#these drawings plagued me for YEARS so i finally remade them

[the-sixxth-sinner]

Sticky sweet

Original works: [x] [x]

THE fanfic inspired by them by @vincess-princess : [x]

[honourablejester]

PF2e Character Concept: Ingra Darkrend

Because I want that noir tiefling dwarf back-alley doctor. The Shackleborn lineage gives me ideas, enough to make up a whole-ass dwarf clan who survived being genetically engineered by fiends to better endure torture, and came out bitter, stubborn, and medically inclined. So.

Character Concept: Ingra Darkrend, Back-Alley Doctor & Gunslinger

Ancestry, Heritage, Lineage:

Dwarf, Tiefling, Shackleborn

Daughter of Clan Darkrend, a dwarven clan born from the survivors of a horrific velstrac experiment centuries ago. Bred, engineered and remade during their captivity under these sadistic shadow fiends, Darkrends are quite visibly distinct from other dwarves, often bearing marks of tiefling heritage as well as lingering results of genetic experimentation, such as vestigial or extraneous limbs and organs. Darkrends also heal faster and better than many other beings, as the ability to survive more and better tortures for longer was a prioritised alteration for their captors.

Several particularly well-adapted shackleborn dwarves managed to finally claw free of their captivity after untold decades of horror. Knowing that their mutated and clearly fiend-touched forms would draw disgust and ire from others, and always fearing that their velstrac captors would find and retake them some day, these survivors banded together and formed what would become the Darkrend Clan.

As a matter of clan culture, Darkrends tend to value survival and self-preservation, as well as loyalty to the clan and ferocious opposition of fiends of any stripe, and velstracs most of all. Many scions of the clan also nurse a fascination and skill for medicine, born of either loathing, curiosity, or a desperate need to understand the many mutations and alterations that plague the clan bloodlines.

Ingra Darkrend

A stout, burly exemplar of her clan, Ingra bears many of the tell-tale markings of the Darkrends, being ‘blessed’ with blue-black skin, a short, stumpy tail, and two little nubs of bony horn emerging unevenly from her forehead. Determinedly hidden under her clothing are further signs, including two strange, misshapen raised lumps of skin on her back, which clan doctors and healers examined during her teenage years and found to be the twisted, vestigial suggestion of wings. The offer was made to attempt to remove them, although Clan Darkrend has found over the years that physical manifestations of their captivity often resist attempts to surgically or even magically correct them. There was every possibility that the ‘wings’ would simply grow back, and do unknown damage in the process. Ingra, being stubborn, bitter, and bloody-minded even then, declined the attempt, and determined to work with what she had.

Languages:

Common, Dwarven, Shadowtongue

Ancestry Feats:

Darkvision: You can see in darkness and dim light just as well as you can see in bright light, though your vision in darkness is in black and white.

Shackleborn: Your lineage shows the signs of velstrac tampering, including some curious quirk bequeathed by those shadowy surgeons of flesh and souls. Your flesh heals cleanly and quickly - all the better for you to serve as a subject for their ghastly art. You gain the Fast Recovery feat, even if you don't meet the prerequisites.

Fast Recovery: Your body quickly bounces back from afflictions. You regain twice as many Hit Points from resting. Each time you succeed at a Fortitude save against an ongoing disease or poison, you reduce its stage by 2, or by 1 against a virulent disease or poison. Each critical success you achieve against an ongoing disease or poison reduces its stage by 3, or by 2 against a virulent disease or poison. In addition, you reduce the severity of your drained condition by 2 when you rest for a night instead of by 1.

Planned Future Ancestry Feats:

Defy the Darkness (Level 5): Using ancient dwarven methods developed to fight enemies wielding magical darkness, you've honed your darkvision and sworn not to use such magic yourself. You gain greater darkvision, enabling you to see through magical darkness even if it normally hampers darkvision (such as the darkness created by a 4th-level darkness spell). You can't cast spells with the darkness trait, use item activations with the darkness trait, or use any other ability with the darkness trait. (Velstrac are shadow fiends)

