Clustered on a street corner in East San Rafael, a group of about 30 men and women — many wearing tallits, some with tefillin strapped to their foreheads — clutched prayer books, chanted Hebrew songs and recited prayers as dawn broke Tuesday, March 13.
It’s safe to say this was the first streetside minyan in the Canal — Marin’s most multicultural neighborhood, where conversations are typically conducted in Spanish or Southeast Asian dialects and corner stores bear names like El Salvador Taqueria or Mi Tierra market.
Normally, Kol Shofar’s Tuesday morning minyan meets in the Conservative congregation’s Tiburon quarters. But that seemed inappropriate under the circumstances.
“We were out here yesterday morning,” explained Steve Schiff of San Rafael, “and it just made absolutely no sense to be inside davening [the next day] when we should be out here.”
The impetus for Schiff, his wife, Bonni, and the others were last week’s raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to round up and deport undocumented immigrants. According to community activists and San Rafael public officials, agents swept into the neighborhood, bursting into homes, rousting people from bed and taking some away.
“Unbelievable,” stammered Fred Cherniss as he wrapped tefillin in the darkness of a bowling alley parking lot nearby. Cherniss stood vigil — alone — on Monday, March 12 in his hometown of Novato, where immigration raids have also been conducted.
“It’s not that the INS doesn’t have the right to protect us,” he said, “but the way they did it was unbelievable. You just can’t separate parents and kids and drag people out of their homes, not let people put their pants on.”
He first heard about the raids at Shabbat dinner last week, then at services.
Rabbi Lavey Derby raised the issue Saturday morning as part of the Torah discussion. It’s about justice, he explained after concluding Tuesday’s minyan, before heading back to Tiburon for Talmud class.
“All human beings are created in the image of God,” Derby said. “We’re all the same: We’re neighbors, we share the same country, so how could this not be of concern?”
Bonni Schiff, who works at Jewish Family and Children’s Services, said the experience had been “illuminating.” Though she lives just a few miles away, “I’ve never been in this neighborhood,” she said.
The Schiffs said they’ll return to the streets if necessary, but they also hope to keep the momentum going in another way. “I think now we’re talking about how we build bridges with this community” of 12,000, Steve Schiff said.
Taking the minyan to the Canal, he added, was “a way to do multiple mitzvot.”
During the 40-minute service, as streaks of red brightened the horizon and the sky turned bright blue, so, too, the neighborhood came to life. Children gathered to catch yellow school buses, men with bag lunches walked to work and a steady stream of vehicles rolled by.
Derby and the others waved to passersby. Many waved back, or honked in solidarity.
“One of the most important things for me was watching the faces of people coming by,” said Steve Schiff. Some burst into tears after realizing “that we were here to support them.”
Kol Shofar past president Ron Brown said it was a matter of “bearing witness.” This was his third morning on the streets, and he, too, was moved by “the outpouring of gratitude from the community.”
Brown learned of the situation from the Marin Interfaith Council, which organized protest vigils starting at 5 a.m. last Friday. About 75 people from churches and synagogues (including Rabbis Stacy Friedman and Michael Lezak of Reform Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael) showed up, according to Jewish Community Relations Council member Suzan Berns of San Rafael.
“I was there to stand in support of fellow members of my community,” Friedman said.
“The way they were being taken [from their homes] and the fear that it was instilling in the residents of the Canal” — the “randomness” of the raids — was wrong, she said. “It was despicable.
“We’ve kept people abreast” of what’s going on, and encouraged congregants to go “if that’s where their conscience leads them.”
The Rev. Carol Hovis, head of the Marin Interfaith Council, joined the minyan and thanked Derby afterward “for letting me pray with you.”
The Rev. Bruce Bramlett, an Episcopalian, also joined the group. “When you come at people with guns bared and knock on doors in the middle of the night and claim to be police, that’s what the brown shirts did in Nazi Germany.” “When you handcuff a 7-year-old and take that 7-year-old to a detention facility, there’s something wrong there.
Hovis, noting that many area residents were afraid to go to work, send their children to school or even go to church, said they would continue to monitor the situation and take action as needed.
Meanwhile, a protest march and community meeting drew an estimated 500 to the local community center Monday night.