Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom. This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Shelach, in which Moses sends 12 spies into the Holy Land to scope out its conquerability. All but two of them come back shaking in their boots, convinced that the giants that inhabit the land will fight back too fearsomely and the Israelites will not be able to take hold of the land that God has promised and led them to. They really never learn. Two of the recon operatives, however - Joshua and Caleb - remind the Israelites that God is on their side and that it doesn’t matter how big the inhabitants of the land are or how puny the Israelites are (small Jews are really a classic trope, huh?). If we fight for what we believe in, for what God wants of and for us, we can win against all odds. 

Setting aside for a moment that the Israelites’ endeavor to conquer the land and rid it of its large previous inhabitants is vaguely genocidal, and also setting aside for a moment the very physical and undeniable presence and will of God in their camp and for their goals, the general belief in winning righteous goals against seemingly indomitable foes resonates for me, as does the idea that sometimes some people must be sent ahead to clear the path for us to take on those foes effectively. This Shabbat, I am thinking about “The People’s Bubbe”. Born this date in 1930, Joyce Schatzberg (more popularly known as Shatzi Weisberger) was a fierce forerunner for so many of the young Jewish queer people and movements I got to know and engage with when I lived in New York. She was not exactly a spy or doing any recon missions (that I know of), but when I saw on my Radical Jewish Calendertm that it was her birthday I thought, “Yes. Shatzi was a shaluach”. The name of the parasha “shelach” means “he [Moses] sent”. And who does he send? People he trusts, leaders of each of the 12 tribes. He sends them ahead, ahead of their time, ahead of the rest of the community, urges them forward toward the ultimate goal - a goal for which there’s actually no option to not pursue. It is God’s will and they have God on their side. Why do they even need the recon? Maybe it wasn’t really about the intel, but about sending some people ahead to witness the Promised Land, to bring back a message of hope and excitement about the beauty of the land and the joys that await them once they are settled in a homeland of their own. Maybe some of that goal backfired a little, but ultimately we do still get the message about the luscious fruits and vegetables and the land flowing with milk and honey. And ultimately, at least Joshua and Caleb do lead the people into the Promised Land. 

Shatzi had a 47-year career as a nurse, focusing mostly on obstetrics and end-of-life care, and worked with AIDS patients at the peak of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Even beyond the world of political theater and direct action, her profession was an activist endeavor, as she helped the people other medical professionals often avoided. Her street activism and community organizing began with protests against redlining in Long Island, and she was involved with local civil rights groups in New York throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. Her civil rights activism led to wider advocacy against militarized state violence against minorities in this country and against communities of color across the Global South. She was a part of a group called “Dykes Opposed to Nuclear Technology,” which is a really great, straightforward name for an activist cell. I was vaguely aware of her at some of the racial justice actions I attended in 2015 and 2016, especially those organized by Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, though she wasn’t exclusive to Jewish or Lesbian organizations. In June 2020, Shatzi attended one of the large-scale protests led by the Movement for Black Lives, which coincided with her 90th birthday. It was then that she was dubbed “The People’s Bubbe” and was briefly trending on twitter. It was then that I fully realized who this old lady I’d seen at protests in 2016 really was. Unfortunately, this Bubbe died just two years later. Like Joshua and Caleb, she was able to be a beacon of hope, support, and joy for the generation after her, paving a way forward. However, like the other ten spies of this parasha, she herself was not able to enter the Promised Land, as we are all still waiting for that milk and honey of true equality to flow through this nation and the world. 

This Shabbat and this Pride Month, let us be especially aware of the paths we are paving forward for the next generation. The problems of this world will not be fixed in most of our lifetimes, but we can at least try to leave our future with better tools, some good intel, and the giant grapes of hope to pull them forward, to help get them over that finished line into a Holy Land. May we each charge forward with courage and love, and may we pass the torch onto the next shaluach when the time comes. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.