H eadlines
‘Deep Trust’: Clergy Describe Planning of March
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
CHRISTIAN, JEWISH
and Muslim clergy from the
Philadelphia area marched
from 61st and Locust streets
to the Philadelphia Police
Department precinct at 55th
and Pine streets on Oct. 27.

The day before, officers had
shot and killed Walter Wallace
Jr., a resident of Cobbs Creek,
and, in protest, the clergy
members, led by the Black
Clergy of Philadelphia and
Vicinity, chanted Wallace’s
name and offered prayers,
calling for justice in their
similarly Abrahamic phrases.

To those unfamiliar with
the inner workings of interfaith
clergy action, the promptness
with which the march came
together might have appeared
to be a spur-of-the-moment
collaboration, borne out of
passionate emotion.

But that’s not quite the case.

Though emotion certainly plays
a role, different clergy groups in
Philadelphia have spent years
building trust between them,
with a steady accumulation of
shared experience ranging from
the mundanity of weeknight
conference calls to protest
actions ending in arrest.

“A part of the reason that
we have become so close in
Philadelphia as interfaith
clergy is that we have devel-
oped deep trust from working
together,” said Rev. Mark Kelly
Tyler, senior pastor at Mother
Bethel AME Church and a
board member of POWER
Philadelphia. “When you have
that kind of trust, then it’s easy
to throw up a protest, or march
together across religious lines,
sometimes with people that
you don’t even know.”
Citing the role of rabbis like
Eli Freedman, Julie Greenberg,
Shawn Zevit and Jill Maderer,
Tyler said that relationships are
built with community leaders
during times of calm, not just
crisis. Then, when the crises
do come — like the Pittsburgh
shooting in 2018, the AME
shooting in South Carolina
in 2015 or the Christchurch
massacre of 2019 — the call for
rapid action can reach rabbis
and imams in circles that Tyler
himself can’t reach so easily.

“[Those rabbis] can say to
Jewish colleagues, ‘Hey, Rev.

Mark Tyler, that’s my guy, he’s
going to be reaching out to
you, I can’t make it. He has the
details, but you can trust him,’”
PERSONAL CARE FOR
COUPLES! 8QLTXHRɅHURIVSDFLRXVWZREHGURRPDSDUWPHQWV
for staying together with on-site Physician and wellness services, three delicious
meals every day, incredible daily support as needed, safe social engagements
at a great monthly rental rate!
We are also including a
SURIHVVLRQDOUHORFDWLRQSDFNDJH for an easy transition to Paul’s Run!
To learn more, or to schedule a
virtual tour simply contact us at
1-877-859-9444 PaulsRun.org/Save
9896 Bustleton Avenue • Philadelphia, PA 19115
4 NOVEMBER 5, 2020
JEWISH EXPONENT
Rev. Dr. Kimberlee A. Johnson, Rabbi Annie Lewis, Rabbi Abe Friedman
and Rev. Linda Noonan at the Oct. 27 march 
Photo by Rev. Chris Kimmenez
Tyler said. “And all of a sudden,
it opens me up to a world that I
would not have access to.”
Rabbi Annie Lewis, co-pres-
ident of the Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia, got the
call for the Oct. 27 march. She
has been a part of marches
and protest actions led by
Black Clergy of Philadelphia,
POWER and other clergy
organizations for years,
and she’s seen the way the
different clergy shows up for
each other. As an example, she
mentioned the op-ed Tyler and
Imam Abdul-Halim Hassan
wrote for the Philadelphia
Inquirer this summer after
former Philadelphia NAACP
leader Rodney Muhammad
shared anti-Semitic content on
social media. That act, Lewis
said, was an expression of a
bedrock principle for clergy
committed to interfaith work
in Philadelphia.

“Our destinies are bound
up with each other,” she said.

“Our liberation depends on
each other’s liberation.”
Koach Baruch Frazier, who
spoke at the Oct. 27 march,
said such interdependence
takes time. A student at the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College, he’s seen first-hand
what an accumulation of solid,
stable relationships can do in
times of crisis — he was in
Ferguson, Missouri, during
the Michael Brown protests in
2014 and knows that to face
down tear gas or the threat of
arrest, you have to trust the
person to standing next to you.

“And that takes a long time,”
Frazier said. “And we have
to be intentional about it. It’s
not something that happens
overnight.” That’s the only way that
Bishop Dwayne Royster, the
interim executive director of
POWER who attended the
Oct. 27 march, can explain the
mindset that allows him to, say,
get himself arrested on behalf
of striking airport workers, as
he did a few years back.

“Every time we’re out
there together, it’s because of
relationships,” Royster said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM