WIDENING OUR CIRCLE OF CARE

BY RABBI MIRIAM TERLINCHAMP

 

When Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri shot Michael Brown, I don’t think anyone knew what would follow. It felt like it was just an open and shut case of a racist acting too quickly, or an anomaly in an otherwise healthy system, or even that we as civilians did not understand the complexity that happens in pursuit of a suspect. However, the reaction to Brown’s death was anything but open and shut. What we saw was civil unrest, protests, the revelation of blatant racism in both the police force and the justice system and the anger that washed through the streets. It should not have surprised us, because we have seen black unarmed men killed by police officers before, we have watched cities burn and then be reborn, and we are not ignorant about the mass incarceration epidemic in our country. However, we were surprised, by Ferguson and then the crime scenarios and subsequent reactions replaying themselves all over the country.

 

These are not new problems for Americans. All of us remember a time of upheaval in our country that had to do with race and economic inequity. We may remember the 2001 riots in Cincinnati over the shooting of Timothy Thomas or 1992 riots in LA after the beating of Rodney King, or farther back to the protests and the violence that came along with the civil rights movement. Regardless, the national conversation around race and economic imbalance is not a new one for the American people. It is depressing to already know how the story ends and to feel powerless in the face of a centuries old issue of injustice.

 

This year, I watched my own reaction to these crimes of primarily white men on black men and then the civil unrest that was primarily black men on black people. As a white Jewish woman it appeared that I had little place in the conversation since none of this really “affected me personally.” Yet, how wrong is that mode of thinking! White, black, Jew or non-Jew, what is happening in our country has to do with all of us, we are all affected personally by the deaths of innocent people, by broken systems, by our complicit behaviors that perpetuate bias, and by having to watch year after year the same problems with the same results unfold.

 

Many of us have forgotten that these deaths, this civil unrest, these campaigns of Black Lives Matter – are part of our story too. The Jewish people are guilty of thinking that the issues that face our country are not “our problem.” But it is our problem, and we are part of the problem because we have reacted too slowly in the face of our neighbors suffering. We have been close-minded about who we think is in our circumference of care.

 

Over the course of 5000 years the Jewish community created a safety net beneath us so that as far as we might fall, we would always have support. This mode of thinking that all Jews are part of a single family is how we survived through centuries of persecution. This safety net, and this large, enfolding family is a sacred gift, something that we created because we needed it.

 

We still need it. We are still scared. We see the state of the world and we know that “IT” can happen again. The “IT” is annihilation. The casting out to Babylon, the reduction of our people to second class citizens, the rape and murder of Jews in countless pogroms, crusades, and attacks- centuries of violence culminating in the Holocaust just 75 years ago.

 

We know suffering and fear. We know the possibility of extinction. Every Jew has taken a communal vow of “Never Again”. The way we live out this promise, this sacred vow of never forgetting, has led to flourishing in the land of the free. Beating our dissenters at their own game by triumphing in the face of adversity.

 

In the United States, after we went through near destruction, our small, decimated, broken people started to rebuild. We owned stores. We went to school and bought homes on the GI bill.[1] We were not allowed into country clubs so we just built our own and then we just kept building. We built museums. We got into politics. We triumphed in the educational system becoming professionals, doctors, lawyers, educators…We are 1.4% of the US population and yet, we, the chosen few, have a presence in this country far greater than our numbers attest.

 

This does not mean we do not experience anti-Semitism every day in this country, this state, and this city. This does not mean we are freed from the stereotypes or the threats to our livelihood. This does not mean that we do not fear for our safety. However, something has changed in the last century since we started to flourish in the United States. There is a difference between the recent acts of anti-Semitism from the anti-Semitism our people experienced 50 years ago. The acts of anti-Semitism we see now do not exist as part of a system of power. It is not the rich and powerful who are spray-painting swastikas on our doors, it is those who perceive themselves to be marginalized.

 

In the article, “Why Jews should care about Ferguson,”[2] author Jay Michaelson explains this distinction, “Anti-Semitism is real, but it is no longer intrinsic to the systems of oppression that killed Michael Brown. Like it or not, most American Jews find ourselves on the side of privilege. We may be “off-white”, as some theorists have proposed but we’re close enough. If we stand up for the underdog, it will be out of ethics, not self-interest.” We may not see it, but the Jewish people have become people of privilege where our response to “Never Again” in the United States is pretty specific. “Never Again” when it comes to the Jews.

 

Last summer, three teenagers wandered into the wrong part of occupied Israel, were kidnapped and subsequently killed. Jews around the world erupted in pain and frustration. We called for action, and Israel, furious in defense of the lives of our children, went to war. We bombed, we invaded, we destroyed tunnels of terror and we killed all in the name of “Never Again”. Never again will we allow our people to be attacked and killed for being Jews.

