Judaism in Action: Faith as a Force for Justice

By Ruth Messinger
Smol Emuni Conference
March 30, 2025

I am an activist, a social change agent, whose work for justice is rooted in and is an expression of her Judaism.

To talk about this is easy, on the one hand, and challenging, on the other hand, because it is so obvious to me that it takes time to parse it out.

So, it is who I am, and it is how I was raised.  A bit of ancient history here. 

My parents, each “officially” from a Jewish home, set out to create a home different from the ones they grew up in, a home that was explicitly rooted in Judaism as it spoke to them—in holiday observance, in values and in acting on those values.

They were how I was raised-- with a grandfather who was the first executive director of federation in NY; a mother who went to work for the then Chancellor of JTS, worked there for 55 years and regularly wrote about the teachings of Judaism in such diverse areas as the environment, domestic violence and the role of women.

And it is their teaching and the teachings of our texts that informed my work in elected office and my work as the CEO of American Jewish World Service, an organization motivated by Jewish values that works to end poverty and expand human rights in the Global South. It is the special sauce of AJWS that we take our belief in B’tzelem Elohim into the field, letting the brave people fighting for their land or their children or their sexual rights to be the people who set the agenda for how we can work with and support them.

And it is that teaching and my personal background that motivates me today to work with and for our newest New Yorkers—the several hundred thousand people who have come to our City in the last two and a half years. They need our concrete services, and they need the assistance of our governments, not only because we are taught to care for the other and the stranger, but also because they are, as new labor, critical to the future economy of our city and country.  We are compelled spiritually, morally and practically to act.

And they need us—as Jews and as Americans—to stand against the current threats of deportation, against the actual arrests of people for exercising their first amendment rights even when we may not agree with what they say.

Please remember that if the government can arrest a Muslim woman on her way to an iftar in Boston to end her fast day and deport her to Louisiana with no due process, if they can round up Venezuelans and fly them out of the US with no due process, if they can arrest Mahmoud Khalil, then, as Pastor Niemoller recognized  they can come for any of us.

I would ask you to keep in mind the rabbinic debate as to which is more important study or action; the answer--study is more important because it leads to action. And understand, similarly, that service, or concrete aid, is a critical commitment of our faith, but it is not sufficient.  We must move on any issue from service to advocacy if we want to help advance justice.

In the words of Jeremiah…we must work for the welfare of the city/country because on its welfare does our welfare depend.

And in the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel …”In a free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty but all are responsible.”

Let us exercise that responsibility and go out as the late John Lewis would tell us “to make good trouble, necessary trouble” in the pursuit of justice.