Rabbi’s Column
RTPV May 2026
To march or not to march, that is the question.
People march for many reasons, of course. We march as non-violent protest, which it
turns out, is often more effective than violent protest (at least according to a researcher
on the Hidden Brain podcast). We march out of solidarity. We march in celebration.
We march in secular culture and in religious ritual: in graduation and funeral
processionals.
Over the course of your lifetime, when have you marched? Was it local or did it require
travel? Were you by yourself or with a group? Was your participation more a product of
your Jewish self showing up or your American self?
When I was growing up, my synagogue was very focused on the Refusniks in Russia.
They were Russian Jews who were denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel (or
elsewhere) between the late 1960s and late 1980s. Upon their request to leave, they
immediately lost their jobs, were subject to harassment, and like Natan Sharansky even
imprisoned in solitary confinement.
At my synagogue, there were posters, speakers, and boxes for collections to be
smuggled to them in the suitcases of the few courageous visitors. One literally could not
walk in the front door without seeing two-dimensional faces of Refusniks calling out their
plea alongside those of our rabbis and our Jewish values.
So when I was studying at Tel Aviv University in 1986 and Natan Sharansky landed at
Ben Gurion at 2 AM, there I stood. A year and half later in 1987, when in my first job in
Worcester, Massachusetts there was a UJA-sponsored bus and flight for the March on
Washington, there was no question I would go. I was the youngest of our group (other
than families with young children) and didn’t know a soul.
The question these days may be a combination of the efficacy and safety of marching
for or against something. But it also may be this: what is the message we are sending
out about our lived Jewish values such that it gets under the skin and into the soul of the
next generation?