“If civil disobedience was inevitable, I’m glad that activist rabbis were prominent among those arrested, and probably it would have been better had there been Orthodox rabbis among them”

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If civil disobedience was inevitable, I’m glad that activist rabbis were prominent among those arrested, and probably it would have been better had there been Orthodox rabbis among them. Rabbi Jeremy Wieder’s learned and powerful sichah at YU, calling on all present to watch the video of Garner’s death and take responsibility for an act of negligent homicide committed by their appointed representatives, will become a primary source and inspiration for ethically sensitive yeshiva students. Rabbi Avi Weiss led a prayer service in support of the NYPD after the two policemen were murdered. I hope it is clear that these need not be contradictory; I rather suspect that a younger Rabbi Weiss would have been arrested the first night as well, and then bounded from his cell to conduct the pro-police prayer service.

Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, “Race and Policing in our Democracy: An Orthodox Reflection”, moderntoraleadership (26 December 2014) [https://moderntoraleadership.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/race-and-policing-in-our-democracy-an-orthodox-reflection/]

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