April 8, 2025
The Central Conference of American Rabbis is deeply concerned about the welfare of its members, its members’ families, and members of the communities we serve whose lives, health, homes, and livelihoods have been placed at risk by executive orders and proclamations issued by the current administration since it took office in January, 2025.
Our Talmudic sages taught that the needs of one’s own community take precedence over the needs of those who are more distant.[i] We therefore begin by addressing needs in our own community. Awareness of risk to members of our own communities enhances our consciousness of and sensitivity to similar concerns throughout American society.
Some CCAR members and their immediate family members are foreign citizens who are living, working, and going to school in the United States, legally. In addition, the communities we serve include immigrants and refugees who possess a wide variety of legal statuses, including some whose immigration status is undocumented. All of these CCAR members and members of our communities are living in fear. Rabbis are often outspoken about a variety of issues, not always in ways that align with the current government or any that came before it. When immigrants who are in the United States legally are detained and threatened with deportation because of unpopular public advocacy, even advocacy we abhor,[ii] we fear for the rights of our immigrant colleagues. Can they continue exercising the American right of free speech without risking deportation, separation from their families, and loss of livelihood? The communities we serve may also include immigrants who have committed minor infractions that make them vulnerable to deportation, even if the offense is not punishable by incarceration. We are concerned for them all—and for millions more like them, beyond our immediate sphere.
Some CCAR members are transgender or nonbinary. Still more are parents of transgender and nonbinary children. The communities we serve embrace transgender and nonbinary people of all ages, including children who are receiving life-saving, gender affirming medical care under the care of their physicians and their parents. President Trump has erased the identities of transgender and nonbinary Americans, deriding those identities as results of a supposedly radical, dangerous, and false ideology rather than as expression of who they know themselves and their children to be. He has sanctioned discrimination and persecution of transgender and nonbinary Americans.[iii] Now, in his Proclamation of Child Abuse Prevention Month,[iv] President Trump has labeled gender affirming care as child abuse. With this proclamation, the President of the United States has threatened the removal of children from the parents who love them and parents from the children upon whom they lavish their loving care. His words may even be understood to threaten the prosecution and incarceration of parents and healthcare professionals who are providing that lifesaving care to children entrusted to their care.
Some CCAR members, members of their families, and the communities we serve are Jews of Color. From his first day in office President Trump has indiscriminately ended Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts within, and well beyond, the United States government.[v] In the span of these three months, the horrific experience of Black Americans from the time their ancestors were first brought to these shores is being denied or minimized, and fewer People of Color are being represented in the leadership fabric of American life. Jews of Color legitimately fear resurging segregation and discrimination. Moreover, as with all People of Color in the United States, Jews of Color are increasingly suspected of being immigrants and refugees, potentially subject to deportation.
While few CCAR members are federal civil servants, some have spouses or other family members who are. So, too, are a significant number of members of the communities we serve, heavily concentrated in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area but spread across the nation. The lives of federal civil servants and their families have been cast into chaos, with more than a quarter million having lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2025,[vi] and many more legitimately fearing that they could be next. People of Color, including Jews of Color in our communities, are disproportionately affected by these draconian and often arbitrary reductions in the federal workforce, having long been overrepresented among federal civil servants, because they have faced less workplace racial discrimination in government than in the private sector.[vii]
Some CCAR members are disabled, are immunocompromised, are gay men or lesbians, and/or are members of other vulnerable minorities who have reason to feel threatened by actions that President Trump and his administration have taken or have suggested are forthcoming. Members of Reform rabbis’ families and the communities we serve, which includes Jews and people with other identities, are equally vulnerable. Our history has taught us that whenever vulnerable minorities are attacked, Jews will ultimately be vulnerable because we are Jewish.
Attacking members of vulnerable minority communities betrays the promise of America. As President and Chief Executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, we call upon President Trump and his administration to stop harming our colleagues, members of their families, and members of the communities we serve, among all Americans whose identities make them vulnerable. In the meantime, Reform rabbis urgently call upon Congress and our courts to uphold American values, respect each unique American identity, and protect all law-abiding citizens of this great nation, especially those who are most vulnerable.
Rabbi David A. Lyon, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis
[i] Bava M’tzia 71a.
[ii] Reform Movement Statement on Importance of Law and Due Process, March 12, 2025, https://urj.org/press-room/reform-movement-statement-importance-rule-law-and-due-process.
[iii] President Donald J. Trump, Defending Women [sic] from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth [sic] to the Federal Government, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/.
[iv] President Donald J. Trump, Proclamation of National Child Abuse Awareness Month, April 3, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/national-child-abuse-prevention-month-2025/#:~:text=We%20affirm%20that%20every%20perpetrator,Liberty%20generations%20into%20the%20future.
[v]President Donald J. Trump, Ending Radical [sic] and Wasteful [sic] Government DEI Programs And Preferencing, January 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/.
[vi] Andy Medici, “How many federal employees have lost their jobs so far in 2025?”, Houston Business Journal and KHOU-11 Houston, April 3, 2025, https://www.khou.com/article/money/business/houston-business-journal/2025-federal-government-job-cut-total/285-55fcc5ed-8279-46dd-b569-ceadde0cbae8.
[vii] Terry Collins and Philip M. Bailey, “Federal jobs were seen as a gateway to the middle class for Black America, then came DOGE,” USA Today, March 24, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/24/defund-black-federal-jobs-trump-musk-doge/81751847007/.