The following speech was given by Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kramer at the Peace Walk’s Listening Event on June 8th, 2025 at Germantown Friends Meeting House.

 

Philadelphia Peace Walk 6.8.25

NANCY FUCHS KREIMER

JUN 08, 2025

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Good Afternoon, friends.

Earlier this week I had lunch with Renate who is here from Germany. After a little shmoozing, Renate got right down to business.

Do you call yourself a Zionist? Anti-Zionist?

Do you use the word genocide about Gaza? Ethnic cleansing?

How do you define antisemitism ?

What do you plan to say about these questions at our Peace Walk?

I told Renate that although I have many thoughts about her questions, most in flux, I wasn’t going to talk about any of them on Sunday.

This is a time of crisis for the Palestinian people, for the Jewish people, for American democracy. It is a time when hope is in short supply. What we need right now, I believe, is better stories, true ones that serve as beacons toward the world we hope to see. As we know, “We become the stories we tell.” We need to tell good ones.

Today, four stories:

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Story one: While researching a book on the Bund , writer Molly Crabapple, discovered a cable sent by Jewish Bundists from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.

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Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

Underground Jewish Labor Movement in Poland in tragic days of annihilation of the entire Jewish population by German conquerors considers it her sacred duty to share the request of freedom loving elements throughout the world to release Mohandas Gandhi from prison in India.

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We need to tell stories of solidarity, even in vulnerable times.

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Story Two: Some of you probably remember this one from

from the mid sixties. During the riots in Black urban neighborhoods, someone wrote “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.” Someone also said, “America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned.”

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As you know, these two comments were not posted by oppositional “friends” on FB. They were written by the same person, the Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. And he repeated both multiple times to Black and white audiences.

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We need to tell stories that puncture binaries. Yes, violence against Jews is bad; yes, we need to name the violence to which it is responding . Never either/or. Always both/and. As King would have said , “Palestinians and Jews are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

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Story Number 3 is about a contemporary of King living in South Africa. I learned from Panjak Mishra, a Hindu-British journalist in his book “The World after Gaza.” about Ahmed Kathrada, a Muslim of Indian descent and one of Nelson Mandela’s closest confidants. He was arrested in 1963. While on Robben Island he read and reread a smuggled copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and copied into his notebook the passages that most inspired him. A Muslim victim of racial colonialism and a terrified Jewish girl in Amsterdam were in conversation!

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We need to tell stories that replace the Oppression Olympics with empathy.

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My last story is just a week old.

On June 4th, a congresswoman asked the House to rise for a moment of silence for Sarah Milgrim and her partner Yaron Lischinsky who were killed the previous week. The congresswoman was Sharice Davids, an enrolled member of the Ho Chunk nation , the second native american elected to Congress,the first LGBT representative from the state of Kansas.

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When we were growing up, we could not have imagined Sharice Davids, nor Iman Jodeh, Colorado's first Muslim state lawmaker, the child of Palestinian immigrants, who came to the JCC event in Boulder last week to express her sympathy to the Jewish community there.

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In the midst of all that is wrong with our country today, we need to tell stories that remind us of what is good.

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Here is my hope for us in this time of crisis.

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That we cultivate what Michael Rothberg calls “multidirectional memory”.

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That we embrace together with love King’s inevitable “single garment of destiny”

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That we seek out and retell life giving stories.

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Thank you all for being here and doing just that.

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The following introductory remarks were given by Mary Ellen McNish at the Peace Walk’s Listening Event on June 8th, 2025 at Germantown Friends Meeting House.

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Interfaith Walk for Peace and Reconciliation
Germantown Friends Meeting—remarks Mary Ellen McNish
June 8, 2025

• In September of 2024, just before the presidential election, many of us here today attended a different Interfaith Service in Philadelphia at Friends Center, during which George Lakey, Quaker activist and scholar reminded us that “history proves that even in the darkest hour, transformation is possible”; Reverand Greg Edwards, from POWER Interfaith explained “why voting was a an important and sacred duty” and Rabbi Nancy Kreimer explained how her important work was “breaking down barriers between Jewish and Palestinian peoples.”

• Our message today continues with HOPE because we cannot give in to the spiritual exhaustion that comes from the current administrations’ assault on what people of faith hold sacred, especially TRUTH!

• Since the inauguration, we have witnessed many of our nation’s leaders ignore the rule of law, refuse to comply with court orders, engage in grotesque immigration rhetoric, violate human and civil rights, and abandon meaningful attempts to end the humanitarian crises in Gaza and Ukraine.  This is in addition to the breathtaking and brazen graft and corruption at a level that we’ve never seen before. The situation feels dire, but as I said there is HOPE!

• There are leaders in Washington who are standing up against the abuses of power that we are witnessing, and we have a federal system of government which gives state and local officials real power and authority, an independent and powerful judiciary, a diverse and free private press (even though sometimes it feels like drinking from a firehose), and a robust national network of advocacy groups working to shore up democracy including Indivisible and Choose Democracy. 

• Speaking of Choose Democracy, I had the privilege of hearing its founder, Daniel Hunter, last Sunday night in a Master Class in opposition and resistance.*

• He reminded us that all of what we are seeing is part of the authoritarian playbook and that the autocrat’s goals are: to divide and rule, to compartmentalize and repress different individuals and groups, to pick fights with the vulnerable, to maximize participatory obedience by implying violence, to overwhelm and to sow confusion.  

• He also highlighted exactly what we are called to do now:

• Remain steadfastly non-violent, cultivate solidarity and push back, build positive community stories, cut through confusion by identifying red lines, work with others to develop a unified mobilization plan and avoid despair!  In other words, SLOW IT, STOP IT, REVERSE IT!

• And we have new interfaith heroes speaking out from Episcopal Bishop Maryanne Budde at the Inauguration to Pope Leo IV to Reverand William Barber, who was recently arrested at the Capital. 

• Many of you know that next Saturday June 14th is NO KINGS Day, I hope to see you at one of the 1,300 national events.  And I just learned that one of the keynote speakers in Philadelphia will be none-other than Reverand William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign.

• And so, today is about coming together in solidarity to create the type of community that is needed in this uncertain and unsettling time.  I hope that when this era of chaos and division is over, we will be able to say that we were part of the solution, that we played a significant role in bringing peace to our communities and to the world. 

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*Daniel Hunter Video:  https://vimeo.com/1089575420

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