This has been a deeply disturbing week. As anyone who has dealt with corrosive problems knows, the first thing we have to be able to do is name the problems unequivocally. If you don’t name them, you can’t confront them. The killing in Barcelona was Islamic terrorism. The killing in Charlottesville was white supremacist neo-Nazi terrorism. Islamic terrorism is pernicious and requires continued vigilance and opposition. This morning I want to focus on white supremacist neo-Nazism and make a few observations.
First, anti-Semitism is foundational to white supremacy. What I’m about to say isn’t news, but it needs to be repeated, understood and shared. Anti-Semitism isn’t just a feature of white supremacy, it’s the foundation. To the white supremacist neo-Nazis Jews are not white, not American. Jews are interlopers. The Washington Post featured an article about this and quoted an African American scholar Eric Ward at the Southern Poverty Law Center as follows:
“The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for white supremacist ideology. White supremacism — inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South — had been the law of the land, and a black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? … Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education and even Washington D.C. It must be brainwashing white people, rendering them racially unconscious.
What is this arch-nemesis of the white race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews. Jews function for today’s white nationalists as they often have for anti-Semites through the centuries: as the demons stirring an otherwise changing and heterogeneous pot of lesser evils.”
‘
The marchers in Charlottesville were chanting, “The Jews will not replace us!” because it articulates their foundational fear.
Their anti-Semitism is deep, powerful, mythical. The extent and depth of it cannot be exaggerated.
Second, anti-Semitism and racism work hand in hand. Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, as Martin Luther King understood when he said the following in 1967:
“In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about six million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him, if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist.”
Given our understanding of the interplay, ideologically and practically, between anti-Semitism and racism, what should we do? First, we should continue to demand that our president denounce white supremacist neo-Nazism unequivocally. The ADL has a petition that does just that. Anything short of unequivocal denunciation validates the hate and the haters.
Second, we must speak out and act out to protect ourselves along with others who are the objects of discrimination. I’ve been repeating the following words for months now and they are becoming increasingly significant:
We rise together or we fall together.
The ADL offers suggestions for 10 things we can do to combat hatred, whoever the source or object of it might be.
Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Hartman Institute of North America, wrote a thoughtful piece arguing that the legacy of the Shoah urges Jews to do two things – one, recognize how important it is for Jews to have political power and two, use that power to pursue and create a moral values system.
He quotes Hannah Arendt who wrote the following in an unpublished essay in 1942:
Those peoples who do not make history, but simply suffer it, tend to see themselves as the victims of meaningless, overpowering, inhuman events, tend to lay their hands in their laps and wait for miracles that never happen. (Hannah Arendt, “Jewish Politics,” 1942)
At times like this it’s easy to feel powerless. Nauseated. Defeated. But we don’t have the luxury of giving in to those feelings.
We’re continuing to journey through the book of Deuteronomy, through Moses’s discourses which were designed to fortify the Israelites for their impending entry into the promised land. A major theme of Moses’s teaching is the proper use of power. While wandering in the wilderness the Israelites are no longer slaves, no longer at the whim of their oppressors. Moses urges them to use their freedom, their newly found power, to create a just society.
We are their ancestors. And we have more power than we often realize.
We must call the treachery what it is and insist that our leaders do the same. We must speak out, and rise up, alongside others who are the objects of discrimination. We must use our power to achieve justice for everyone.
ראה אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה “Behold I present before you today a blessing and a curse.” (Deuteronomy 11:26) There’s no guarantee which way things will go in 2017 and beyond, especially if just we sit back and hope for the best. With all of our power, we can and must choose the blessing.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on August 19, 2017
NYC Interfaith Gathering - "Yes to Love, No to Hate," August 23, 2017
First, anti-Semitism is foundational to white supremacy. What I’m about to say isn’t news, but it needs to be repeated, understood and shared. Anti-Semitism isn’t just a feature of white supremacy, it’s the foundation. To the white supremacist neo-Nazis Jews are not white, not American. Jews are interlopers. The Washington Post featured an article about this and quoted an African American scholar Eric Ward at the Southern Poverty Law Center as follows:
“The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for white supremacist ideology. White supremacism — inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South — had been the law of the land, and a black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? … Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education and even Washington D.C. It must be brainwashing white people, rendering them racially unconscious.
What is this arch-nemesis of the white race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews. Jews function for today’s white nationalists as they often have for anti-Semites through the centuries: as the demons stirring an otherwise changing and heterogeneous pot of lesser evils.”
‘
The marchers in Charlottesville were chanting, “The Jews will not replace us!” because it articulates their foundational fear.
Their anti-Semitism is deep, powerful, mythical. The extent and depth of it cannot be exaggerated.
Second, anti-Semitism and racism work hand in hand. Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, as Martin Luther King understood when he said the following in 1967:
“In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about six million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him, if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist.”
Given our understanding of the interplay, ideologically and practically, between anti-Semitism and racism, what should we do? First, we should continue to demand that our president denounce white supremacist neo-Nazism unequivocally. The ADL has a petition that does just that. Anything short of unequivocal denunciation validates the hate and the haters.
Second, we must speak out and act out to protect ourselves along with others who are the objects of discrimination. I’ve been repeating the following words for months now and they are becoming increasingly significant:
We rise together or we fall together.
The ADL offers suggestions for 10 things we can do to combat hatred, whoever the source or object of it might be.
Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Hartman Institute of North America, wrote a thoughtful piece arguing that the legacy of the Shoah urges Jews to do two things – one, recognize how important it is for Jews to have political power and two, use that power to pursue and create a moral values system.
He quotes Hannah Arendt who wrote the following in an unpublished essay in 1942:
Those peoples who do not make history, but simply suffer it, tend to see themselves as the victims of meaningless, overpowering, inhuman events, tend to lay their hands in their laps and wait for miracles that never happen. (Hannah Arendt, “Jewish Politics,” 1942)
At times like this it’s easy to feel powerless. Nauseated. Defeated. But we don’t have the luxury of giving in to those feelings.
We’re continuing to journey through the book of Deuteronomy, through Moses’s discourses which were designed to fortify the Israelites for their impending entry into the promised land. A major theme of Moses’s teaching is the proper use of power. While wandering in the wilderness the Israelites are no longer slaves, no longer at the whim of their oppressors. Moses urges them to use their freedom, their newly found power, to create a just society.
We are their ancestors. And we have more power than we often realize.
We must call the treachery what it is and insist that our leaders do the same. We must speak out, and rise up, alongside others who are the objects of discrimination. We must use our power to achieve justice for everyone.
ראה אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה “Behold I present before you today a blessing and a curse.” (Deuteronomy 11:26) There’s no guarantee which way things will go in 2017 and beyond, especially if just we sit back and hope for the best. With all of our power, we can and must choose the blessing.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on August 19, 2017
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