This
past December, a friend and I traveled to Austin, Texas. Neither of us had ever been to Texas before,
and so we decided to take a trip to see a part of the country we had never
before had the chance to see. And so, we
went down to Texas, explored the area, tasted of the local delicacies, met up
with a colleague, and had a chance to see the important sites, including a
brief sojourn to San Antonio in order to see The Alamo. Among our first stops upon our arrival in
Austin was the LBJ library and museum on the campus of the University of Texas
at Austin. The building is quite
imposing and its place on the University campus unmistakable. A behemoth of a white rectangular building,
up on a slight hill, surrounded by paved courtyards with the giant football
stadium in the background, the Presidential Library and Museum walks a visitor
through the life and career of LBJ. From
his humble beginnings in rural Texas teaching immigrant children, to the Oval
Office, I learned much about LBJ and his legacy.
And
that is what a museum is all about isn’t it, legacy? What is it that a person did which is worthy
of keeping forever? What is it that a
person made or painted or sculpted that society has decided is worthy of
preservation? In the case of LBJ, his
legacy is clear, at least according to the museum. The museum makes the case that were it not
for the historic legislation that LBJ caused to be passed, President Obama
would never have been elected. Now, the
museum doesn’t go so far as to say that, but the video clips and the thrust of
the permanent exhibit make it clear that the curators and preservers of LBJ’s
legacy believe, and want us to believe, that a distinct line of this nation’s
progress as relates to race can be drawn from LBJ to Barack Obama.
And
what a legacy that is. Our nation has
seen itself torn in two, again and again, over the issue of race. Today, the museum tells us, things are
better. Today, the museum tells us,
thanks to LBJ, the race issues which plagued our nation are more a thing of the
past than the present. LBJ was, after
all, responsible for the passing of the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights Act
and the Great Society Legislation, which gave aid to education, Medicare,
Medicaid, and fought against poverty.
The LBJ Museum wants us to know that it’s thanks to LBJ that we have
many of the laws and rights we take for granted.
And
his legacy endures, in some ways. This
year was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights
Act. The desk on which LBJ signed the
legislation into law is on display at the Museum, as is the pen he used. 50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964
outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national
origin. It removed obstacles to voting
and removed segregation in schools, places of business and public
institutions. 50 years ago, the Civil
Rights Act changed this nation and moved us toward a more perfect union, toward
a better society. And, in truth, LBJ’s
legacy endures in these landmark pieces of legislation that continue to form
the backbone of racial equality in this nation.
With
50 years working toward racial equality in this nation under our belts, one
would think that this nation would be more evolved when it comes to race. The Library and museum seem to tell us we
should be. And yet, in the last months,
and most prominently this summer, our nation’s old wound was opened again. Michael Brown, an African American young man,
was shot fatally by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, just outside of St.
Louis. If only this were a solitary
incident. Closer to home, on Staten Island,
Eric Garner died in police custody after a choke-hold was used to subdue him
during an arrest. Last month, in South
Carolina, at a seemingly routine traffic stop, Levar Jones, an unarmed black
man was shot multiple times by a police officer after he went back into his car
to retrieve his license, as instructed by the police officer.
This
is not an indictment on the police. The
overwhelming majority of police officers work hard and put their lives in
danger and in harm’s way each and every day to keep their communities
safe. They are family men and women, who
show kindness, compassion, bravery and care on a day to day basis, as they face
more complicated threats and more and more lenient gun legislation. There are some questions about the particular
police officers involved in these incidents and the amount of force and
firepower that is becoming commonplace among police departments, but more
striking, and more important for our nation to grapple with, is the fact that
in each of these incidents, and the many others over the last many years, the victim was unarmed and was
black.
It
has been 50 years since LBJ signed the civil rights act into law, and we, as a
nation, still have some soul searching to do about what we value and what we
believe civil rights and equality really mean.
It has been 50 years since the Civil Rights Act became law, and there is
still a wide gap between what it means to be white in this nation and what it
means to be something else.
