This week, Ben Frazier passed away following a 9 month battle with cancer. Ben was an award-winning civil and human rights leader — a long-time broadcast journalist who became the first Black anchor of a major news show in Jacksonville. He received the NAACP’s Rutledge H. Pearson Civil Rights Award for his advocacy and outstanding contributions to civil rights over many decades. He founded the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville to “empower, educate and organize our communities in an effort to establish greater self-sufficiency.” He had a VOICE and used it.

Growing up, I always felt that my rabbi had “a voice”- as the expression used to go, someone you could listen to read from a phone book, when those were actually a thing. He happened to give a great sermon, too. That dynamic duo shared by my rabbi and Ben — a worthwhile message and a voice to carry it — is hard to come by. What a voice!

I knew Ben peripherally, but I wish I knew him better. Dealing with health issues, he still showed up these past few years to fight for a number of issues of equity and equality. In 2016, Ben joined Rabbi Tilman and other faith leaders for a memorial service for those lost at Pulse Nightclub, echoing our hope that our city’s Human Rights Ordinance would expand to cover ALL of its citizens. This past November, a month into his cancer diagnosis, he brought Northside Coalitions members to James Weldon Johnson Park when our OneJax partners held a vigil of Unity & Hope following the desecration of our downtown spaces by antisemitic messages. It was important to him to show support for the Jewish community.  

In a few days is the 17th of Tammuz, a day that commemorates the siege that led to the destruction of the holy temple in Juersalem. We are about to spend nearly a whole month speaking about the cause of that destruction, sinat chinam, useless hatred… and we see the embodiment of useless hatred right before us.

3 years ago, after the lynching of George Floyd, I quietly worked with partners in a number of local Jewish and non-Jewish organizations to create a series of learning sessions. Rabbi Lubliner and I participated in a dialogue series under the umbrella of Where Race Meets Religion. The Rabbi and Dr. Richard Wynn, UNF’s Chief Diversity Officer, held a forum on Intersectionality and Identity, while my session covered Allyship with Dr. Kimberly Allen, the dynamic founder of 904orward. 

Ben was also supposed to be a participant. His kickoff learning session was tentatively called, “Real Talk: Encounters with Race and Racism,” but that program was canceled before major publicity was sent out.       

Why? A quick Google search of the event’s co-sponsor, a national Jewish organization Bend the Arc, revealed a political campaign with overt anti-Trump sentiment, with slogans promising to “free America from [him].” At the time I wrote to our community partners: “I don’t always agree with speakers or organizations that are brought to the greater Jacksonville Jewish community, but there is a difference between not endorsing and silencing. I hope we can find ways to lift up voices and conversations in a constructive way.” But the image of the co-sponsoring organization was already tainted too much. Today, you won’t find the same rhetoric on their homepage — I can only provide conjecture as to why that is. But in name calling, in that being the focus of their message, they foolishly stopped a conversation before it could even begin, conversations that needed to happen about the fight against white supremacy, antisemitism, and racism in this country. 

We said we’d have him back for a later event. Our community needed to hear his VOICE. But that ended up never happening. To be frank, Ben’s political leanings might have seemed foreign to many in our midst, and yes, part of his story is that he spoke truth, often to closed ears. But in speaking truth, in his own voice, he reached a far-ranging audience. And I wish that the Jewish community could have been more a part of his story. In a planning call for the program, Ben poignantly stated “Where our missions intersect, is where our collaboration begins.” He understood that we can’t all agree on everything, but there has to be a place where we can come together, to have a conversation.

This is the climate synagogues and synagogue professionals must operate under. Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Chancellor of JTS and our Shorstein lecturer this upcoming winter, wrote this past week, “We face an acute shortage—of rabbis, but also of educators, cantors, organizational leaders, camp staff, chaplains, youth leaders, and even lay leaders.” The shortage isn’t solely a pipeline problem, and isn’t solely one for the Jewish faith. It’s exacerbated by a mass exodus of clergy of all faiths from the professional ranks. 

The Christian research organization Barna reported that in March 2022, “the percentage of pastors who have considered quitting full-time ministry within the past year sits at 42 percent” 

In an article titled” Why Pastors Are Burning Out” Anglican priest 

Tish Harrison Warren writes  

“That the top reported reasons for clergy burnout were the same ones that people in the population at large face: stress, loneliness and political division. But these stressors affect pastors in a unique way. Pastors bear not only their own pain but also the weight of an entire community’s grief, divisions and anxieties. They are charged with the task of continuing to love and care for even those within their church who disagree with them vehemently and vocally. These past years required them to make decisions they were not prepared for that affected the health and spiritual formation of their community, and any decisions they made would likely mean that someone in their church would feel hurt or marginalized.”

The tightrope dance of speaking up on issues without alienating congregants is a top reason for clergy burnout, but avoiding the “hot topics” altogether doesn’t alleviate the stress, either. 

In our torah portion, the main character, Balaam, sought to curse the Israelites, only to have God intervene as puppeteer in order to bless Israel, despite Balaam’s objections. Faith leaders, on the other hand, have the capacity, and the desire, to be facilitators of difficult discussions; to have freedom of the pulpit because they have the trust of a congregation to speak from a religious perspective that is authentic, thought-out and thought provoking. Theirs are the mouths open not in curse but in conversation.

This isn’t the first sermon on civil discourse, but I do think it helps to remind us all that there is a space in this ohel (tent), in this mishkan (portable sanctuary)- on Saturday morning, in adult education classes, in print, to have meaningful conversations about reproductive health, Israel, and gun control. 

Balaam famously blesses the people of Israel:

 “Mah tovu ohelecha yYaakov, mishkinotekha Yisrael.” 

How good are your tents Jacob, your dwelling places Israel? 

The rabbis asked why the doubling of the language? Why not say “How good your tents Jacob” OR “how good your dwelling places Israel?”

The Gemara asks in Bava Batra 60a: 

From where are these matters, i.e., that one may not open an en-trance opposite another entrance, or a window opposite another window, derived? Rabbi Yoḥanan says that the verse states: “And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel dwelling tribe by tribe; and the spirit of God came upon him” (Numbers 24:2). The Gemara explains: What was it that Balaam saw that so inspired him? He saw that the entrances of their tents were not aligned with each other, ensuring that each family enjoyed a measure of privacy. 

Our dwelling place, our synagogue, is also a tent- open to difficult conversations, open to all; but our rabbis remind us that there is room for each of us to have our own space; we can all dwell together even in our measure of privacy.

So what does meaningful dialogue look like? Can we find a way to hear people’s voices? And is there a point and place when and where we can rally around each other beyond our mutual disdain for Nazis and antisemitism? 

Philosopher Martin Buber, writing in Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters, says:

“There is genuine dialogue – no matter whether spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them.

There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by the need of objective understanding.

And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources”

Let us aim for genuine dialogue. For while our synagogue is a misgav, a haven, a safety net from the noise and chaos of the outside world, it is also a mishkan, a place to dwell- to sit with difficult topics and sit in conversation with one another; to challenge ourselves; to grow. 

To paraphrase Ben Frazier’s words, “Where our mishkans, our missions  intersect, this is where our collaboration begins.” May we collaborate on a mishkan, a portable sanctuary we take wherever we go, a sanctuary built on trust, respect, curiosity and love. May we have faith in our leaders to guide us, and in our own potential to better ourselves and this world. Mah tovu – how good is the tent we can build, all of us, together?