Service for a gathering to address U.S.-sponsored torture

The following service by Rabbi Margaret Holub can stand alone as a spiritual introduction to a speaker about torture or the showing of a film. It can also be interspersed into a service, or done as part of your community's regular services.

OPENING OUR HEARTS AND MINDS:

(song) Pitchu li shaarei tzedek avo vam odeh Yah…
Open for me the gates of justice. I will enter them and give praise to God.

From the depths I cried out, HASHEM! HASHEM answered me with divine compassion. Ps. 118:5

Silent contemplation -- We open our hearts and minds and enter into the reality that at this moment human beings, bearers of the Divine Image, are undergoing torture at the hands of other human beings. We focus our inner attention on those people who are detained and interrogated by agents of our own country.

PRAYERS FOR DETAINEES:

The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; God heard their moaning… (Exodus 2:23-24)

All my bones exclaim, "My God, Who is like You, saving the weak from the powerful, the needy from those who would prey on them? (From nishmat)

Silent contemplation: We ask Divine compassion on detainees experiencing torture, cruel treatment and injustice. We ask that their cries be heard and answered, speedily and completely. May they know that they are remembered.

FINDING OUR PART IN THE WORK:

How can I repay HASHEM for all His gifts to me? I will raise the cup of deliverance. Ps. 116:12

Silent contemplation: We look within to find the cos yeshuah (cup of deliverance) which is ours to lift. We ask that we will know what is our part to do in ending US-sponsored torture.

FINDING COURAGE AND HOPE:

If, early that year [1787], you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth would have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire's economy would collapse… Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life. There was an abolition committee in every major city or town in touch with a central committee in London. More than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat slave-grown sugar. Parliament was flooded with far more signatures on abolition petitions than it had ever received on any other subject. And in 1792, the House of Commons passed the first law banning the slave trade.---Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free and Empire's Slaves, p. 7.

That which is broken can be fixed. R Nachman of Bratzlav, Likutei Moharan

Silent contemplation: Visualize the doors of detention centers opened, secret prisons revealed, unmarked planes with shackles on the floors grounded. Visualize people who have been held without charge being heard in full, evidence offered in the open court, evaluated fairly; those who have committed crimes held to account, those who have been unfairly imprisoned, restored. Visualize the legislation permitting torture, the secret memos, the presidential orders repealed. Visualize the United States Constitution repaired and re-honored. Visualize the Gates of Justice re-opened.

(song) Pit-chu lanu shaarei tzedek, avo vam, odeh Yah.
Open for us all the gates of justice. We will enter them and give praise to God.