As
modern Jews in 21
st century America, we have been subsumed into white
culture. Or maybe, we pushed ourselves
in and demanded a place. Yes, Jews are
still distinct, but the fact of the matter is, we are a minority primarily
living and working as a part of the majority.
But it wasn’t so long ago that signs reminded us of who we weren’t. No Dogs or Jews allowed, the signs told us. As a minority, the rights of other minorities
ought to be as important to us as our own.
And, we have a legacy of being a part of the solution to societal
inequality that we ought not forget.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism [in Washington DC], under the aegis of the [Southern Christian]
Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building. During the Civil Rights Movement, Jewish
activists represented a disproportionate number of whites involved in the
struggle. Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the
Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.”
Among those Jews were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, of blessed memory,
who gave their lives, alongside James Charney, in the fight for freedom and
equality in what has come to be known as the Mississippi Burning.
“Leaders
of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in
public accommodations. Most famously, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched
arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.”
[2] As Jews, and as Reform Jews in particular, we
have a legacy of working toward equality in this country and doing whatever we
can in order to further the causes of life, liberty and happiness for all. Of late, however, our voices have been too
quiet. Of late, we have not spoken out
enough about the issues of race that continue to plague our nation.
These
United States, from the outside, seemed to be doing better than ever in terms
of race. After all, the first family is
African American. Doesn’t that mean we
are post-racial, even if the election of the president brought out the worst
among some of our countrymen? No. It doesn’t.
It means we’ve made progress, but there is much more to do. This summer’s protests in Ferguson in
reaction to the shooting death of Michael Brown and the other young black men
in this country show us exactly how far we are from being post-racial, how far
we are from having race be a thing of the past.
They show us that the mask of tolerance and acceptance under which we go
about our daily lives is only just that, a mask, hiding the reality of
inequality based on race that continues to this day. An inequality that is systematized into the
penal code and played out in incarceration rates and policies like Stop and
Frisk. An inequality that tells the
authorities that they can, and indeed should, be listening in on calls and
communications just because someone happens to be Muslim. An inequality that plays out in employment
rates, graduation rates and access to loans and mortgages. An inequality that continues to try to
disenfranchise voters. An inequality
that persists even as the Supreme Court rules that voting rights and
discrimination are no longer at issue, as they gut the preclearance elements of
that same Voting Rights Act that LBJ signed into law.
Fifty
years after the Civil Rights Act and 49 years after the Voting Rights Act, the
inequality in our land cries out to us, and it demands that we work to create a
new legacy for the next generation. A
legacy of equality and justice for all.
A legacy which puts into action the motto of this great nation: out of
many, one.
But
this summer, as the mask of a post-racial America was torn off another mask was
torn off as well. How can we focus on
race in this country, while throughout this nation and in other nations, the
ugly face of anti-Semitism was front and center again. We focus on it because the Anti-Semitism
whose resurgence we witnessed with shock and dismay, and which infiltrates
quickly due to the New Media is related to the racism which we see continuing
in this nation. They are related because
this summer we have had the opportunity to witness that we as a species are not
as evolved as we had hoped to be by 2014.
We are not as open to others and differences as we would have thought in
the aftermath of the disastrous conflicts of the 20th century. We haven’t learned our lesson yet, as humans
on this earth, and we seem to forget too easily that we are more alike than we
are different. That we are all created
in the same image.
In
response to the war between Israel and Gaza many protests against Israel
included, in commonplace incidents, placards, posters, and chants the likes of
which we have not seen in many years.
Throughout Europe’s capitals, those bastions of tolerance and culture,
riots and protests against Jews continued, putting Jewish communities in danger
and on high alert. But the posters and
the slogans weren’t the extent of the violence.
Jews in Europe and even here in America, faced violent attacks. Antiemetic incidents were so prevalent that a
Twitter and a Tumblr feed were started called “Everyday Anti-Semitism” which
tried to catalogue the numerous attacks in print, at protests, and which people
reported.
But
the war in Gaza was simply pretense. In
Brussels, in May, well before the war began, four tourists were shot at the
Jewish Museum in that city. This is the
kind of incident with which we have become all too familiar. Whether it was the Chabad in India or the
attack on the JCC in Argentina, we are used to a certain number of lone wolf
attacks, and perhaps we will never rid our world of this danger.
But
this summer, we saw more than just an isolated incident. Jewish-owned stores and a pharmacy in Paris
were firebombed and destroyed. Synagogues
in Germany have been firebombed, Jews in Sweden attacked and bludgeoned, a
Synagogue in Paris besieged and its members forced to defend their place of
worship from violent anti-Semitic protests posing as anti-Israel protests. In London, shouts of “Death to the Jews,” or
“Hitler was right” among other chants, were heard as a part of the more than
100 reported anti-Semitic attacks in England in July. Posters depicting Israel as equal to the
Nazis were commonplace. And even on New
York’s Upper East Side, a Jewish couple was harassed and attacked. More recently, a rabbi in Mississippi was
asked to leave a restaurant because he was Jewish and took offense to the
waiter’s description of a “Jewish salad,” though that incident is disputed by the restaurant's owner.
There
are, of course, differences between what is happening now and what happened in
the Europe of the 1930's. The
Anti-Semitism today is not state-sponsored as it had been for many centuries. In fact, many leaders of Europe, notably
France, Germany and Italy, have publicly and loudly condemned the attacks and
have done their best to try and stop them.
In Germany, a country for which firebombing of a synagogue dredges up memories
of a hate-filled past that nation has worked hard to overcome, a rally against
hate and against anti-Semitism drew thousands of people and was headlined by
the Chancellor and Prime Minister.
None
of this is meant to be alarmist nor to scare us into staying at home or force
us all to decide to move to Israel. But
it is important that we are aware of what is happening in the world. According to an Anti-Defamation League poll
completed over the last year, fully 26% of adults worldwide harbor anti-Semitic
attitudes. That number jumps to 34% in
Eastern Europe and 74% in the Middle East.
The numbers are much lower closer to home. Only 9% of Americans and 19% of people in the
Americas harbored negative views of Jews.
None of this is surprising.
Anti-Semitism has existed for as long as there have been Jews. It existed before the conflict in Gaza, and
sadly, it will exist even after a true and enduring peace is established, may
it happen in our days.
I
have been studying Sefer HaYashar with some colleagues over the last few
months. Sefer HaYashar is a midrashic
collection, which means that it takes the stories of the Bible and elaborates
on them to fill in the gaps and answer some of the questions that come up when
reading the Bible. For example, what was
Abraham’s childhood like? This question
is raised because the Torah introduces Abraham as an adult with no description
of his youth. Sefer HaYashar answers
some of these questions. And, since this
collection most likely dates from a post-crusader time frame, the stories take
on a slightly different cultural resonance.
Sefer
HaYashar talks at length about Abraham and why he left his land to go to
Canaan. The Torah tells us that it is
because God told him to go with the famous words “Lech Lecha”. But that’s only part of the story, according
to this Midrash. Sefer HaYashar posits
the young Abram as a believer in the one God, as opposed to the rest of the
population, especially Nimrod, the King of Ur.
The King makes multiple attempts to kill Abram including by throwing him
in a furnace and by shunning him. None
of these work, and Abram hides from the king for many years, taking refuge in
Noah’s home, and continuing to learn the ways of God.
At
a certain point in time, the king has a dream which is interpreted to mean that
Abram will cause the king’s death and destruction to the kingdom. Abram hears of this and says the following:
“Let us arise and go to Canaan, out of the reach of injury from [the king], and
serve the Eternal…and cast away all the vain things.” (Sefer HaYashar, ch. 12)
It is Abraham who makes the decision to flee
Ur, making it as far as Haran. And he
flees because the powers that be don’t like the religion he practices. By putting Abraham in the same position which
the Jews of the Middle Ages found themselves, namely forced to flee on account
of their belief, this Midrash makes a point to say that as Jews we have always
had to deal with this. Since Abraham, we
have had to contend with people who dislike us merely because of who we are and
what we believe.
