nearest state line as quickly as we could. That meant driving to Louisiana as fast as possible, but within the speed limit so as not to give anyone in or out of authority an excuse to stop us. With two eyes on the road and six watching to the back and sides, we made it unimpeded into the Pelican State and then to New Orleans. We checked in at a hotel that did not discriminate based on color, and went to Pat O’Brien’s, a historic bar that that favored the color green more than it cared about black and white.

I was not then, and am not today, a serious consumer of alcohol. I have never liked the smell of a bar. But on that night, at that old Irish pub in the French quarter of a city in a Deep South state, the air seemed fresh and clean compared to the heavy atmosphere that hung over and smothered Mississippi and its people. Here we were safe from intimidation and danger, free to be who we were, free to think, free to say what we thought. We had found sanctuary in an improbable place, and that made it all the sweeter.

If you’d like to share your thoughts with the congregation on what sanctuary means to you - a time in which you felt like a sanctuary dwelled within you, or how we can extend sanctuary to those who need it, feel free to reach out to Ellen Blum Barish and David Barish . 
Since his retirement as a litigator with a major national law firm, Roger Price has focused on writing for and coordinating the Judaism and Science website, a forum on fact, fiction and faith. There he and others explore the inter-relationship of Judaism and a variety of physical, biological and social sciences. At Beth Emet, Roger has taught adult ed classes, presented divrei torah at Kahal and served as a member of the Board of Trustees. Beyond Beth Emet, he has taught at Hevreh: An Adult Learning Community, the URJ Summer Learning Institute, BJE Chicago’s Kickstart, Limmud and various congregations around the country. Roger’s wisest and most enduring act occurred almost fifty years ago when he, a native of the South Side of Chicago, married a North Side girl, the remarkable puppeteer, storyteller, educator, consultant and author, Marilyn Price .  
In Exodus 25:8, God says to Moses, “Create for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” These words set the building of the Tabernacle into motion. But the verse’s ending has an interesting grammatical anomaly. Instead of telling the Israelites to create a sanctuary so God can dwell within it, the wording suggests that the dwelling may be amon g the people, or within them, suggesting that God can live within us rather than exclusively in a physical sanctuary. This year at Beth Emet we’ll explore the multiples meanings of sanctuary—as physical space to gather as a community for prayer, as spiritual space where we feel safe and whole, and as an attitude that is welcoming and accepting of everyone.

This weekly e-mail project, curated by David and Ellen Barish, allows congregants to express themselves in any of a variety of media: speechmaking, poetry, essay, story, photography, film, paint, sculpture, printmaking, textile, sound or music. If you'd like to contribute, please email Ellen and/or David .

Logo designed by Marco Siegel-Acevedo
Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
1224 Dempster Street
 Evanston, IL 60202
                          847-869-4230                           

If you do not wish to receive this email, please   contact us . If you use the unsubscribe button, you will no longer receive any emails from Beth Emet (including EmetMail, Lifecycle notices, etc.). 
Facebook