Justice In An Age Of Hatred, Bigotry And Injustice

Justice In An Age Of Hatred, Bigotry And Injustice

In Memory of George Floyd

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

May 30, 2020

In the Torah it says, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

The repetition of the word underscores its importance, and the importance of pursuing it, although justice is sometimes blurred and slippery.

The Torah continues, teaching us that failure to bring justice to light is equivalent to being an accomplice to it oneself.

One of the greatest injustices perpetrated by one human being against another, throughout our history, is racism.

I have known about racism in America since my days in middle school, when I learned about Little Rock, and the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

In August 1965, I lived in Los Angeles, and I remember well the clouds of smoke billowing over Watts, a primarily African American neighborhood in an otherwise prosperous and modern city. The Watts Riots began as a traffic stop which soon escalated. Six days later, after the intervention of nearly 4000 member of the California Army National Guard, the violence finally ended, leaving behind 34 deaths and over $40 million damage[1].

There were many riots since then, all following a similar pattern: Police overreaction to some relatively minor offense (actual or perceived) resulting in escalating violence and destruction.

Today we are witnessing a similar pattern, in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the United States.

Riots are never excusable. They perpetuate the injustice, affecting lives, livelihoods and property (often owned  by people who live in those impoverished communities).

They do give vent, however, to pent up anger and frustration.

Because racism is still, tragically, alive and well in America.  Despite the Civil Rights acts. Despite the many changes in culture and society.  Why—as some would proclaim—there are African Americans in TV shows now! In movies, even in commercials! Supposedly there is no discrimination in admission to colleges and universities. Some have even made it to the highest echelons of American society, including the US Supreme Court—and of course (though one time and one time only so far), the office of the President of the United States.

But these few and far-between successes only highlight the general state of affairs today. By and large, there still is discrimination against people of color. This fact is even more apparent these days, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though African Americans represent only about 13% of the American population, according to the CDC nearly one-third of the infections is among people of color.  “The environments where most live, the jobs they have, the prevalence of health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and how they are treated by the medical establishment have created a toxic storm of severe illness and death”[2]

This “toxic storm” was waiting for an opportunity to erupt, and that moment was the horrendous killing of George Floyd. The brutal and deeply disturbing video has gone viral, not surprisingly igniting even more rioting and demonstrations.

These are highly charged and challenging times. COVID-19 is only one wave sweeping over us all. The cultural and political divides that underlie American society have become monstrously ugly. Anti-Semitism—the canary in the mines—is at near-historic levels today. “Maskers” vs. “anti-maskers;” health specialists vs. politicians and big business; quarantine vs. nearly 15% unemployment—the worst since the Great Depression—all these are indicators of the great divides that threaten us.

And now, George Floyd, and racism. 

At exactly the time when we need to overcome our differences, to support one another, to help find a cure for the pandemic, to show more compassion to the stricken and the dying. 

Because there is injustice: resources being diverted from poor neighborhoods toward those that can afford testing and better health care.

Because there are far too many instances of police overreaction and brutality towards African Americans.

Because cultural stereotypes and fears persist—maintained both by whites and people of color (think of the word “thug” and how it’s used by each community).

Because fear and mistrust persist.

What we should be hearing from the government is comforting, unifying words. Instead, what we heard on Friday from the White House was an historically racist tweet (“When the looting starts, the shooting starts”), a phrase that to African Americans rings of the same threat and hatred as a burning cross.

So what can we do to help?

The problem is enormous. Racism runs through human history—through human veins. How does one stop that?

Change must take concerted effort on all levels of society—legal, educational, social, economic, cultural, and political. We must educate ourselves and recognize the problems (we already know the roots; what we need to know now is what forms this bigotry takes  today). And we must take action. Where we see racism, we must call it out. There will be countless arguments about freedom of speech and whether we can make racism a hate crime. But no matter, we must point to it wherever we see it raising its ugly head. Racists must be held accountable—not because of the fear of rioting, but because racism is an injustice and a wrong that must be righted. Speech that is even seen as incitement to violence must be curbed—even if it comes from the President of the United States.

Correction: Especially if it comes from the President of the United States.

The war against racism is never-ending. Because it is so deeply rooted in our subconscious, it must be constantly confronted, each and every time that we encounter it.

In his immortal “I Have A Dream” speech, Rev. Martin Luther King spoke of a time when people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Sadly, this vision is still a dream, no closer to realization than when the words were spoken in 1963. 

May God give us strength and courage to make this noble dream turn real.  It’s up to us—all of us, regardless of color, race, region, nationality, or gender—to make it so.

It’s the right thing to do, the holy thing to do, no matter how difficult or dangerous.

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[1]  Joshua, Bloom; Martin, Waldo (2016). Black Against Empire: The History And Politics Of The Black Panther Party. University of California Press. p. 30, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots, (accessed 30 May 2020).

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/coronavirus-disproportionately-impacts-african-americans/#close, (accessed 30 May 2020).

© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman

What Our Flag Still Says: Memorial Day 2020

What Our Flag Still Says

Memorial Day 2020 

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

In the Torah’s stories of the death of Abraham and, later, his son Isaac, I always find myself  both confused and amazed by the description of how their children came together to bury their father.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet it does. Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, were never very close. At least 13 years of age separated them, and there are intimations that Ishmael may have been abusive toward his younger half-brother. The troubling relationship between the two continued—even to this day. The Torah describes Ishmael as the ancestor of the Arab peoples, and while the Jews and Arabs may be distantly related, in modern times there is little love lost between the two nations.

Still, when Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac come together to bury their father.

Jacob and Esau—Isaac and Rebecca’s sons—may have been closer in age (they were, in fact, twins), the hatred between them is the background for famous incidents of cheating, manipulation, and murderous oaths. Hundreds of years after the Torah’s story of their rivalry was told, the ancient Rabbis made Esau (and his descendants, the Edumites) symbol of Israel’s most vicious and murderous enemies.

But in the Torah, when Isaac dies, Esau and Jacob overcome their hatred for one another and come together to bury their father.

A similar (although not quite as deadly) division exists in America today. Though at times hateful and violent, and widely exacerbated by the social media, two vocal and hate-filled camps stand across from each other, each throwing epithets at each other, each calling the other by names, labels and words that if our parents heard us utter, they would make us wash our mouths out with soap.

One would think we are at the outset of yet another Civil War.

What we seem to have forgotten is not what comes between us, but rather, what connects us.

Americans can’t claim the complex and deep-rooted history that Jews and Arabs share. Modern American history only goes back 500 years. And there are other differences: Americans, although often speaking of “our forefathers,” do not share ancestries. Among us are people who have come from all over the world. The Pilgrims who, according to our origin stories, landed at Plymouth in 1620, were not the only newcomers to the New World. There were also French and Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch, among others. By religion, they were Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, not counting the religions held by the slaves they brought with them from Africa and elsewhere.

And of course, before any of them, there were the Native Americans, each with their language, culture and customs.

Yet history brought us all together in an amazingly short time. Somehow, all interwove into a colorful tapestry of cultures that learned to coexist; that lived side by side; that intermarried or held fast to their cultural roots; that at times fought against each other, but at other times traded, ate and drank together, and by some mysterious force became one Union.

Memorial Day, better than any other day in the year, recalls to us what made us one nation. In Arlington, VA, and in every other state of the Union as well as in 16 foreign countries, the neatly aligned graves of fallen American soldiers, stretching for seemingly miles in every direction, decorated with crosses, stars of David and other religious emblems, all serve to remind us of how we became the American People. Not peoples—one people.

For some of us, this long weekend is an excuse to go shopping for sales and markdowns. For others, it’s an opportunity to enjoy the beginning of summer with barbecues and picnics, or to take in the beauty of the land through hikes and nature walks. For all of us, however, Memorial Day is there to provide us with the most important reason and purpose of our existence.

The cultural, economic and military strength of the United States is there not by accident or coincidence. The American success story was paid for by the lives of the soldiers who fought in its wars. Close to 7000 died in the American Revolutionary War. 500,000 in the Civil War. Another half a million died in World War II.

Close to a million and a half Americans paid with their lives for our freedoms today.

But we must never for a moment lose sight of the fact that each of them—those marked by a headstone, a flag, by a name engraved in a wall, or designated as “unknown,” as well as those who are still MIA’s—was a human being, born of a mother and father. Each had a family, a lover, children, and a circle friends. Each was a unique human being with desires, talents, and a life story that never reached its natural conclusion.

Simply put, we are here today because they are not.

Of course, we could just go on bickering. We could protest over rights—and wrongs. We could live each moment in pursuit of our own happiness, strive toward goals we set for ourselves, and stridently abuse those who disagree with us or stand in our way.

Or we could repeat—a hundred times over, until we memorize them—the words spoken by President Lincoln as he stood over the graves of the fallen at Gettysburg: “It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Despite an occasional dearth of toilet paper or disinfectant wipes, on the whole we Americans today are far better off than most of the rest of the world’s population. Though in the throes of a dreaded pandemic that is taking a tragic toll of life and health from among many of us, we are by and large living the good life.

Yet we are facing today challenges not unequal to those faced by our ancestors: Civil rights, justice and injustice, ignorance, poverty and dangerous disease. Perhaps, if we take some time from this long weekend to assess where we came from, and how far—and at what cost—we have come to reach this point, we might also discover the factors that united us in the past, and which still unite us today.

The ideals for which America stands, upon which it was founded, and for which so many paid with their lives, are best represented by our flag. Its colors as well as the stars and stripes are so much than simply geometric design: they stand for our diversity, for the uniqueness of each one of us, for the basic human rights of each individual member of our culture and society. They stand for the sacrifices made by our fathers and mothers. They represent our unity and collective identity, as well as our promise and purpose as a nation.

