(RNS) — What’s it like to be living in Minneapolis today? I asked my former colleague, Ron Kiener, a Minneapolis native who returned to the city after his retirement to be near two of his grown children. “It’s oppressively insane here. It’s even taken precedence over my obsession with the Middle East,” said Ron, who spent decades teaching everything Jewish from Kabbalah to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
He is not the first to make comparisons with the Middle East. Ron recalled the time he visited a former student of his, a Palestinian who lived in the occupied West Bank. As he walked down the street in Ramallah, a young Israeli soldier stopped him at gunpoint. “It has the same kind of feel psychologically,” he said. “This is in a military, a brown-shirt, operation where the local police are powerless or can only serve as a buffer.”
The daily life of his extended family is caught up in the protests. Ron’s daughter, Ariana, has her name on the federal class action lawsuit filed by her law firm challenging the arrest and imprisonment of refugees resettled at the behest of the U.S. government in Minnesota. Ariana bought 100 whistles to distribute around her neighborhood, and now, whenever Ron goes out, he carries a whistle along with his passport.
Ariana’s brother, Sam, and his wife, Jill, meanwhile, deliver food to Latinos who have been afraid to leave their house. Their daughter, Yael, organized a protest at her middle school, not unlike the protest her grandfather organized against the Vietnam War when he was in high school.
Yael Kiener, third from left with earmuffs, and friends from Hopkins North Middle School in Minnetonka. (Photo courtesy of Ron Kiener)
Ron said he generally applauds the way Minneapolis’ Jewish religious community has reacted to the immigration enforcement push. On Friday (Jan. 23), Temple Israel, the oldest and largest synagogue in the city, hosted a meeting for clergy and politicians and the next evening sponsored a Havdalah — end of Shabbat — service that was moved to Zoom because of concerns about possible violence after federal officials shot and killed Alex Pretti earlier on Saturday.
Ron appreciated an open letter issued by the Minnesota Rabbinical Association, whose membership includes rabbis from all streams of Judaism, condemning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and U.S. Border Protection agents for “wreaking havoc across our state.”
“It’s the border patrol people who are doing the shooting — the ICE people are unkempt idiots,” said Ron. “In the Twin Cities there is such hatred for what they are doing to this city and to us. They’re the ones that are causing this violence.”
Before the bodies were cold, Trump administration officials and their apologists began vilifying the victims and rationalizing the homicides. Renee Good, who had been shot by a federal agent Jan. 7, was said to be a domestic terrorist who shouldn’t have tried to drive away. Pretti was deemed a domestic terrorist who shouldn’t have been carrying a gun. (It was a licensed pistol in a state that permits concealed carry.)
Hysterics have been performed over a few activists’ disruption of a church service, as if it were the crime of the century.
“Who are you going to believe,” ask the Trumpists, “us or your lying eyes?”
I believe my old friend and colleague.
