i started praying with my feet

Thank you for your words of support in response to my email last week. I am grateful for this community of care and encouragement. 

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became one of the most charismatic and forceful leaders of the American abolition movement. At the age of 20 he made his daring escape, saying “Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.”

We invoked his name on Wednesday morning at Mother Bethel Church, the birthplace of the African Methodist tradition, before stepping off on our Pilgrimage for Peace. It would have been his 206th Birthday. I recited Tefilat HaDerech and Rabbi Alissa Wise gave voice to the famous words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel which echo the Douglass’: 

“For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”

Growing up, the spirit and image of Rabbi Heschel marching with Dr. King was almost a logo for the kind of Judaism I was being raised to embody and aspire to. I am so grateful to the organizers from Faith for Black Lives for their vision, faith and commitment. It was a deeply multifaith experience, bringing together Christians, Jews and Muslim Arabs, as well as representative Hindus, Buddhists, Unitarians, Quakers and a deeply spiritual agnostic. I was so moved by the Kol Tzedek members who joined and those who plan to join. Know that we have all been part of it. We hosted lunch on the first day at the Calvary Center and sponsored lunch on the second day at a church in Claymont, Delaware. 

I spent the last two days on the Pilgrimage of Peace, clocking more than 48,120 steps across some 24 miles. It was sunny and brisk, and unexpectedly restorative. Needless to say, my feet are sore. But my soul is renewed.  In a world of automobiles and Amtrak, we are so accustomed to moving at the pace of engines. It was so soothing and connecting to be walking at the pace of diversely-abled human beings. 

Time slowed. We walked two by two. Sometimes we sang. Most of the time we talked. It was regulating and grounding to move our bodies together, purposefully. We walked through the city, into residential neighborhoods and vast miles of strip mall sprawl. It wasn’t particularly glamorous or green. We stopped at city and state lines to pose for a picture and mark milestones. We found a park with a statue of Dr. King. We knocked on a church and asked if we could come in for lunch. In the evenings, local mosques fed us family style. There was grace and hospitality in abundance. 

At one point yesterday, I was marching with Rev. Stephen Green. We were holding the pilgrimage banner and he looked at me and earnestly asked, “Do you do long walks often?” I kinda chuckled, thinking he was kidding. When I think of long walks, I think of 2 hours in the Wissahickon or the Woodlands. I shared that this was my first “long walk” so to speak - if by long walk, you mean interstate pilgrimage. He shared a litany of walks he had been part of, most longer than this 150 mile stretch. It was a spiritual practice of his to make pilgrimage.  

In the Torah, pilgrimage, known as a regel from the root meeting leg, was a central spiritual practice, focusing on the Shalosh Regalim, the three Pilgrimage Festivals of Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot. But then the temple was destroyed, twice, and we remade those festivals to center around our local temples. So much has been possible because of our decentralized diasporic traditions. And yet this long walk connected me to what was when we let go of the practice of making a pilgrimage by foot.

The truth is that I actually have done one other long walk. When I was 16 years old I participated in the March of the Living, which involved a foot pilgrimage from the labor camp of Auschwitz to the death camp Birkenau. It was springtime and I took my shoes off to feel the pavement. I remember the birds and the bleak landscape. It too was a very formative long walk. Bringing my young soul to witness a place of so much death and destruction. 

In addition to the March of the Living, I spent many miles thinking about the people of Gaza. The many videos I have seen of their pilgrimages over the past 4 months, in search of safety. Families barefoot, carrying mattresses and a cooking pot, pulling babies barely clothed. Their faces frightened. Their destination unknown. The ground bombed into rubble and the season turned to winter. The survivors have made these foot pilgrimages many times. From the north to the south. From Khan Yunis to Gaza City to Rafah and back again. Nowhere is safe. Everyone is hungry. There is no fuel so cars can’t drive and people must walk long distances. 

What a privilege to walk for peace on their behalf. With the spirit of Douglass and Tubman, King and Heschel in our hearts. With the memory of 13 million people in my DNA. And the call of our sacred ancestors who made pilgrimage to the city of peace over and over again. May we merit to bring about a ceasefire and a lasting just peace for everyone in Israel/Palestine.
For those who are available this weekend, I encourage you to join the pilgrimage for any amount of time, and especially for the final stretch next Wednesday into D.C. People of all ages and abilities are welcome. There is a wheelchair accessible minibus that follows behind that is available to ride in, carrying snacks, water and willing pilgrims. I hope to join in the coming days with my kids.