Fiendish Wings (Level 9): Frequency once per day. You can strain to call forth bat-like or otherwise fiendish wings from your back, similar in appearance to those of your fiendish ancestors. Once manifested, these wings remain for 10 minutes. You gain a fly Speed equal to your land Speed while you've manifested your wings. (Yeah, those lumps of skin on her back are gonna dramatically come out later)

Mountain’s Stoutness (Level 13*): Your hardiness lets you withstand more punishment than most before going down. Increase your maximum Hit Points by your level. When you have the dying condition, the DC of your recovery checks is equal to 9 + your dying value (instead of 10 + your dying value). If you also have the Toughness feat, the Hit Points gained from it and this feat are cumulative, and the DC of your recovery checks is equal to 6 + your dying value. (Dwarves make a really good base if you’re trying to genetically engineer people to last longer under torture)(*Also, it’s a level 9 feat, but I wanted the wings first, so I’m taking it at level 13)

Relentless Wings (Level 17): Prerequisites Fiendish Wings. Your wings are now a permanent part of your physiology. You gain the effects of Fiendish Wings at all times, rather than just once per day for 10 minutes. (How’s she gonna deal with this further permanent alteration of her body by the velstrac legacy? It’s useful. Even cool. But it’s also really unmissable. But maybe by Level 17 she’ll have settled into herself and come to terms with things. Maybe. Heh)

Some Planned Future General Feats (levels undetermined):

Diehard: It takes more to kill you than most. You die from the dying condition at dying 5, rather than dying 4.

Fleet: You move more quickly on foot. Your Speed increases by 5 feet.

Toughness: You can withstand more punishment than most before succumbing. Increase your maximum Hit Points by your level. The DC of recovery checks is equal to 9 + your dying condition value.

Background:

Back-Alley Doctor:

You're the medic many turn to when a more official clinic or healer might not be available. You may specialize in stitching up bullet wounds or have a standing, confidential deal with a criminal syndicate to provide your services any time of day or night. In either case, you've perhaps turned to the adventuring life because a former client is unhappy with your work or members of the local constabulary have been asking too many questions. Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Constitution or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost. You're trained in the Medicine skill and the Underworld Lore skill. You gain the Risky Surgery (Advanced Player's Guide 208) skill feat.

Ingra Darkrend

More than many dwarf clans, Darkrends value survivability and medical intervention. Ingra was no exception. As a result of their visibly fiendish alterations, Darkrends also tend to be very aware of how many people either can’t afford or simply won’t get the benefits of more … official medical intervention. Ingra’s career on the distinctly less official side of medicine was half self-interest, given that criminality is often practically demanded of Darkrends outside of clan strongholds, so it might as well pay if it’s inevitable, and half bitter principle. Everyone, no matter what they look like or what they’ve done, should have someone to go to to get their flesh and bone, and perhaps souls, sewn back together. Even if that means a make-shift surgery stuffed in the back of a bar.

With this in mind, it’s going to be the constabulary that forced her to move on, not the former clients.

Background Feats:

Risky Surgery: Prerequisites: Trained in Medicine. Your surgery can bring a patient back from the brink of death, but might push them over the edge. When you Treat Wounds, you can deal 1d8 slashing damage to your patient just before applying the effects of Treat Wounds. If you do, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your Medicine check to Treat Wounds, and if you roll a success, you get a critical success instead.

Class, Subclass:

Gunslinger, Pistolero

I considered a lot of classes for Ingra. Alchemist caught my attention for a bit, particularly Mutagenist, because there’s a lot of thematic resonance with the velstrac alterations and Darkrend medical philosophy, but … well, frankly, alchemist is intimidating to me as a class. I also considered Cleric, but Ingra strikes me as a) too pragmatic and b) too bitter to find devotion easy. I spent a long time considering Rogue, because noir, back-alley doctor, it fits, and I might well do a version of this character as a rogue. I’m flipflopping between Ruffian and Thief for the racket. However. There’s a bit of me, possibly because of the noir thing, that just keeps picturing her with a pistol. A back-alley mug with a gun and a sewing kit. It’s a good image, and frankly Ingra’s entire character has been about the image for me, the picture of her I have in my head. So. Gunslinger.

