Pride Shabbat

It was just past 1am in New York City on Sat June 28th, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn. Patrons wouldn’t have been surprised when the officers arrived – LGTBQ-friendly bars were regularly raided ostensibly to punish those selling liquor without a license; in reality, this was an excuse police used to justify violence against LGBTQ people.

Each June, pride month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

On that night, people gathered outside on Christopher St. The crowd grew angry as police used brute force against gays, lesbians, and transgender folks. Protesters at Stonewall weren’t just fighting back against a single act of violent injustice -- they were standing up against a pattern of ongoing humiliation and dehumanization.

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This week, Torah instructs us to hold a commemoration, each year, of our people’s liberation, called Pesach. It is to take place bein ha’arbayim: at twilight.

Why?

To recall the uncertainty and chaos before we were free, that only afterwards marked the tipping point in getting free, and an inspiration for future liberation movements of other oppressed peoples.

That night, Moses instructed our people to be ready. After so many attempts to get free, no one thought this night would be different than any other night.

Even so, we prepared ourselves at twilight: in that space between day and night, between freedom and captivity, between what was and what could be.

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The fight that took place on Christopher street in 1969 was a twilight moment, a moment between what was and what could be. Some people called it a riot, others an uprising.

Whatever it was, LGBTQ people demanded liberation that day from unjust laws — from police violence, from the criminalization of their identities -- and the world began to listen.

These days, we live in a twilight moment: for weeks, people have gathered in protest and shows of solidarity to address our nation’s ongoing history of institutional and systemic racism, demanding liberation from unjust laws and police violence.

Just as at the twilight of liberation of the Israelites in Egypt, just as at the twilight of liberation outside a bar in Greenwich village...we don’t know what will happen, what sense history will make of this moment of unrest, whether or not true enduring change will result from people standing up for their right to safety and equal protection under the law.

But in our uncertainty, we can draw hope from these past moments of liberation.

As we celebrate LGBTQ pride month, may we hear humanity’s creation b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, as a moral imperative that calls us to treat all of humanity with equal justice and dignity. May we look back on this twilight as a time of lasting change for our nation and for its black and brown citizens in our day -- as it was for LGBTQ folks, and for our own people in days past.

May the days ahead bring a time of physical healing to all who are ill, and a time of societal healing for our ailing country, so all people might proudly celebrate their identities, And so each of us may be who we are –and be blessed in all that we are.  And let us say: Amen.