הָ֭רֹפֵא לִשְׁב֣וּרֵי לֵ֑ב וּ֝מְחַבֵּ֗שׁ לְעַצְּבוֹתָֽם׃
‘The One who heals their broken hearts and binds up their wounds.’
-Psalm 147:3
It’s an overcast Monday morning at Crissy Field last August. I’m kneeling in the sand. The mighty Golden Gate Bridge towers behind me. In front of me are 50 bubbly and brilliant seventh graders from the Brandeis San Francisco School who are in the opening days of their school year. They are seated in concentric circles around me. I met these students at this awe-inspiring location to get to know them a bit, to help them imagine the year ahead: the learning, the growing (physically, mentally, spiritually) and to talk deeply about holy+healing service+learning that they would be doing at GLIDE in the coming year.
They asked great questions. And they could not contain their excitement to come volunteer at GLIDE. After some good conversations, these students, in their bathing suits, walked into the waters of the San Francisco Bay for a Jewish ritual called ‘mikvah’ which is a purposeful immersion in living waters. We brought them to the Crissy Field to put a sacred stamp on the beginning of their school year.
Rituals, at their very best, help us to mark time, to take soulful inventory of what is good and not good in our lives, to measure our growth and to point us toward making commitments to living more focused, purpose-filled lives. The Brandeis teachers and I had planned out a robust year of ritualized learning and serving for the seventh graders and their families.
In the ensuing nine months,
- These students came to GLIDE to learn from GLIDE staff and clients and to serve lunch together nine separate times
- Families from each grade came to serve breakfast at GLIDE one Sunday each month
- Brandeis families came together to make sixty Welcome Home boxes (that contain needed household items) for newly-housed GLIDE clients who’ve come off the street or out of incarceration and into housing.
- Parents from the community learned together regularly about GLIDE’s holy+healing work. Many of them showed off their best dance moves at GLIDE’s Holiday Jam.
In April, Brandeis’ Head of School Dan Glass and three of his amazing educators joined GLIDE’s 12th Alabama Justice Pilgrimage. It was an astonishing blessing to have them on the bus with us. Needless to say, the time we spent with them and 30 others on the ground in Alabama was simultaneously heart-breaking for the brutal stories we encountered about the history of racial terrorism in America…and profoundly inspiring thanks to the sessions we had with so many righteous, life-affirming, fiercely devoted justice activists, artists and educators who met us along the way. This justice pilgrimage was so inspiring for us all that we are working together on a plan to bring Brandeis 7th graders on a future Alabama Justice Pilgrimage.
This deepening partnership between GLIDE and Brandeis is what I call a justice covenant: a deep, enduring, soulful and commitment between loving individuals and communities that empowers us to collectively work to heal civic and societal wounds that have festered for way too long in this blessed yet troubled city and country of ours. When we gather together regularly, when see the Tzelem Elohim, the Image of God in one another’s eyes, we can’t help but remember that we need each other and that we are in this holy+healing work together.
In early June, I gathered back at Crissy Field with these Brandeis seventh graders, who had invested so much soulful time at GLIDE and in the Tenderloin this past year. By now, I knew their faces. I could see how each of them had grown physically this past year….what blessing. Once again, the bridge was at my back and their gorgeous faces were gathered tightly around me.
I asked them to reflect on this past year. How had they grown? How had their time at GLIDE impacted and inspired them? My GLIDE heart swelled from the stories they shared about how much they had grown because of the recurring, transformational time they had spent in the Tenderloin.
One student shared with me a story about serving french fries to a GLIDE client saying ‘It was really special that I could be serving food to the less fortunate while I was having an interesting conversation with someone I had never met before…I remember when Rabbi Lezak told us the difference between feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. The difference has made me stop and pause when I am on the street and see an unhoused person. I feel totally confident walking past them now while before I felt less so. I have been much more appreciative of how fortunate I am since our first visit to Crissy Field. I also see unhoused people in a different way than I did before. I plan to keep volunteering at GLIDE with friends and family.”
After the students shared their stories, we said a blessing together and, like they did at the beginning of their school year, they walked into the waters of the San Francisco Bay to put a ritual stamp on the end of their school year. They screamed with delight when their growing bodies met the cold water of the bay.
At GLIDE, we define a pilgrimage as ‘a journey of personal spiritual discovery that forever changes you.’ It is abundantly clear that the Brandeis students and families made recurring pilgrimages into GLIDE and the Tenderloin this year that forever changed them.
This is but one of many sacred, justice-covenant partnerships we have built through GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice. We are partnering with other schools, congregations and organizations to build similar pilgrimages together in the coming months and years.
We hope you will join us.
Rabbi Michael Lezak