On April 5, I gave a talk at the annual SEPA (Santa Elena Accompaniment Project) dinner in Oberlin. My talk was both inspired by the sermons of Rabbi Sharon Brous, the senior rabbi of IKAR, a nondenominational congregation in Los Angeles that my wife, daughter and I belong to, and “borrowed” in parts from her remarkable book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.

Some years ago, after ICE agents carted off five workers in a raid on a local Mexican restaurant, an Oberlin College student, a neighbor active in the Salvation Army, and I collaborated on writing a resolution to bring to City Council. Its intention was to establish as city policy a measure that would prevent police, fire, EMS, or any other city service from asking for the citizenship status of any person who required assistance. The proposed resolution would also prohibit city police from requesting training to prepare them to act as immigration enforcers – something known as 287(g) training. We discussed the matter with city officials and the police but, as a formal resolution, we needed the positive vote of city council. This meant bringing it up for the traditional three readings at City Council before a final vote was taken. Before the first reading, the session where we would introduce it for discussion, so many threats were phoned into the city – threats to me would come later — that the city installed a metal detector for the first time to check those entering the building. I presented the resolution, and it ultimately would pass and be implemented. That resolution, with a few updates since its initial 2008 introduction, is still in effect.

Anyway, sometime after that, I received an angry email from a sender whose name I didn’t recognize. The emailer said she was from Painesville and had driven all the way to Oberlin to express her fierce opposition to the resolution at that first City Council meeting – even though they measure had nothing to do with Painesville. She wrote me incensed that at the meeting,I had accused her of being a “bigamist.” I found that strange, since I didn’t know her and hadn’t the slightest clue (nor any concern) as to whether or not she was a “bigamist.” I soon realized she probably meant to say “bigot,” not “bigamist,” and it was indeed quite possible that I referred to those opposed to the resolution we were introducing as “bigots.”