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Rabbi Brockman Thursday at WNHH FM.
Kica Matos and Rabbi Herb Brockman (at left) with Nury Chavarria in 2017 at Fair Haven's Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, where she was being housed to prevent federal agents from arresting and deporting her.
Donald Trump is back at raiding immigrant communities and deporting people. So Herb Brockman is back at working with other religious leaders to step in to help targeted immigrants and their families.
It’s what gentile “saviors” did for Jews threatened during the Holocuast. So, reasoned Brockman, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Mishkan Israel and a decades-long interfaith social justice leader, it’s what Jews now need to do for others in precarious straits.
As in 2017, when Trump I administration raids began, Brockman is a member of the interfaith new Sanctuary Movement Connecticut. The movement placed nine undocumented immigrants facing deportation during Trump I in local houses of worship and arranged for legal support and medical care and food for their families. This time around they’re preparing to do the same if necessary.
Meanwhile, Brockman was among the Jewish leaders involved in preparing a lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration’s change of policy involving “sanctuary” congregations. The new policy authorizes immigration agents to enter churches or mosques or synagogues to arrest immigrants in order to deport them. Brockman participated as a representative of a Reform Judaism organization, one of 27 umbrella groups (including those representing Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews) that filed the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are currently at the phase of establishing standing in that suit. Meanwhile, a parallel suit filed by five specific congregations have won a temporary injunction from a Maryland-based federal judge putting the new Trump policy on pause.
Brockman, who retired from the Mishkan Israel pulpit after three decades, is showing up at Jewish organizations here at home to enlist support for the suit and for efforts to support those facing deportation.
In an interview Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” Brockman argued that both Jewish religious tradition — loving the “stranger,” creating “sanctuary cities” — as well as Jewish lived experience propel him to engage in this work.
He noted that Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum was designed with an entry pathway lined with trees for the “righteous Gentiles” who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. The museum, Yad Vashem, lists the names of 24,000 such peoples whose deeds it could verify.
Brockman said he finds particular inspiration from the example of Albania, the only Eastern European country that ended World War II with more Jews than before. Albania is 70 percent Muslim, he noted.
“The imams actually organized bringing Jews, particularly children from Germany and from France, into Albania and put on hijabs and told them not to say a word. They would claim that they were mute. ‘Cousins of ours. They couldn’t talk.’ ”
Both the Talmud and the Quran draw from the Adam and Eve creation story to support a religious imperative to welcome and protect “the stranger,” Brockman noted.
“The rabbis asked, ‘Why did God begin humanity with one man and one woman, as it says in Bereshit, in Genesis?’ The conclusion was to teach us that no man would ever be able to claim that ‘my ancestors are greater than yours.’ We all are from the same. The same question and the same answer is in the Quran. As people of faith, we come together over these issues we may fight.”
Also on “Dateline,” Brockman spoke out against the Trump administration’s arrest and moves to deport recently graduated Columbia University student and legal resident Mahmoud Khalil, who played a prominent role in protests against Israel and the war in Gaza. The administration characterized that case and promised future arrests of students and academics who have expressed opposition to Israel as moves to counter antisemitism.
While he “may disagree” with Khalil’s views, Brockman said, “as a Jew, I am offended that the president of the United States — who welcomes into the White House known antisemites, white racists, Christian nationalists — would pretend that this is for me, to protect me. If he wants to protect me, he should start at home before he goes to do this.”
Brockman noted that many Jews have spoken out against the arrest and its implication for First Amendment rights to free speech. By invoking antisemitism to silence people based on their political views or to deport even legal residents, the president is “using” Jews as “scapegoats,” Brockman argued. Brockman also criticized — based on the limited knowledge of the facts available so far — Yale Law School’s decision to suspend and bar from campus a scholar tagged as antisemitic by an anonymous AI-operated website for her publicly expressed opinions.
Click on the video below to watch the full conversation with Rabbi Herb Brockman on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” about sanctuary congregations, immigration, interfaith activism, and why he doesn’t plan to celebrate Purim. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”