From
this story, we see that in the Middle Ages, Jews projected the animosity they
felt back in time, believing it to be something we have no choice but to
contend with. The ADL survey makes the
same point. Anti-Semitism exists and we
need to be aware of it, and work to combat it in every way we can. Just because it exists, though, doesn’t mean
that Jewry is necessarily in danger. One
of the many legacies that has been passed down to us is a resilience of the
Jewish people: a legacy of endurance even in the face of difficulty, even in
the face of hatred.
Anti-Semitism
persists, just as racism persists. And
this summer we witnessed a shattering of our complacency and the breaking of a
sense of security we may have felt, as we recognized that the Gaza protesters
weren’t talking about Israel, or just about Israel, but they were talking about
Jews, all Jews. They were talking about
us. They were talking about you. And they were talking about me.
And
so what can we do? How do we combat
these pernicious elements of our world that seem to never be abated? There are a number of actions we can
take.
First,
let us recognize what we are already doing.
By being a part of a congregation, and bringing your family here with
you, you help to foster a strong Jewish identity in yourself and your family. Don’t underestimate this. Recognize the gift that you are giving your
family: the gift of Jewish community.
The gift of Jewish community is a gift of finding pride in who we
are. And regardless of what others
think, we can counter that with our pride and our sense of self. Studies show that once Jews are no longer an
abstract to people, meaning that after someone meets and befriends a Jewish
person, their opinion of Jews in general tends to be more positive. How much more so will this be the case if we
exhibit a tremendous and unabashed pride in who we are.
Next,
we can support worldwide Jewry by making our voices heard as a part of the
upcoming Zionist Congress, though our votes and our donations. The Zionist Congress distributes billions of
dollars annually to fund Jewish education and shape the Jewish nature of Israel
and communities worldwide. Every Jewish
adult is eligible to vote. By voting, we
make known that we care about what happens to Jews all over the world, and that
we will not abide living in a world where Jews are under attack and
threat. By voting we put into action the
axiom “kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh,” that all Jews are responsible to one
another.
Next,
we must look inside ourselves. We ought
to take care with the words we use and work to combat any latent prejudices we
might harbor. It is not easy to look
inward, but if this day, this Yom Kippur, can teach us anything, it is that we
have the ability to look inside ourselves, find those parts of us we wish to
make better and then resolve to make those parts better. In our public confessional, we comment on the
ways we have harmed others, whether by baseless hatred or xenophobia. Let us work every day against these most base
parts of who we are. Let us also speak
out against hate speech. Hate speech is
destructive and if left unchecked easily adopted as normative. And it is not just hate speech against Jews
we ought to concern ourselves with. We
can follow and continue the legacy of the previous generations of Jews who
fought and died to make this nation better and more tolerant for everyone,
regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, or sexuality.
We
can hold our officials to task. If we
believe in Voting Rights, we need to tell our representatives. If we believe in non-discrimination policies,
we need to make our voices heard. We may
not have the ability or time to put our lives on hold and get on a bus to go
make change, but we can all pick up the phone or send an email to our
congressperson or senator, both state and national. By speaking up for what we believe, we work
toward what we thought we had all along.
We work toward a nation and a planet neither of which will be putting on
airs of tolerance and acceptance, but rather will be veering toward justice.
Perhaps
we thought everything was taken care of because laws have been passed and
changed to make this nation more equal, and to provide equal rights for
all. But we forgot what is required
alongside legislation like the Civil Rights Act. When he signed the bill into law, LBJ said
the following:
This
Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities
and our States, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges
of injustice in our beloved country…So tonight I urge every public official,
every religious leader, every business and professional man, every workingman,
every housewife—I urge every American—to join in this effort to bring justice
and hope to all our people—and to bring peace to our land.”
Let us continue to join in
the efforts to bring justice and hope to all people. Let us work to ensure a bright future free
from hatred and division for the Jewish community worldwide, and for our
nation.
Let that be our
legacy.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah
