Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,
I’m writing today to share with you a post that first appeared on Velveteen Rabbi, written in response to the white supremacist rally and march in Charlottesville this weekend. (My post is enclosed below.)
I commend to you also the statement that was released by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism: URJ President Rick Jacobs on Charlottesville.
Torah teaches us not to stand idly by when a fellow human being’s blood is shed (Leviticus 19:16). Silence gives tacit cover to white supremacy, especially in a community like ours that is so predominantly white. In the face of what we just witnessed, I will not be silent. I hope that you won’t, either.
One article I’m finding helpful today is How to Talk to Your Kids About the Violence in Charlottesville. If you have other good resources for navigating these difficult times, feel free to share them on the synagogue Facebook page.
On a pastoral note: what unfolded in Charlottesville this weekend may be activating or triggering for many of us — especially the use of Nazi symbols and slogans. If the weekend’s protests leave you in need of support, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll be away for a few days later this week, but Rabbi Josh Breindel will be providing emergency pastoral coverage in my absence.
Take care of your hearts and souls during this difficult time, and take care of each other, and do what you can to build a better world.
Blessings to all —
Rabbi Rachel
*
After Charlottesville
I spent Shabbat in an increasing state of horror about the white supremacist march in Charlottesville. Chants of “blood and soil,” “white lives matter,” and “Jew will not replace us;” white men carrying torches or wielding swastika-emblazoned flags; the death of a counter-protester at the hands of a maniac driving a car — all of these led me to a heartspace of commingled grief and fury.
Watching this ugliness unfold was not a “Shabbesdik” (Shabbat-appropriate) way to spend a day when we’re meant to live as if the world were already redeemed. Ordinarily I ignore the news on Shabbes, and seek to inhabit a different kind of holy time. But it felt important to bear witness, both to the white supremacist protests that blended the KKK with Nazism, and to those who bravely stood up to offer a counter-message.
Throughout the day I sought strength and hope in the fact of rabbis who traveled to Charlottesville to stand against bigotry alongside clergy of many faiths, “praying with their feet,” as it were. I took comfort in the number of people I saw donating to progressive causes in Charlottesville (per Sara Benincasa’s suggestion). But the weekend made clear just how much work we have to do to root out the cancers of racism and prejudice in this country.
Bigotry and xenophobia are among humanity’s worst impulses. White supremacy and antisemitism are two particularly ugly manifestations of those impulses (and they’re clearly intertwined — I recommend Eric Ward’s essay Skin in the game: how antisemitism animates white nationalism, which is long but is deeply worth reading). After Charlottesville, I recognize that there is far more hatred than I knew.
I was appalled by the ugliness we witnessed this weekend, and I know that’s a sign of my privilege. I haven’t had to face structural racism. I imagined that modern-day Nazis were laughable, and that the moral arc of my nation would bend toward justice without my active assistance. No longer. These hatreds are real, and alive, and playing out even now. They will not go away on their own.
The work ahead is long, but we must not give up. We have to build a better nation than this: more just, more righteous, concerned with the needs of the immigrant and the refugee, cherishing our differences of origin and appearance, upholding the rights of every human being to thrive regardless of race or religion or gender expression, cherishing every human being as made in the image of the Infinite One.
In offering that core Jewish teaching, I don’t mean to parrot the “all lives matter” rhetoric that erases the realities of structural racism. Every human being is made in the divine image. That doesn’t change the fact that in today’s America, we don’t all have equal opportunities or receive equal treatment. In today’s America, racism is virulent. So are other forms of bigotry and hatred. We have to change that.
We have to mobilize, and educate, and hold elected officials accountable, and combat voter suppression, and give hatred no quarter. Those of us who are white have to work against racism and the malignant rhetoric of white supremacy. We have to combat antisemitism in all of its forms. We have to recognize that all forms of oppression are inevitably intertwined, and we need to work to disentangle them all.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. We won’t all be able to participate in this holy work in the same ways. Some will be able (for reasons of gender or skin color or finances) to put their bodies on the line in direct action and protest. Others will participate by calling congresspeople, running for office, writing op-eds, or teaching children how to be better than this. But it’s incumbent on all of us to do what we can.
I’ve often heard people muse aloud that we wonder how we would have reacted if we’d been alive during the Shoah, or the Civil Rights years, or any number of other flashpoint times of crisis and injustice. Would we have protected the vulnerable? Would we have spoken out? Would we have been upstanders? This is a time of crisis and injustice, and the only unacceptable response is doing nothing at all.
Some links:
- Showing Up For Racial Justice
- How to fight white supremacy in Charlottesville and beyond
- Former Neo-Nazi Says It’s On White People To Fight White Supremacy
- Five ways to fight back against antisemitism
- How Jews can fight white supremacy in Trump’s America
- A call to my beloved Jews: we gotta talk about privilege
- My Family is Black and Jewish. Here’s what Charlottesville means to me.
- Hate in Charlottesville: the Day the Nazi Called Me Shlomo
- Ten Ways to Fight Hate: a Community Response Guide
