Nitzavim: Standing Together with our Reform Partners to Protect Voting Rights

by Cantor Amanda Kleinman

"We HAVE Overcome"

So read the sign held up by a young man at a rally celebrating the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008: "We have overcome," a play on the song that became the anthem of the Civil Rights movement over fifty years ago. And we have overcome a great deal in the struggle for racial equality.  As I learned last weekend, however, we still have quite a ways to go.  

I returned on Sunday, August 21, 2016, from Raleigh, North Carolina, where I attended the launch of Project Nitzavim, the Reform Movement's initiative for voting rights, facilitated in partnership with the Religious Action Center and the NAACP. Hundreds of clergy, congregants, and concerned citizens from around the country gathered to affirm our commitment to ensuring that every American can exercise the right to vote, particularly in this time of persistent voter suppression.  We spent most of the weekend registering voters, I in the small city of Rocky Mount, near the Virginia border, and at the Lost Sheep Outreach Ministries church in Raleigh. I heard powerful stories of people whose voting rights are in jeopardy: one young woman had no form of identification to record on the voter registration application; a man expressed to me his concern about how he would get time away from work to vote, particularly with proposed cuts to early voting. At the same time, I left feeling truly inspired by the resilience of individuals who, despite being pushed down repeatedly, find the strength to rise up, and to overcome, again and again.

A little over fifty years ago, the Voting Rights Act, which legislated and protected against racial discrimination in voting, was drafted in a Religious Action Center boardroom. Moses reminds us that is only when "atem nitzavim kulchem," (Deut. 29:9) when we all stand together, that we can truly live in covenant with God. Today, just as we did in 1964, we are called, once again, to stand together, this time to combat new voter suppression laws that target people of color and those most vulnerable to discrimination. There is great power in our collective voice; as The Reverend Doctor William J. Barber, II reminded us on Thursday night: "When we all stand together, what a day of justice it will be."

Cantor Amanda Kleinman is a graduate of the HUC-JIR DFSSM, and was ordained in 2015. She is a member of the Amercian Conference of Cantors and serves as Assistant Cantor of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.