For the Way, I went with Pistolero, almost purely because of the reliance on Intimidation. Look. Ingra’s bitter. She’s hard and bitter and angry. Pugnacious. She’s from a clan that are hated and reviled because they had the misfortune to be taken by fiends and genetically altered to endure torture. She’s a back-alley doctor because she knows people like her often don’t get to visit legitimate doctors, so she’s trying to provide a service for everyone like her who’s not welcome on the bright and shiny side of the law. She’s just … Pistoleros are about Intimidation (or Deception, but that’s not where we’re going with Ingra).

Look at Raconteur’s Reload (Level 1): Your rapid or forceful words draw the enemy's attention away from your hands long enough to chamber another bullet. Interact to reload and then attempt a Deception check to Create a Diversion or an Intimidation check to Demoralize.

And, later, Grim Swagger (Level 15): You attempt to clear the room by promising a grim fate to anyone who doesn't do what you say, and quickly. […] If you attempt an Intimidation check, you promise everyone in the room that you're going to be the last thing they see.

Ingra’s a demonic dwarf. She’s a tiefling. She knows how people look at her. So yeah. If she needs to, she’s going to lean into that. She’s going to pop a hand on her gun and fucking swagger. If centuries of torture under actual fiends didn’t break the Darkrends, some pissant bloody asshole or monster isn’t going to break her.

Basically, Ingra is the embodiment of come and have a fucking go.

Skills: Acrobatics, Intimidation, Lore: Underworld, Medicine, Society, Stealth, Thievery

Planned Class Feats:

I’m a bit more flexible here, I don’t have the class feats planned out the way I have the ancestry feats planned, but I am definitely going to snag both Grit and Tenacity and Unshakeable Grit when I can, because Ingra’s just like that. I am leaning all the way into dwarven stubborn for her. Darkrends did not come out of decades of torture just to back down from things now.

Grit and Tenacity (Level 8): Frequency once per hour, Trigger You fail a Fortitude or Will save. You call upon deep reserves of toughness and mental fortitude to power through an otherwise debilitating effect. Reroll the triggering save with a +2 circumstance bonus; you must use the second result.

Unshakeable Grit (Level 12): Prerequisites: Grit and Tenacity. You've become hardened by conflict after everything you've faced, and you possess a certain intractable stubbornness. If the reroll granted to you by your Grit and Tenacity reaction is a success, you get a critical success instead; if it's a critical failure, you get a failure instead.

And, voila. Ingra Darkrend, bitter back-alley dwarf and gunslinger with a tainted family history.

[route22ny]

New York Unmasked

by Harry Siegel

Imagining our city, for worse and for better, after the coronavirus pandemic

The city that never sleeps is taking a nap now, and it’s going to be a very different place when it finally wakes up.

Not long after the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, and again after Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, there was a lot of talk about how New York wouldn’t be the same. Both times, reports of our collective demise proved to be greatly exaggerated as the city quickly recovered, economically speaking, and resumed the upward path — ever more prosperous, populated and pricey — it’s remained on for at least the last quarter-century.

This time is different.

Any remaining vision of the city somehow picking up more or less where things had been left off went away with the decision to start shutting down the trains for four hours each night. That’s a huge though supposedly temporary shift for a system that’s run 24 hours a day for over a century with only the briefest of interruptions — until now the only one in the country that doesn’t turn off, as I’ve been shocked to re-learn every time I make the mistake of visiting another city. As with many of the decisions New York and the nation have made in this plague year, it will be much more difficult to turn things back on than it was to turn them off.

Already, the devastation is staggering. In less than eight weeks, the 13,168 (as of Friday night) confirmed coronavirus deaths here have exceeded the total number of murder victims, 12,509, over the past two decades — and that’s counting the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

New York managed to keep the death count down to 13,168 at the cost of putting the city and its economy in the equivalent of a medically induced coma, and with no assurances at all that a second wave of infections won’t be coming despite that.

While putting New York under helped keep the first wave from completely overwhelming the medical system here, as happened in Italy, “the point where we can really start at reopening…obviously is a few months away at minimum,” Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

Even at that point, whenever we finally get there, it’s hard to see everyone just getting back on the train for a crushed morning commute to the office, or servers returning to packed restaurants and bars and theaters and nightspots. Forget about tourists flying in to burn dollars; it’s an open question how many of the generally better-off New Yorkers who’ve left in the course of this will return here, or how many families will borrow or pay now so students can have the city as their campus — or if there will be a campus at all this fall.

This is all surreal. While some people talk about how the virus ravaging New York compares to 9/11, Donald Trump — who claims he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11, though he’s never named a single one of them — dispatches fighter planes to fly low over the city as a tribute to first responders.

While we still don’t know why New York was hit so hard by the virus, it’s clear that density — in places from the Meatpacking District here to the meatpacking plants in the Midwest — plays a big role in spreading it. And this is a place built on density, by far the densest big city in America as well as the biggest.

So this witchy hour we’re in is looking less like a PAUSE than a painful and fundamental shift in how the city functions and what it means to be a New Yorker.

To get through it, many people need to keep looking ahead and, I hope, looking at what New Yorkers can do in their own lives and demand from their politicians to see the city finally emerge as a fairer and more resilient one . I was born in New York City just ahead of the blackout babies, in November of 1977 — the month that Ed Koch was elected mayor and started to set the city on the path it’s mostly remained on until the virus — and I’ve remained here pretty much since. My dad grew up here, and his dad , and me and my brother are both raising our daughters here now, walking distance from each other and Rosie and Zadie.

I’m committed to the city for a lot of reasons, in addition to my family here: I own a house (or at least the bank lets me live in it), and one that’s bizarrely worth much more than I bought it for, at least if I was to sell it. My kids have a couple hundred square feet of their own outside as we shelter in place. And I know a bit and write a lot about New York, which really isn’t a skill set that travels.

But the truth is that the city of the past two decades has felt less and less like home, and more and more like the parts of Manhattan I try to avoid. I’ve spent too much of my adult life railing against the hipsters, gentrifiers, trustafarians and yuppies who didn’t have the good taste to spend their money here and then leave but instead “discovered” neighborhoods and remade them in their images, often to be priced out in time by new “discoverers.” I saved a bit of spleen for the people who rail against those people, rather than do something more productive with their time.

New York has become a city of increasingly sterile retail, one where internet listings have made real estate a more transparent and internationally accessible marketplace for foreign capital to reshape neighborhoods that preserve less and less of their old characters — for better and for worse.

It’s a corporate town, full of semi-interesting hustlers and characters along with its steady share of the depraved, the doomed, the damned and the dull. I’ve seen enough and read enough to know that none of that is new. But it’s metastasized over decades of financialized and increasingly monopolized and VC-fueled growth to swallow other values and ways of life. It’s hard to swim against a tide of money, and it takes a certain mania to even try.

Some of this is selfish, for sure. I preferred the waterfront of my youth, when the piers were barren and all but off-limits but for the bold and the desperate. No one with means would walk there, let alone live there, since it still had the taint of not so long ago shipping and industry and the rougher trades that lived by the waterfront, when the High Line was just a long-abandoned elevated track west of the projects that you could break into and walk on.

That all became part of the steel-and-glass luxury city that Mike Bloomberg described, one here for companies that can afford the best and priciest, and the people who draw incomes from those companies, directly or by providing services for their FIRE (that’s finance, insurance and real estate) workers who live in The City while firefighters commute in from Westchester and Long Island, or by constructing the buildings these people live in, or from the bloated government that services the “other” people who need help to stay here at all. A city that’s priced hospital beds out of big swathes of Manhattan and Brooklyn to clear space for luxury housing.

For years, I’ve been anticipating a reset as office space declines in importance with the rise of remote work, and that in turn brings down commercial and residential prices; hoping for a different, sturdier and livelier New York that exists for and better reflects the people who live here rather than serving as a clearinghouse for the world’s money. Over my adult life I’ve read endless warnings — including in this paper — about the return of the “bad old days” that are long gone for most New Yorkers, if they were here for those days at all. Now, we’re about to get a real taste of what a sharp downturn, along with a hostile federal government, feels like: “Drop Dead.” Now they’re looming as trading floors are vacant along with everything else that isn’t actually essential, and much of what’s abruptly left won’t soon return or the money that they brought in and splashed around.