 

This summer we saw another crisis, more policy than anything else, but still the notion of the “Iran Deal” sent Jews in our country to our government representatives. Many of us feared that the “Iran Deal” would affect the safety of our Jewish homeland. There was no way that we wanted to see Iran fund terrorism in Israel. We asked: Doesn’t our President love us? Doesn’t our government care what happens to Israel? Publicly and with strong voices we called out our opinions.

 

In both scenarios, the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati and The Jewish Council on Community Relations kept us informed, shared with us ways we could help, and offered healing and proactive suggestions in the face of our helplessness. Our Jewish institutions helped us combat our fear and pain through action.

 

At the same time, in our own country, our cities were on fire. The deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddy Gray… 501 unarmed black men and women killed in police custody over the course 2015. Our Jewish community was quiet; we took our time in how to respond, carefully wording our voices of support for the people in Ferguson, in Baltimore, and in New York. We were not quiet because we did not care. We absolutely cared.

How many of us watched the video of Sandra Bland’s arrest and were horrified? How many of us saw the photos of 12-year-old Tamir Rice’s body lying on the ground for hours, and were gripped with grief?

How many of us read or watched what happened in our city with Sam DuBose, the unarmed man killed for a traffic violation by a University of Cincinnati police officer?

 

And then what did we do?

Did we get on a bus and go to Ferguson and march? Did we grab signs of support and sit with the DuBose family in Clifton? Did we send messages of comfort to our exhausted and frightened police force that stood on edge, fearing that what happened here in 2001 would happen again?

 

I didn’t.

I watched the news, the Facebook reels, and then once the media replaced the stories with new stories, I moved on. Not because I didn’t care, or wasn’t angry and saddened, but because part of me, a part of myself I hate to acknowledge, did not see those victims as my own people. They are not Jews. Those cities are not in Israel. They have nothing to do with my promise of “Never Again.”

 

But that is a horrible lie we are telling ourselves. Taking care of only our own is hypocritical, outdated, and will lead to the destruction of our world. Taking care of our own, is not enough.

 

We, the American Jewish community have sinned.

We have failed to see the stranger as one of our own, and therefore we have contributed to the cycle of oppression, poverty, and injustice in our country.

 

We, the American Jewish people have sinned.

We have rested on our historical alliance between Blacks and Jews during the civil rights era. We have quoted time and again how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel prayed with his feet alongside MLK. Forgetting that in the 1950’s and 1960’s our plight as disenfranchised minorities was similar. Now that it is not, we are careful and calculated in how we voice our support for African-American’s in our country.

 

The American Jewish people have sinned.

The Jewish community of Cincinnati has sinned.

Temple Sholom has sinned.

I, your rabbi, have sinned.

By trumpeting Jewish causes above all others, forgetting that this is my country, my city, my children. Cincinnati has the 2^nd highest childhood poverty rate in America with 74% of our black children living below the poverty line[3] and we are doing little about it because we have forgotten that those black impoverished children are OUR children.

 

We have been blind to the needs of our community. Forgetting that HUMANITY is our family, not just our Jewish communal family. Our blindness has nothing to do with our hearts. The suffering of human beings pains us. Whether it is the Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives, or in the anger and pain of mothers losing children because of systemic racism prevalent in our country – we see ourselves. We know what it means to flee, to be scared, to never feel like we will be free of persecution.

 

The pain that each of us feels has a purpose. There is something in that nano-second between caring about what we see on the news or Facebook feed or newspaper and the moment when we move forward, reading the next buzzfeed article or turning to the latest Netflix show. That moment between sadness and dismissal is a holy space. Within it lies our deepest problem as human beings – the feeling of powerlessness in the face of pain.

 

We see the bodies, read the headcounts, watch the cities hold their breaths for fear of civil unrest, and we feel powerless. Surrendering to powerlessness is human. While taking action, that is Divine. When we take action, we acknowledge that we may not have a huge impact, but in the face of suffering we will not be idle. We are so good at this when it comes to Israel, when it comes to Judaism, and the Jewish people. But our circumference of caring for others must be larger than just ourselves. In this world of ever-connectedness, the luxury of only caring about our own narrow world is not acceptable. We cannot be isolated by faith or by race.

 

At Temple Sholom we are trying to lift ourselves above our own discourse, even in the face of major institutional change. Earlier this year when a gunman opened fire at a bible study group at Mother Emmanuel church, I was at a national social justice meeting in Philadelphia with other faith leaders. Horrified by what happened in South Carolina, the 60 of us made our way to the closest AME church in Philadelphia. The outpouring of communal upset was deeply moving,

 

The church shooting shook me. I thought about the many synagogues and JCC and Jewish organizations that had been targeted over the last few years. I thought about how my first impulse as a rabbi is to call the police when I feel unsafe, but that might not be true for other faiths and races. With Mother Emmanuel, I felt kinship and loss, and I could not be silent. I could not just move on. I could no longer lie to myself that these too, are my people. I did not know what to do, but I knew that I had to do something.

