Al Sharpton’s sins and Parshat Shoftim

Michael Brown was buried last week. Some criticize the family for asking Al Sharpton to speak at Michael Brown’s funeral. That’s wrong; the Brown family is enduring a pain that no parent should endure and should not be criticized for any choice they make to ease their pain.

It is, however, justified to criticize the media for building up this hater, for averting their eyes and refusing to show Sharpton for the hypocritical bigot he has been his entire career.

Al Sharpton began Michael Brown’s eulogy by quoting the Biblical prophet Micah. But when thinking about Sharpton’s career I can only think of a passage from last week’s parsha Shoftim:

“You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the L-rd your G-d is giving you. “

Watching last week’s funeral opened a festering wound from the past, a funeral in 1991 where Al Sharpton also gave a powerful eulogy; at that one he said:

“The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. … All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds.”

Those people in Crown Heights should have justice, especially those who were hurt in the violence as noted in the sworn testimony of Efraim Lipkind, a former Hasidic resident of the neighborhood:

“Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica.”