This will be painful, but New York has always found ways to make new uses of what’s here. The same way that small and sturdy Brooklyn rowhouses built for the burgeoning middle class woke up one day as $2 million “townhouses,” and Single Residence Occupancies that single men depended on to maintain lives here, such as those were, become mansions with enough money and time, office spaces can become creative spaces like warehouses became artist’s lofts. Finally, housing prices, and everything else, should relate to the incomes of the bulk of the people working here. Right now, they relate to the vagaries of the global markets.

I’ll repeat that: The size of our economy, and real estate prices, should relate to the value of the goods and services people here actually produce. That will hurt a lot of New Yorkers who’ve invested in the city, including me, as property values and rents flatten or even go down, but some of that pain is needed. A city that’s too expensive for gas stations or grocery stores — looking at you, Manhattan — is too expensive for most people.

I hope we’re becoming a city that gives a proper Bronx cheer to Airbnb and Seamless and Uber and WeWork and all the venture capital-funded wannabe monopoly “tech” companies looking to “disrupt” fundamental aspects of our life by losing money for long enough to drive their competitors out of business altogether. That resists the convenience of Amazon and its ilk to support our local grocery and book and hardware stores, so that those are still there when we really need them.

A city that knows better than to cut off its nose to spite its face, now that we know better than to touch our faces. If New York has to sleep now to survive, it’s the perfect time to dream.

harrysiegel@gmail.com

***

This essay appeared in the New York Daily News, May 3, 2020.

Photo via ShutterStock

[jatamansi-arc]

Shabbat Sh’mot 5777

20 January 2017 Rabbi Michael Adam Latz Shir Tikvah Congregation

Cry Unto Pharaoh!

ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים אשר לא ידע את יוסף

A new pharaoh rose up over Egypt who knew not Joseph. Now, when we ended the book of Genesis last week, Joseph and Pharoah had a close relationship—you remember how cozy those two were, saving all the Egyptians and the Children of Jacob by planning ahead; well, the Jews thought they had it made in the Egyptian shade. Not so much. Over the years, this new pharaoh strategically and intentionally made life more and more difficult for the Israelites: taking away their rights, enslaving them, beating them, challenging their basic dignity.

וַיֵּאָ נְ ח֧ ּו בְ נֵֵּֽ י־יִ שְ רָ אֵּ ֵ֛ ל מִ ן־הָ עֲבֹ דָ ָ֖ ה ַוִי ְזָָ֑עקּו

The Israelites groaned under the bondage and cried out; 

The new pharaoh was cruel and paranoid, indecent and violent. So we cried out to God—

We cried out to resist tyranny. Because we knew in our bones that slavery and human dignity are incompatible.

Raise your hand if you know the name of the person who delivers your mail? How about the name of the person who picks up the garbage or the recycling or the compost from your house or apartment or condo? This is how white supremacy works, how racism works—it seduces us with a fallacious notion of radical individualism that says we can and must do everything on our own. But in reality, it isolates us so that we don’t even know the names of the people who are intimately involved in our lives: people who pick up our trash, serve our food, draw our blood, clean our streets. It divides us. It dehumanizes us. You want to be a religious person? Learn people’s names. Listen to their stories. Share your own. Break down those invisible but potent barriers. Story telling is a radical act of resistance.

Tonight is a night for stories.

I want you to know the names of two women who remade the world—and without whom, we wouldn’t be here tonight: Shiphrah and Puah.

Shiphrah and Puah were the midwives who delivered the Hebrew babies. And when Pharaoh decreed that all the Israelite boys must be killed (he got paranoid the Israelites would form a mass army and rebel), they engaged in history’s first act of civil disobedience. They refused to do what the almighty Pharaoh demanded.

Pharaoh was furious! “Why are you disobeying me?”

Shiphrah and Puah answered him, “The Hebrew women are vigorous! Their labor is so short—they give birth before we arrive.”

C’mon folks. Shiphrah and Puah lied. They lied to save those babies. They refused to destroy innocent human life because of the ravings of a megalomaniac lunatic. According the Egyptian legal system, they broke the law! But God rewarded them and their households.

And we remember Shiphrah and Puah—and their epic moral courage—this night.

