This weekend, Jews and Muslims each have
major holidays. This conjunction of the Islamic and Jewish calendars happens
every 33 years. Muslims celebrate a major feast holiday, Eid Al-Adha. Instead
of feasting this weekend, we Jews fast.
In discussing Tikkun Olam, the Repair of
the World, in connection with the fast day of Yom Kippur, as I will be doing
today, the actions of Mohandas Ghandi came to mind. Ghandi used fasting as a way
to bring awareness to important issues and promote what he believed to be
right. Once, he pressured the British and Indian leadership to reconsider a
Constitution that would have enforced the Indian caste system and maintained
the oppression of the “untouchables.” Another time, in fact, the last fast that
Ghandi undertook, was an effort to encourage Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi to
work toward peace. Peaceful relations between peoples was a primary goal of
Ghandi’s life’s work.
While they may not have fasted, we
remember the actions of other individuals as well. Twenty-five years ago, there
were protests in China’s Tiananmen Square. Many thousands of people were involved
in the protests, but it is the image of a solitary figure standing in front of
a row of tanks that came to symbolize that pro-democracy protest movement. In
this country, in Montgomery, Alabama, a half century ago, Rosa Parks, a black
woman, tired after a long day at work, was sitting in the “colored” section on a
bus on her way home from work, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger,
and became a symbol for the Civil Rights movement. As I noted on Rosh Hashanah,
individuals can make a real difference by inspiring others.
Yet, while there is more freedom today
in China than there was in 1989, restrictions on freedom are still a prominent
part of life there. In India, violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs
regularly. In America, the Jim Crow Laws mandating segregation of public
accommodations eventually were overturned and there has been progress, but
discrimination still adversely affects minorities in America. The reality is
that while individuals can make a big difference, they need a great deal of
help from the rest of us to succeed. We have to do our part of the work.
Prejudice, oppression, and hatred remain
a part of our world. And so, on this day when we contemplate how we live our
lives and especially about how we act toward others, I am going to speak about discrimination
in America, the concept of the Shandeh, bringing shame on one’s people, and the
challenges we face in trying to overcome the prejudices we all have as we try
to repair our world.
I’ll begin with a story from our own
tradition. Take a moment and imagine. Close your eyes.
Think of yourself standing at the border of your
nation, the only land you’ve ever known, looking out into an inhospitable land
before you. You’re holding the hands of loved ones and friends. You’re tired.
Exhausted to be more accurate. You don’t have much food to eat or water to
drink. You’ve been traveling speedily because you have no choice but to do so.
If you fell behind, they would have caught you and that would have meant
oppression, persecution, and maybe even death. You yearn to move forward, to
cross the boundary before you and to journey toward a place of freedom.
We have been in this place many times
before as a people. My own grandparents and great-grandparents lived out this
story in Eastern Europe.
Now, imagine yourself standing at the shore of a broad
sea. You have no boat, but the pursuers still come after you. Some pray with
teary eyes, minds filled with fear. Children look to the adults for answers.
The adults look to their leaders. Their leaders plea for divine intervention.
Yet, the waters do not part. It looks like there will be no escape.
Finally, you look on as one brave soul, perhaps
believing with a degree of insanity that he could make it happen, begins
walking out into the water. He has no idea how to swim. Carrying and wearing as
much as he is, he’s not going to float well anyway. He walks out into the water
until the water covers his head.
Suddenly, the waters part and there you and others,
Nachshon and Miriam, Aaron and Moses find yourselves standing on dry land as
you continue your walk to freedom.
Now, feel free to open your eyes so you
don’t fall asleep!
That is the Midrash, the rabbinical tale
of Nachshon, whose faith helped part the waters. The rabbis say that it wasn’t
only Moses lifting his staff that made the waters part. It was instead that
Nachshon believed that they would part and risked his life to demonstrate that.
He had faith in God and because of Nachshon’s faith, the waters parted.
I recently discovered a version of this
Midrash with a little modification at the end added by Rabbi Susan Talve, a
friend, who is the spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation in St.
Louis, Missouri.
She shared a version of the story of
Nachshon with her own ending at a community service in St. Louis following the
shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Here’s my version of the story
with Rabbi Talve’s modification.
You look on as one brave soul, perhaps believing with
a degree of insanity that he could make it happen, begins walking out into the
water even though he has no idea how to swim. Carrying and wearing as much as
he is, he’s not going to float well anyway. He walks until the water covers his
head. You panic. He’s going to drown! You know it. So you rush to the water and
dive in. You’re not alone in doing that. Many people accompany you, all diving
in to save this one young man.
Suddenly, the waters part and there you find
yourselves standing amid the waters on dry land as you continue your walk to
freedom.
Rabbi Talve explained her version of the
story in the following way: Nachshon, like so many of us who want to change the
world and might respond in a desperate situation, wearied of waiting for a
miracle to happen and acted rashly. What really parted the waters was that so
many people rushed in to try to save him; not just his parents and those who
knew him, but all of the others as well, risking their own lives to save the
life of one child.
This ending and its explanation by Rabbi
Talve make sense to me. One person can make a great difference. One person can
be the catalyst for a movement, its Rosa Parks, but others need to jump in and
help if the grand task is going to be accomplished.
Changing the world is not easy. A
parting of the waters, as difficult as it may have been to accomplish, often
merely allows for the first step on a long journey to be taken. Our tradition
has the Israelites wandering through the wilderness for two generations, forty
years, before we even entered the Promised Land after the waters parted.
Neither will the “promised land” of equality
in Civil Rights and an end to discrimination and prejudice be reached easily.
That destination will be reached only after a long and difficult journey as
well. What has been accomplished thus far for minority rights has required
blood, sweat, and tears and there is still much work to be done.
Rabbi Talve, in a recent article she
wrote about the events in Ferguson, Missouri, argues that we continue to live in
an America divided by gender, race, and class. As Rabbi Talve notes, in many
municipalities across the country:
Driving while black, shopping while black, just walking
in the street while black, are crimes. Talk to any parent of a black male
and they will tell you about the "talk" everyone has with their
child. "Keep your head down, be polite, don't run from the police
and…lose the attitude."
A Grand Jury is now deliberating the
case in Missouri and will decide whether or not Officer Wilson should be
charged with a crime based upon the evidence. That said, the context of the shooting
of Michael Brown is that of a broader national narrative: a history of
conflict, prejudice, and discrimination. In that context, we encounter the rhetorical
question that circulated at the time of Trayvon Martin’s killing by George
Zimmerman and circulated again with the death of Michael Brown and events in
Ferguson. It comes from The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. I
think it says what needs to be said about the way much of our society sees African
American men. The question is:
At what age is a black boy when he learns he's SCARY?
It is, of course, a pointed rhetorical
question, one that mocks the discrimination that forms its context. In relation
to that, the questions I might ask are:
At what age, did you first experience
discrimination and prejudice? When do
you notice that people are treating you differently, not because you’re simply
growing up and, perhaps, are bigger and stronger than those around you, but
because you look differently than they do? Dress differently? Or act
differently than they do?
Those are questions with which Jews are
familiar. While we Reform Jews may not be readily identifiable as Jews because
of the way we dress, our more traditional brethren certainly are and at times
they face discrimination because of it.
That said, in Jackson, Mississippi, only
recently, a Reform Rabbi colleague of mine, Ted Riter, went to a restaurant as
was asked whether he wanted his salad “Large or Jew sized” with the
accompanying explanation being that the smaller salad was “cheap, like Jews.”
The owner didn’t even know he was speaking to a Jew when he said what he did.
Many of us have overheard conversations about
Jews being cheap or untrustworthy. Those words are not usually said to our
faces. There is even a term still too commonly used that refers to someone
trying to get the best deal from you. The verb used is “To Jew” and means to
“act like a Jew” in bargaining. It is a term based in many centuries of
Antisemitism, during which Jews were almost exclusively in businesses that
required bargaining. Jews were money lenders, tax collectors, peddlers and
middlemen in all sorts of business transactions.
While, for the most part, we have not been
seen as being a physically scary people, religious based hatred of Jews,
conspiracy theories, and simple lack of knowledge about Jews has produced fear
of the Jews as a collective. Even in the modern world, there are people who
fear that Jews lurk in the background of politics and economics, pulling the
strings of leaders.
Fortunately, in America today, we’re
unlikely to be pulled over or harassed because we’re Jewish, even if we wear a
kippah. But that is not and was not always the case and it wasn’t all that long
ago that many clubs excluded both Jews and people of color. Signs could be
found on no few establishments in America only half a century ago that read,
“No Jews, No Blacks, No Dogs.” The term for blacks was more often the “N” word.
It has taken no little effort by individuals,
religious groups, and others around the nation to overcome the stereotypes
often at the base of these aversions. There is much more to be done. We also
know how easily dislikes are renewed and reinforced.
The concept of a shandeh, Yiddish for
shame, has long been a part of Jewish life. A shandeh fur die goyim is
something done by a Jew or Jews that is seen as resulting in embarrassment or
taint on all Jews in the eyes of those who are not Jewish. No few people would
cite the actions of Bernie Madoff, whose financial crimes reinforced the
stereotype of Jews and money, as an example.
