WASHINGTON — More than 150 rabbis and cantors protested outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, in what organizers said was the largest all-Jewish protest of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge.
"I will not stand on the blood of my neighbor! I will not stand idly by," they sang in English and Hebrew, referencing a Biblical passage.
The hundreds of rabbis, cantors, and other Jews waved signs stating "resisting tyranny since Pharaoh" and "looking more like Nazi Germany every day," as they protested the government's mass arrests and removal of immigrants.
"It's time the Jewish community has got to stand up and say, 'You know what? What's going on is not acceptable. It's just not acceptable. It doesn't comport with Jewish values,'" said Sol Glasner, 74, of Chevy Chase, Maryland. "I'm delighted to see so many Jews come out and express themselves as Jews. Specifically as Jews. We're Jewish Americans, we're concerned as Americans, and we're concerned as Jews."
Beth Rubin, 67, said she drove six hours from Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend because she sees ICE on a path toward what her family fled in the 1930s.