The Exodus story recalls our people’s liberation from slavery to freedom. It wasn’t an easy road to freedom. You might remember the story? Moses didn’t walk up to Pharaoh in his palace one day and say, “You know Sir, we’d like to talk. You see, while we really enjoy working seven days a week in the hot Egyptian sun and don’t really mind our task masters beating us or throwing our baby boys in the Nile, we’ve decided that this just isn’t the right match for us Israelites. Thank you for your time, but we’re going to depart to worship our God in freedom. How does next Tuesday at noon work for you?”

C’mon!

This liberation wasn’t easy! Pharaoh’s heart was stone. The Israelites spent 400 years being treated like garbage. Moses had a hard time speaking in public and the people had Egypt in their hearts. Few of them could imagine a different life—a world where they were free. In fact, the rabbinic commentators explain that the Israelites couldn’t even hear Moses at first—mi-kotzer ruach v’avodah kashah—they were being worked so hard they couldn’t even breathe, much less imagine freedom.

That’s precisely why there were 10 plagues before Pharaoh let the Israelites go free. Why? To remind us that freedom doesn’t happen over night.

You and I—we’ve got a lot in common now with Shiphrah and Puah: as of noon today we are called to engage in ancient acts of resistance. We’re gonna get uncomfortable. Are you ready to get uncomfortable? Are you ready to disrupt business as usual?

That’s hard for a lot of us. We like things orderly. We’re Minnesotans. We’re nice.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous letter from a Birmingham Jail, “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Today, in 2017, the same folks who are demanding a Muslim registry are likely some of the same folks calling in bomb threats to JCCs and bringing guns aplenty into mostly poor, mostly Black and Brown neighborhoods; they’re the same pharaohs who want to take social security away from old folks and health care away from the sick; and blame all our problems on Brown immigrants and Transpeople using public bathrooms as they engage in the cynical politics of division and distraction—all the while never doing a damn thing about Aleppo or the rising oceans or public education or building a bridge or creating a job for anyone not selling oil to Russia.

Those 10 plagues were as much to challenge the Egyptians and the Pharaoh as they were to show the Israelites that we had the power of endurance; the plagues helped the Israelites slaves build the requisite faith and the spiritual muscles to resist tyranny. We build faith step by step, story by story, person by person.

Those 10 plagues were the original politics of disruption; humanity’s boldest wake up call. 

You beat these slaves? We’re gonna ruin your water!

You overwork these people? We’re gonna wreck your crops!

You won’t pay them? We’re gonna block your roads!

You won’t free them? We’re gonna turn off the lights!

You deny people their basic human dignity? We coming!

After 10 plagues, Pharaoh’s hardened heart finally shattered and our people marched to freedom!

Because enslaving people, discriminating against people, denying people their innate dignity is such a profound theological affront to God that business as usual just isn't possible. We must never forget where we've come from and who we are: We were slaves in the land of Egypt, you and I; those are the words we recite every Passover seder. This. Is. Personal. Human dignity is our ultimate theological concern. And when that means interrupting business as usual to break the chains of bondage, then it is both our religious inheritance and our moral obligation to rise up against the tyranny that prevents all people from being fully human.

In the next four years, I imagine there are pharaohs who will tell us— or tweet us—something that assaults the deepest promptings of our conscience. Will we stand in the moral breech like Shiphrah and Puah? In our hands will be the decision to join Pharaoh or to engage in moral resistance. Sometimes it will involve rallies and letter writing campaigns and testifying to legislative committees. At times, like Shiphrah and Puah we will be called to proclaim there is a higher, holier purpose and we must be emotionally, spiritually, and ethically prepared to do what is necessary to make manifest those ancient values. Values that cry out like the babies the midwives kept alive— because we know we cannot break that which is already broken—our task is alive with hope and compassion, promise, and redemption. This moment cries for our spiritual and moral resistance to normalizing hatred and violence against people who are different, who look different and pray differently—because we believe what we were taught when we first embraced Torah—that humanity was created in God’s image… That Love. Trumps. Hate.

The Exodus was a theological revolution. It is time for a new theological revolution, a new moral revival!

Every synagogue and mosque and church most now call ourselves to compassionate activism, to stand up for the poor, the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the sick, the immigrant, the Muslim, the Gays, the Trans, the person of color, the elderly, those with disabilities.