At no point may we lose sight of what America is, and how it got to be that. The Biblical stories that are part of our tradition carry lessons and admonitions no less valid today than they were thousands of years ago: That we remember why we are here, for what reasons this country was established, and at what cost it still stands.

May this Memorial Day be meaningful for us all. May we remember and honor those who gave their lives so that we might live in freedom today. May we never lose sight of the path yet ahead of us.

God bless America, make it strong, and keep us all in health, safety and peace.

© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman

The Road Ahead: Emor.2020

The Road Ahead

D’var Torah for Parashat Emor

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

May 9, 2020

This week’s Torah portion, Emor (Leviticus 21:1-24:23) is the fundamentalist’s bible. Not only does it contain the strictest laws possible, regulating whom a priest may or may not marry; how he may or may not mourn (and for whom); but also such beauties as “If a priest’s daughter becomes desecrated through adultery… she shall be burned in fire” (Lev. 21:9); and the ever popular “A fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Just as he inflicted an injury upon a person, so shall it be inflicted upon him” (Lev. 24:20).

Listing the holidays along with their proper sacrifices, Emor not only prohibits any fault or blemish in the animal offered as sacrifice, but also forbids any deformity in the body of a priest who would offer these sacrifices.

And just to cap it all off, the portion makes an example of a person who blasphemes (utters a curse, using God’s sacred name), and has the entire Israelite community stone him to death.­

More than 3000 years later, this portion is an embarrassment. How can it still be there in our sacred texts, we wonder. And why do we keep returning to it, year after year? No matter that most of these laws are now moot (no sacrifices now that the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed). No matter that already by the early years of the Common Era, some two thousand years ago, the Rabbis had already agreed to ban capital punishment.

And besides, doesn’t the constant repetition of these dreadful laws only bolster those among us who would see them as God’s immutable word and misuse them to prop up their own bigotry and prejudice?

When the Five Books of Moses were completed and sanctified, around the year 500 BCE, the injunction was made that not a word should be taken out or added to the text, and that serves as one reason to keep this portion where it is.

However, Jewish Law continued to evolve. Through commentaries, through discussions and laws quoted in the Talmud, and through responsa issued throughout the ages, Jewish law (the Halacha) has continued to develop, reflecting progress in human understanding and knowledge.

So why return, year after year, to these antiquated laws?

Certainly there are lessons still to be drawn from this portion. Transgressions bear consequences; holiness—God’s powerful and mysterious energy—can be dangerous and must not be trifled with; those who lead by example must not be sidetracked by temptations—they set an example and must therefore adhere more strictly to law and tradition than the general population. These are but some of the lessons we can learn from these chapters.

But there is more.

Why, when we recite the Passover Haggadah, do we begin with the humble origins of our people? Why, even when we stop believing in the stories of Creation as literal truth, do we still read them?

One reason is that these stories tether us to history and to our evolution as a people. We were not born—as some pagan gods were reputed to be—fully formed. Our pedigree is no more noble than anyone else’s. That is the lesson we find in the rabbinic explanation of why Adam and Eve are seen as the progenitors of all humanity—to remind us that no one is born more noble than another. We share the same humble beginnings. The foundation of even the greatest civilization is never without its flaws and failures.

But there is another lesson we can take from this portion, and it has to do with our own role in the constant evolution of our culture and heritage. When we read the fundamentalist laws of Emor, when we find ourselves shocked and appalled by their apparent intolerance, we are also simultaneously moved to fix the wrong, to right the injustices and unfairness, to ease the harshness by which we judge ourselves and each other.

We constantly seek to better ourselves and our lives. How to do that unless we have some basis for improvement? What standard or bar do we use to measure how far we have come, and how much further we still have to go?

Emor serves to remind us of our origins, of the laws that we knew at the earliest days of our formation into a people.

To see these laws as the end-all of the Torah’s teaching would do a great disservice to our humanity. The great ideal that we must all be “a holy people, a nation of priests” (an ideal expressed several times in the Torah) cannot be realized in light of the harsh conditions that Parashat Emor imposes on us. We would fail from the start, doomed even before we began.

This seeming conflict and paradox must therefore be seen in a different light.

We aren’t born holy; we become holy. It’s a process, a journey that begins with ignorance but progresses to enlightenment and understanding.

It’s OK to start at The Beginning, no matter how often or frequently we do that. Looking at the past enables us to evaluate our progress forward. Along the path, it’s OK to make mistakes, even to fail. As long as we don’t lost sight of where we are headed, as long as we remember to rise again—and to help others, to extend a hand to those who might need it, to shed light on faults and cracks along the path, and throughout it all, to be more forgiving and accepting of faults we see in others. Just as we hope they will be of us and ours.

And perhaps that’s why Emor is there, and has been all along: To remind us of where we started. We are all participants in the progress of our humanity. Looking at our past should serve to remind us of where we are going; it should encourage us, inspire us, and give us our moral north.

And that’s why we read this portion, year after year, and why we find it so objectionable time after time again. It can only serve as a reminder of where we came from, not where we are headed to.

© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman