A wet field of overgrown grass between the vineyards in Sonoma, my children running laughing after a soccer ball and a basketball - nothing contains them. There are no rules to their game, they are uncontrollably happy, they can be and do anything here. We have it good.
We were running 125 years ago, too. Running to America, we fled pogroms where children like mine lived in fear, had nothing, where parents saw only blood and destruction where they lived.
America welcomed my family and we have helped build it. We have followed her rules, paid our taxes, built and supported businesses. We have tried to give more than we have taken. Thousands have led better lives because of us.
Today America changes – says refugees are unwelcome, builds a wall with its hostility. Generations from now we will miss the laughing children’s children of those we exclude.
When we fail to pay it forward, we suddenly fear what is behind us. Just over our shoulder, despair and anger lurk among those we leave suffering.
Violence will meet us if we do not resist non-violently. We must cling to truth, satyagraha. We must produce prohibited salts, boycott buses, lie prostrate before wheels of tanks, and through it all, touch lepers, for the love of G-d.
For the love of children running laughing through the overgrown grass, for the sake of my bliss, today and for the next four years, I resist.
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