If our belief in God does not demand the mitzvot—the commandments—of love, compassion, generosity, and a robust commitment to healing our planet, if it is only focused inward, on the self, its simply narcissism.

The time has come for authentic people of faith to rise up and resist the blaspheming of our religious traditions: Jesus hung with the prostitutes in the hood, Moses crossed the border with a motley band for former slaves with no papers, and Muhammed proclaimed that our attachment to worldly possessions would destroy our ability to see God in the world.

It is time for a theological revolution in America:

A theological revolution where we wake up to the suffering around us and strive, together, to find ways to build a community and society with compassion as the cornerstone of our social policy and human dignity and mutual respect at the heart of our politics.

A theological revolution where people of faith proclaim that racism and sexism and the worship of guns are blasphemy and addressing mass violence and the need for decent public education and quality affordable health care and work that pays a sustainable and thriving wage are not merely rights in a civilized society; they are moral commitments we must make to one another and the next generation.

It is time for a theological revolution in America where we are willing to listen to people who disagree with us because we hold their humanity and our collective future in our hearts and because, to be a person of faith means that hope is a commitment we make to ourselves and to our children.

It is time for a theological revolution that brings to life the Golden rule—do nothing hateful to another human being precisely because we are our sister's and our brother's keepers.

And it is time for a theological revolution that says if and when we invoke the name of the Eternal we better be prepared to defend all of God's creatures and creation with every fiber of our bodies and souls—especially the ones who drive us bananas.

Today, we inaugurated a president who traffics in hatred and colludes with white supremacists. There are those who choose to cozy up to him and his administration, or worse: who suggest we wait and see. No!  When you appoint a white supremacist as your chief adviser, when you nominate a man who does not believe in fairness to people of color as your attorney general, when you nominate a climate denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency, when you boast about grabbing women with impunity and you mock those with disabilities, when you threaten to register my Muslim sisters and brothers, when you threaten the health care of 18,000,000 of our fellow citizens, you have shown that you do not share the values of people of faith in this great nation. Our moral tasks are resistance, resilience, and repair. 

We will not stand idly by while you make our neighbors and our planet bleed with the stench of xenophobia and racism and sexism. The prophet Elie Wiesel (z”l) taught that we might not be able to stop all injustice, but we’ll all be damned if we don’t try every chance we have. 

Our moral task in the next four years is clear:

1. Resistance! Shiphrah and Puah paid attention to the challenges and the world around them. Disrupt and interrupt cruelty every time you witness it. Let no racist joke get finished, no sexist commentary to go unchallenged, no locker room talk be spoken in our presence, no rejection of people who look or pray or believe differently. This is what chutzpah looks like. It means defending what is right, speaking out, and resisting normalizing cruelty even when it doesn’t make you popular. Especially when it doesn’t make you popular.

2. Resilience. If you belong to Shir Tikvah or another spiritual community trying to live into our theological and moral commitments—awesome! If you are not yet a member, what are you waiting for? The only way we’re going to get through this moral swampland is by holding on and joining one another, fiercely. That means supporting the organizations who provide moral leadership in this time of moral crisis. We are powerful, together.

3. Repair. Show Up! Be present. Stretch Spiritually. We’re going to be asked to be present and it’s going to be hard. Its gonna be cold. (Its Minnesota folks; weather is always gonna happen). We’re gonna be tired. And still we need to show up. To rallies. To protests. To the halls of the State Capitol. To congress. To City Hall. As people of faith. Because we believe in human dignity and that our public leaders are servants of the public—not the other way around.

4. Finally, Keep Going. Eight years ago, then Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about a famous New Yorker, Harriet Tubman. Tubman, as you know, guided more than 300 slaves on the Underground Railroad, from the southern slave states to the free states in the north. “And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice.

If you hear the dogs, keep going.

If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.

If they're shouting after you, keep going.

Don't ever stop. Keep going.

If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.

Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going.”

We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

We who believe in love, compassion, and human dignity cannot rest.

We who believe that ours is a nation of immigrants cannot rest.

We who believe in the equality, justice, and care for our planet cannot rest.

We who believe that Shiphrah and Puah were right and just when they defied Pharaoh’s immoral decree cannot rest. Keep going!