By Rabbi Sydney Mintz–
In Jewish tradition we say, “Zichrono livracha,” may his memory be for a blessing. I was very honored to speak as the 4th Annual Alvin Baum Memorial Lecturer at the University of San Francisco (USF) on March 22, 2025, as someone who benefited from Al’s presence, his mentoring, his tzedakah, and his menschlichkeit.
To speak at USF in the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice is also a great honor. Because of Al’s husband Robert Holgate and their dear friend Pam David, Al’s memory continues to be a blessing through the lecture and the scholarship awards given to USF students in the program each year. I also want to honor the teachers in this program, especially my friends and colleagues Dr. Aaron Hahn-Tapper, Oren Kroll-Zeldin, and Rabbi Camille Angel. I have had the great honor to teach in classes here in the Jewish Studies & Social Justice program at USF over the past 15 years and to host the USF students for shabbat at Temple Emanu-El.
In 1977, one of our synagogue members, Melvin M. Swig, established the Mae and Benjamin Swig Chair in Judaic Studies in memory of his parents. Not only was this the first endowed chair or Jewish Studies program at USF, but Swig and the university had actually broken historical ground on a global scale: it was the first Jewish Studies chair and program at a Catholic university worldwide.
With Dr. Aaron Hahn-Tapper at the helm, the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice has blossomed with over 95% non-Jewish students, which in our day and age is amazing. To me, this is an incredible model for how to educate young non-Jewish students about the Jewish people. As we are all very aware, life on campus has been shifting precariously over the past few years and especially over the past 18 months. As a member of both the LGBT and Jewish communities, I have never felt my identities and values challenged as profoundly as they have been over the course of the past 18 months, since October 7th.
Sometimes, being yourself can be very challenging and simultaneously the most powerful example of activism and speaking truth to power. Jewish students on campus have Hillels and Chabads to support them, but I have always wondered what the best way is to educate the rest of the students who don’t know very much about the Jews or Judaism, given the fact that the Jews make up less than 2% of the American population. How do the 98% of non-Jewish students learn anything about the Jews or the Jewish community?
Since October 7, many students have learned about the Jews for the first time at Pro-Palestinian campus protests and campus encampments. The Swig program is a serious way for academic Jewish Studies to help shape a more realistic narrative of who we are as a people. I salute the Swig program that has been educating Jewish and non-Jewish students about the Jews, Jewish history, Queering Religion, and the many ways Jews express their Judaism in one of the most diverse student bodies in the country.
As Rabbi Camille Angel wrote about her position here at USF: “Some [of my students] have never met a Jew. Most of my students haven’t met a woman rabbi, let alone a lesbian rabbi who uses her own story as text. This opportunity enables me to share some of the ideas and strategies that Jews have used over centuries to navigate intolerance and to create something better.”
At the lecture, I invited everyone to share where they or their ancestors were born in order to remind us of the origins of what was intended to be a great melting pot of diversity in the history of this country. I then shared this story from my family’s origins:
“My family came here, via Ellis Island, Chicago, and to California from Kertsh on the Black Sea of Russia in 1900. My family was full of musicians, but only one instrument, a flute, made it and continues its journey with me. This flute has come a long way from Kertsh. It was born somewhere in Europe in the 19th century and was certainly one of the many instruments that my family played in Kertsch. To my knowledge, it was the only instrument that was aboard the Wilhelm de Kaiser crossing the Pacific Ocean with what was left of my paternal family after Czar Nicolas and the Russians had their way with them. My father’s family, the Strilky’s, joined the Bolchevick Revolution in Russia when Czar Nicolas began his terrible rule in the late 1880s. My uncles Nahum and Samuel were beheaded for their resistance, and my Aunt Bertha was imprisoned. My great great grandmother died on the prison steps after attempting to visit her daughter Bertha that Passover. It was a very dark time for the Jews and a very dark time for the world.”
As I reflect on the myriad ways we as Jews, as members of the LGBT community, as humans can help to change the world, to stay engaged and not to give up, I am inspired by the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who taught that, when he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, he was “praying with his feet.”
I have had the great opportunity and privilege to pray with my feet for the rights of the LGBT community, the Jewish community, immigrant communities, minorities, and marginalized communities over the course of the past three decades. I take very seriously the responsibility to be “L’Or Ha-Goyim,” or a light to the nations, and to express in actions big and small the Jewish ethic of Tikkun Olam, the repair of our broken world.
Rabbi Sydney Mintz was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City in 1997. She has served as the Rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco for the past 28 years and is currently working on her nonprofit 13th Tribe and creative projects in the Bay Area in the areas of comedy, queer culture, psychedelics, and end of life.
Aging in Community
Published on March 27, 2025
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