I flew home to Cincinnati the next morning made a few calls and on the one week anniversary of the shooting our synagogue was filled with over 300 people from 22 different faith institutions. We did not solve anything. We did not undo the harm that had happened in North Carolina or suddenly solve the 400 year-old issues of racial injustice and economic inequity. All we did was open our doors.

 

In that moment we needed to DO SOMETHING with our powerlessness, and the only thing we could think to do was to hold hands, sing and pray with our neighbors. And damn if that wasn’t one of the most holy things that our congregation has been part of. We haven’t stopped taking action.

 

We are active with:

• Amos Project, a faith based group that strives for racial and economic equity
• ECI, the Economics of Compassion Initiative, a group striving towards economic balance and pursuit of jubilee
• The Preschool Promise Initiative, a voucher system for all Hamilton County 3 and 4 year olds to attend Preschool, which we hope to have on the ballot in 2016.

But it is not enough. We need to do more. We must expand the way we see ourselves and the community we care about.

 

In our Torah portion on Yom Kippur we read, “Atem Nitzavim hayom kulchem…” “All of you, every one of you stand before me…” Not just the priests, or the leaders, or the judges but every human stands up and listens to this commandment:

“For the mitzvah that I command you this day: it is not too extraordinary for you.

It is not too far away! It is not in the heavens, (for you) to say: Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us and have us hear it that we may observe it?

And it is not across the sea, (for you) to say: Who will cross for us, across the sea, and get it for us and have us hear it, that we may observe it? Rather near to you is the word, exceedingly, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it!”[4]

It is clear from the passage that the greatest mitzvah we seek is within our grasp. Not in books, or the heavens or the seas, but rather in our own hearts. What is not spelled is what the commandment actually is. The 12^th century scholar Nachmanides says that the mitzvah being referred to is the entire Torah. While the 15^th century rabbi, Seforno explains that it is Teshuvah, repentance. I think that it is both of those mitzvoth and more. I believe that we read this verse on Yom Kippur in order to hear the mitzvah that we have not lived up to. The mitzvah that has felt too far away, too impossible, too unbelievable to realize in the face of our powerlessness.

 

The mitzvah is Ahavat ha’ger loving our neighbor as ourselves. The mitzvah is not wasting energy on self-centered actions but rather on the needs of the greater whole. The mitzvah is not moving on when our hearts are stirred by the suffering in this world. The mitzvah lies in the enduring wisdom of Rabbi Hillel, “Im Eyn Ani Li Mi Li? If I am only for myself what am I? And if I am not for myself who will be for me? And if not now when?” Let us continue the important and sacred work of caring for the Jewish community. While simultaneously choosing to expand our sense of who we include in our family of “Never Again.”

 

The next time something stirs you, awakens the suffering in your heart – pause in that moment between sadness and apathy. Sometimes we stay silent because it feels lonely to talk about what bothers us. We know if we talk to a fellow Jew about Israel or the Jewish people, we are talking amongst family and we all feel pain. But the same has to be true with the innocent who are dying in our cities, for the children who are living in poverty, for our city that ranks 73 out of 77 in the greatest disparities among blacks and whites in metropolitan areas.[5] Look for allies, initiate the conversation, plan what you want to do about it, and then see it through to the end. Listen to the powerlessness that you feel and then choose life, choose the Divine path, choose to do something about the pain in this world. Start small; we don’t need to reach for world peace just yet. Turn to a friend, make a phone call; sponsor a small gathering in your home where we can voice what bothers us as individuals.

 

We never know what difference we can make simply by taking action around something that stirs our soul. All of us can make a phone call. We can reach out to people who are in need. We can say these are our children, this is our city, and we want to help mend the brokenness in our world. We can be a better Jewish people by being proactive. It is holy work to make change, to build relationships, and to expand our circumference for those that we are willing to fight for.

 

The role of the synagogue is to be a sacred community. It is not the job of a synagogue only to be mired in our own self-interest. Worrying about our own problems because it’s easier or feels more pressing than the world outside of us that is dripping in blood and pain. There is no such thing as turning a blind eye. That apathy eats at our souls; it kills us from the inside, because inaction is a symptom of powerlessness and the weakness of the human spirit.

 

Last night, during our Kol Nidre service, I talked about how Temple Sholom is in the middle of our story. We are still writing the next chapters of our congregational book of life. This is part of it. These Black lives, these Syrian lives, these African refugees lives, the lives of the children in our city, their lives all matter. It is our holy, Jewish task, to see their fate inextricably tied to our own fate. Calling out: “Never Again” for any of us.

 

[1] Debby Irving, “Waking up White: Finding myself in the story on race” Elephant Room Press. 2014.

[2] Jay Michaelson, “Why Jews should care about Ferguson.” The Jewish Forward, August 19, 2014.

[3] The Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio, “The State of Black Cincinnati,” August 2015, page VI.

 

[4] Deuteronomy 30:11-14

[5] Bowdeya Twej and Sharon Coolidge, “Cincinnati: 20 years later, it’s still two cities.” Enquirer, August 30, 2015.