Liberty And Justice For All: Juneteenth 2021

 Liberty And Justice For All: Juneteenth 2021

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

One of my favorite pastimes is doing research. Just about any subject will do—a Jewish topic, or perhaps something else that piques my interest. Learning something new is always fun and exciting for me. There are always multiple leads, and I tend to follow a good number of them (usually too many). So as one thing leads to another, I soon have a dozen or so windows open, and then I find that, regretfully, I have to close one after another and focus on the actual topic at hand.

Everything, it seems, is interconnected. Everything that happens depends on what has already been or that took place in the past. As the saying states, “We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.” And how true that is.

Of course, there is an even more ancient proverb, penned more than 3000 years ago and often quoted:  “There is nothing new under the sun.” As it appears in Ecclesiastes 1:9, the verse is somewhat pessimistic. The author, said to be King Solomon, sitting in his palace in Jerusalem, laments the tediousness of life, viewed through the lens of the melancholy that accompanies his old age.

In countering Solomon however, one can argue that his world-weariness fails to recognize the newness of each day, the refreshing afternoon breeze that brings relief to the heat of the day, or the smile and potential that come along with each newborn baby.

Yet it is still true that everything that is, follows on the heels of something else that preceded it. Take Juneteenth, the newest national holiday, just approved by the United States Senate and House and signed into law by President Biden. The history of this holiday goes back almost 150 years.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln as an executive order in 1862, it didn’t become effective in the South until June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced to the more than 250,000 Black people in the state that they were now free. And it wasn’t for another two years that this day was first celebrated as a holiday, and another five years yet before it appeared on “a calendar of public events.” 

Since then, Juneteenth, as it came to be known, went through slow progress, from individual and family celebrations to a quick surge in popularity, and subsequent decline under the Jim Crow laws. 

Ironically, during the 1950’s and ‘60’s, the Civil Rights Movement focused not so much on African-American identity and history as on passing laws ensuring freedom and integration. However, since then, the holiday assumed ever-greater importance, until it finally achieved the status of a Federal holiday just this week.

This quick history lesson, however, must be accompanied by some facts. Only two months ago, a former US Senator, Rick Santorum, claimed that America was in fact “nothing” before white Europeans came here and created a nation. In this sweeping erasure of history, what Santorum failed to mention was the contribution of the Indigenous Peoples (Native Americans); of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Asia and Europe who were induced to emigrate to this continent to build railroads and mine the coal, gold, silver and other minerals buried in its mountains; the migrant farm workers from Latin America; or the Black People who were enslaved and forced to provide the labor of constructing and building America. These were the workers who built the White House, who quarried the Yule Marble from Colorado used for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. These were the same workers who, inspired and joined by impoverished Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, formed the unions that, literally with their blood, sweat and tears, guaranteed for the first time in history fair wages, health care and—later—equal opportunity for all people, regardless of gender, race or creed. It’s a struggle that’s still going on today, but one which has contributed to America no less than the contributions of the Puritans and other White Christian settlers who came from England, France, Spain and the Netherlands to find religious freedom and new economic opportunities.

America as we know it today is actually a New World, conceived and built by dreamers and refugees, by conquerors and victims. It’s the product not only of one race or people, but a conglomerate of humanity. 

And that is why Juneteenth is, finally and properly, a national, Federal holiday. The thread of slavery which gave birth to this day is woven into the tragedy and triumph of the Civil War, which in itself was a struggle for America’s soul. Juneteenth is a celebration that reminds us all, not only of the immense moral and physical evils of slavery, but also of the multitude of hands, colors, races, religions and nations that contributed to the birthing and safeguarding of this nation.

Juneteenth represents not only the end of the age-old scourge of slavery, but also the dawning of a new day, of new hope, and of new dreams.

We do stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and we honor them all by taking this day to reflect on the path forward that they showed us, and on what now is incumbent upon us to do. We cannot erase the past, just as we must not ever take the future for granted. We are all part of the same flow, the same breath of life that came into being at the moment that the universe was created. The contribution of each and every one of us is as vital to our ongoing existence as that of any of our ancestors. 

Juneteenth is not only the newest holiday on our calendars; it represents every dawn and every new morning. It stands not only for any one event in our past, but also for everything that now must be done to ensure that we keep moving forward, toward the goal of liberty and justice for all. This task is up to each and every one of us; may we find the strength and courage to follow through.

© 2021 by Boaz D. Heilman