Jewish high school students want to celebrate Shabbat by protesting gun violence, and their Jewish communities are stepping up to help.
The march is a response to the Florida school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, which resulted in the deaths of 17 students and staff, 5 of whom were Jewish. Since the shooting, students from the high school have been leading the lobbying for gun control, advocating against the NRA, and organizing the March For Our Lives.
“Our USYers, like teenagers all over the country, are rising up and demanding change to assure their safety,” Wernick said in a public Facebook post, as well as a pre-Shabbat USY email. “They are declaring with one voice that it is not acceptable to be worried about being shot at school.” He added that USY wants to make this message “crystal clear to our government leaders.”
Because the protest falls on Shabbat, Wernick recognized the ensuing “tension” between Jewish life and civic responsibility. He announced that USY will support up to 150 students who want to travel to Washington D.C. from their communities.
Adas Israel, the largest Conservative synagogue in D.C., will be hosting the travelers, with instructions to USYers to bring sleeping bags for the trip. Food will be provided, as well as prepaid bus passes for students who don’t wish to walk the 5 miles from the synagogue to the National Mall.
In other cities where the March For Our Lives will be taking place, students will be able to march under a USY banner with a staff member.
Other groups are also focused on bringing Jewish teens to the march. A group calling itself Jewish Teens March For Our Lives is partnering with Ohev Sholom or the National Synagogue, an Orthodox synagogue in D.C., to provide hospitality for another 50 people. “Teens from FL have taken an incredible initiative that we want every teen to have the opportunity to be a part of,” the Facebook event reads.
Jewish high school students have been heavily engaged in the current wave of national student advocacy against gun violence. For example, Zoe Terner, social action vice president in the southern tropical region of NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth), traveled to the Florida capital to continue the lobbying after some 100 students took buses to Tallahassee, Florida’s capitol, to lobby representatives who ultimately refused to consider a ban on assault rifles.
Joining a bus from the Parkland Reform Jewish community, Terner wrote about her experience for the NFTY online blog. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” she wrote. “Never before have students across the country mobilized like this, and never before have the eyes of the nation been so closely trained on us as we fight for change. A country-wide call to action roars loudly in all of our ears, and NFTY is heeding the call.”
Zachary Herrmann, the 2017-2018 president of NFTY, also said in a Union for Reform Judaism blog post that he is “convening a special task force” to organize Jewish teens across the country against gun violence. “We are angry, we are determined, and we are strong,” he wrote.
The international director of NCSY, Rabbi Micah Greenland, released a statement in response, saying that NCSY looks “forward to participating in a coordinated and collaborative effort with the multiple youth movements and organizations involved,” the New York Jewish Week reported. Since then, however, there has been no mention of concrete NCSY or Orthodox Union advocacy against gun.
Jewish students aren’t just protesting but also fundraising. The Bake Action Against Gun Violence was started by the kids of Rep. Ted Deutch, a Jewish Democratic representative of the district where the Valentine’s Day shooting took place, JTA reported. The group bakes and sells hamantaschen to raise money for organizations advocating for gun control. The college students were inspired by Challah for Hunger, a campus movement started in California that sells freshly baked challah to fundraise for charities working to end global hunger.
But strong teen advocacy, especially on a subject as controversial as gun control, can easily be overtaken by adults. Some students, for example, felt wary after all the press coverage spurred by donations from people like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey to the March For Our Lives campaign.
Aware of this power dynamic between young and old, Wernick wrote in his USY email, “I am only thinking about this moment and what it means to our children and our nation. They are leading us and we must be in support of them.”
He added, “I believe that if Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were with us today to consult, he would respond as he did so many decades ago, [that] sometimes you have to ‘pray with your feet,” referencing Heschel’s words about marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement. “This is such a moment.”
Lev Gringauz is a New Voices reporting fellow studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.
