I feel the presence of the Shechinah (“Divine Presence”) most during protest. 

And so when I learned of the national invitation to clergy (and clergy-in-training) to travel to Minneapolis and support communities on the ground, I eagerly leapt at the opportunity. Over 600 other clergy answered the call, gathering together in local churches for learning and action. 

Susanah Heschel, a Jewish Studies scholar and the daughter of neo-Hasidic innovator [1] and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), publicly posted on Facebook days after the convening, saying “you are asking me where my father would be today: in Minneapolis with the other clergy. If you read his work and love his writing, you know he would never support the violence of this administration." [2]

In December, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent over 3,000 Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and DHS officers to Minnesota in what they deemed “Operation Metrosurge.” Between December and the end of February, 2026, federal officials arrested 4,000 people in Minnesota, including 5-year-old Liam Conjeno Ramos. [3] Agents terrorized Minneapolis communities; racially profiling people, deploying tear gas on non-violent protesters, and shooting three people, killing two of them, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. [4] It was in solidarity with these targeted communities that the clergy gathering was organized: the flyer had read “Dr. King put out the call in Selma. We’re putting out the call in Minneapolis.” [5] One of the many who heeded the call in Selma in 1965 was Abraham Joshua Heschel. 

Rabbi Heschel, who was a descendant of multiple Hasidic dynasties and originally raised to be a rebbe himself, taught at the Jewish Theology Seminary in N.Y.C. and is widely considered one of the most important 20th century Jewish thinkers. In his teaching and writing, he stressed the importance of connecting to the Divine in the modern world and argued that both Hasidically-informed prayer and prophetically-informed activism were primary avenues for that connection. In Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Heschel says that “to pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain the sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.” [6] I felt like I was praying every second I was in Minneapolis. 

The first moment I stepped into the large church hall filled with over 600 clergy from across the country, I felt goosebumps prickle up on my arms. The room was filled with a sense of pregnant anticipation, and it was almost too loud to hear myself think. Clergy filled every corner of the space as they ate vegetarian breakfast burritos, hugged new and old friends, and borrowed winter gear from the shared donation table. I could not help but be filled with an immense sense of wonder, much like how Heschel describes prayer. It felt like I could sense history happening right beneath my feet. Each moment felt like some sort of miracle — organizers had pulled together this clergy convening in just four days! 

After marching from Selma to Montgomery with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to demand the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Heschel wrote “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.” [7] Reflecting on the march in his personal diary, Heschel compared marching with Dr. King to walking with the greatest Hasidic masters of his childhood. [8] 

I discovered God the first time I got arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience. In college I participated in a protest advocating for updated federal voting rights legislation. After we were released, I remember feeling an electric feeling in my body, and a deep sense of what I can only describe as ecstatic relief, as if I had just cried or had a long laugh with a good friend.

This connection between protest and prayer was palpable for Heschel. In fact, Heschel’s presentation of Hasidism in general has been described as one replete with “a brooding voice of discontent,” [9] positioning spirituality and morality as two sides of the same coin. 

I love davenen (“praying”), but there is something more intense, more embodied, about the experience of putting my body on the line for all I believe to be true and good. While I aim to acutely tune into the present moment during both prayer and protest, I find it easier to accomplish through the latter. When I feel my actions are serving a higher purpose, my mind wanders less to my lunch plans, or the emails I need to send later. Only during protest do I feel so certain that I am in the right place, doing exactly what I should be doing at that moment.

But no matter how you feel about engaging in marches, rallies, or civil disobedience, I believe Minneapolis can serve as a teacher for us all, showing there is a role for everyone to play in resisting authoritarianism. [10]

In Minneapolis I saw so much beauty and so much pain.

Neighbors were caring for neighbors. People were arranging grocery and medication deliveries for others who can't leave their homes out of fear of ICE detention, organizing neighborhood watches, and dropping everything and sprinting towards the scene when they heard a whistle indicating ICE was nearby.  

On January 23, 2026 over 50,000 people marched in -25 degree cold. Strangers passed out hand warmers to other marchers. One of my friends even said he was handed a warm potato on the march to use as a hand warmer.

While there were so many beautiful networks of resistance and community care, they didn’t obscure the simultaneous and palpable terror. Black and brown people, immigrants and non immigrants alike, continued to be snatched off the street. The morning after the clergy convening ended, Pretti was shot and murdered by Border Patrol agents. But even after that horrific scene unfolded, people continued to show up for one another. There were neighborhood vigils throughout the city.

In The Prophets, Heschel writes, “What the prophets proclaim is God’s intimate relatedness to man. It is this fact that puts all of life in a divine perspective, in which the rights of man become, as it were, divine prerogatives.” [11] Heschel describes the prophets as ‘activists’ of their time, people who loudly declared that God yearns for justice for all people. He understood that call to be echoed by the Hasidic masters, and believed that it is our actions that will make that a reality. 

And like Heschel, I believe God deeply cares for humanity. I want to live in a world where we care for each other just as much. I still believe that that world is possible. May we build it together. 

Endnotes:

[1] Although Heschel never claimed this title himself, many scholars have described his work as invaluable in the movement to bring Hasidic spirituality to non-Hasidic Jews. See Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Development of Neo-Hasidism: Echoes and Repercussions Part II: Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky” in The Lehrhaus (December 31, 2018). Accessed via https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/the-development-of-neo-hasidism-echoes-and-repercussions-part-ii-abraham-joshua-heschel-and-zelda-schneurson-mishkovsky/#_ednref33. 

[2] Susannah Heschel, “You are asking me where my father would be today,” Facebook, January 25, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xgWqyAeY/. 

[3] Priscilla Alvarez and Holly Yan, “A Preschooler Was Taken Away By ICE,” CNN, January 23, 2026 https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/23/us/liam-conejo-ramos-ice-wwk.

[4] Alyssa Chen, “A Timeline of Operation Metro Surge,” Minnesota Reformer, February 20, 2026 https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/02/20/a-chronology-of-operation-metro-surge/.

[5] MARCH, “A Call to Minneapolis”, Facebook, January 16, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CTJ8cp6xL/ 

[6] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996), 341. 

[7] Kate Collins, “Jewish Voices from the Selma-to-Montgomery March,” Duke University Human Rights Archive, January 14, 2015. Accessed via https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2015/01/14/jewish-voices-selma-montgomery-march/#:~:text=I%20felt%20my%20legs%20were,his%20activism%20with%20his%20faith. 

[8] Quoted from Heschel’s diary in Or N. Rose with Dov Peretz, My Legs Were Praying: A Biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel (Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish, 2025), 58.

[9] Mayse, “The Development of Neo-Hasidism.”

[10] We are not all meant to play the same role in this moment: we all have something unique to offer. We learn this truth from Deuteronomy, in which the Israelites are told to bring their unique gift to God during the three major festivals. The verse reads “Each with their own gift, according to the blessing that the Eternal your God has bestowed upon you,” (Deut 16:17). The Zohar comments on this verse that “The Torah does not demand of a person more than they can perform.” (Zohar, Emor 43. Accessed via https://www.sefaria.org/Zohar%2C_Emor.43.281?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en) This reality is mirrored by writer and activist Deepa Iyer’s social change map, which is a resource to help individuals figure out their role in the larger movement for equity and justice. Learn more here: https://www.socialchangemap.com/

[11] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001), 219.