This problem of a Shandeh isn’t unique
to Jews and Judaism, however, though the Yiddish term certainly is. American
Muslims regularly face this problem as well and an African American minister
friend of mine wrote along these lines the other day about Adrian Peterson, Ray
Rice, and other NFL players accused of domestic violence as resulting in a
negative reflection of black men as prone to violence.
We live in a nation in which only
slightly more than 150 years ago, those professional athletes could have been considered
property. We live in a nation where 50 years ago there were places where black
and white athletes wouldn’t have been allowed to play together in no few places
because of segregation. Today, laws may have changed, but our minds are still
segregated to an extent. We apply different rules to different people, though
we may try our best not to do so: sometimes because of their ethnicity or
religion, sometimes because of how they dress or, yes, because of the color of
their skin.
Our eyes can perceive differences in
shade and color, but they do not force us to see those differences in shade and
color as determinate of character and worth. Our minds do that. Our feelings do
that.
When we ignore how our minds process
difference, we can easily fail to realize our own prejudices. We can even allow
our laws to enforce them—and as a nation, we have. It did not escape the notice
of those protesting the events in a suburb of St. Louis, that in 1857, Dred
Scott, a slave, after attempting to sue for his freedom at the Federal
Courthouse in that very city, had the Supreme Court of the United States
declare in a 7-2 decision that he had no legal standing in the court and even
that he was an “inferior being.”
We, Reform Jews, with our belief that
all people are created B’tselem Elohim, in the image of the divine, find such a
thought unfathomable, not to mention horrifying, repugnant, and despicable. We
also have experience with what happens when people come to be considered
“inferior beings.” It happened to us only seven decades ago, after numerous
times before that.
However, with the rapidity of
technological change today, we tend to act as if society and human interaction
change equally rapidly. While our society little resembles that of pre-Civil
War America, 157 years are barely a blip on evolutionary chart. Much of our
prejudice is connected to survival instincts, associating with those similar to
us and avoiding those, even fearing those, who are not.
Reform Jews have been and remain at the
forefront of combatting this challenging aspect of our humanity and our
society, the ease by which we can discriminate and the difficulty we often have
in overcoming it. When we add in socio-economic disparity, especially when
historically connected to blessing and curse in many religious traditions
including our own, the challenge we face is compounded.
Tonight, when we read the Kol Nidrei
prayer, we spoke in the voice of the one forced to say “Yes,” when he or she
meant “No.” We spoke with the voice of the persecuted minority, with the voice
of someone fearful to stand up as Jew and say, “No!” We understand fear as a
people. We understand being afraid of threats. Perhaps not so much today, but
in past generations, we’ve had “The Talk” or something similar with our own
children, warning them not to make waves, not to be noticed, not to trigger
Antisemitism.
During the 1960s, as Jews came from the
north to the south to aid in the Civil Rights struggle and were at the
forefront of demonstrations, no few Jews in southern communities feared that
they would face the backlash. However, throughout the Jewish year, we are
reminded that we were once strangers. Our history is full of discrimination and
persecution and threats against us, too often brutally carried out. We know how
it feels and what it means to be considered “inferior beings.” We know the consequences
that hatred can have and we should feel obligated to stand against it.
So, on this Yom Kippur, Atem Nitzavim! Here
we stand, all of us arrayed before God. Again and again facing challenges. Perhaps, we will be Nachshon, jumping into the
waters before us, hoping that we can individually make a difference. Perhaps,
we will be like Susan Talve’s rescuers of Nachshon, jumping in to save a life
and parting the waters. Regardless, let us not be onlookers, complacent
and silent, in the face of injustice.
Tomorrow evening, I will stand before
the ark and read what I believe are among the most powerful words in any of our
services over the course of the year:
Called to a life of righteousness, we rebel: arrogance
possesses us. The passions that rage within us drown the voice of conscience:
good and evil, virtue and vice, love and hate contend for the mastery of our
lives. Again and again we complain of the struggle, forgetting that the power
to choose is the glory and greatness of our being.
We can make the right choices. We can
elevate the voice of conscience not only for ourselves, but for our
communities. We can choose to overcome that struggle. Let us choose to stand
up, even to march, for righteousness. Let us jump into the waters and change
our world for the better.
May our fast indeed be the one of the
Prophet Isaiah of which we will read tomorrow:
Is this not the fast, I look for: to unlock the
shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go
free and to break every cruel chain?
And may we do as Isaiah suggests: Let us
remove the chains of oppression, the menacing hand, the malicious word. Then
shall our light blaze forth like the dawn.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah, May we all be
sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.
