The Ally Difference
Rabbi Ron Stern
February 17, 2023 | 26 Shevat, 5783
Watch video of Rabbi Ron Stern’s sermon and all Shabbat sermons HERE.
In Rabbi Ron Stern’s Shabbat sermon, he reaches back 35 years to his time in rabbinical school. His wife took a job working for an underserved Mizrahi community in Jerusalem, while he volunteered weekly at a center for children with special needs at ALYN Hospital. Rabbi Stern uses these experiences and his own childhood to teach about the true meaning and responsibilities of allyship through three stories.
The first concerns his wife’s work with that Mizrahi community. By the mid-1970s, the dark-skinned, Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews in Israel had begun vocally protesting against the poverty, poor education, and lack of access to services they faced, appeals that echoed those at the core of the American Civil Rights Movement. Those protests prompted the creation of Project Renewal—a joint effort between Israel and Diaspora Jews to address those issues. Since its inception, Project Renewal has expanded its mission across Israeli society, adding Arab, Druze, Ethiopian, and ultra-Orthodox communities under its umbrella.
The children Rabbi Stern encountered at ALYN Hospital faced different challenges. One 8-year-old, Mirala, had just one limb, but possessed an assertive, room-filling personality and a thirst for knowledge, learning English and Arabic along with Hebrew. In the facility’s swimming pool—her refuge from gravity—she found freedom. One year, Rabbi Stern took her to visit Purim celebrations around Jerusalem and visited rabbinical schools where she was “a big hit.” Organizations like ALYN, Beit Issie Shapiro and the Israel ParaSport Center—which we support at Wise—have achieved incredible success over the years with disabled children in Israel. They have done this by listening to their clients and working with them to design supportive devices that combine high tech with Israeli ingenuity.
Rabbi Stern’s third story concerns his youth in New Jersey, where a well-meaning program called the Fresh Air Fund invited suburban, white families to host Black children from stressed and impoverished neighborhoods in inner cities for two weeks in the summer. That iteration of the now-140-year-old program, unsurprisingly, did not meet with success: It did little to prepare either the host families or their guests for the cultural differences of their two communities, or to address their needs. Its current iteration is a summer camp-based model that focuses on leadership, skill development, career exploration, and educational programs.
These three stories have a common point: To be a true ally—rather than a well-meaning savior—means that we connect our care and concern with an admission of what we know and don’t know about the other. As we celebrate Black History Month as well as Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month, the contrast between the failures of Fresh Air Fund’s savior model and the successes of endeavors like Project Renewal, ALYN, the Israel ParaSport Center, and Beit Issie Shaprio, illustrate the importance of inclusion. The head of the IPSC is himself a disabled athlete. He knows and understands the needs of his community. While many in Israel’s marginalized communities still face challenges like unemployment, high crime rates, underperforming schools, and persistent poverty, members of those communities are involved as equals in plotting their own path to change through Project Renewal, and much has been accomplished.
Allies are curious. Allies are empathetic. Allies don’t tell those who need help what they need. Allies seek to understand the circumstances of those they wish to support. Allies listen. Even when it’s uncomfortable.