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Light Drizzle ‘Black lives absolutely matter,’ says Rabbi Billet
The past three months, we have made tremendous sacrifices precisely because we value human life infinitely. Not just Jewish life, but the lives of all humans.
How do we react to the chaos that rules America today? As an Orthodox Jewish community we must condemn racism in the strongest possible terms.
I recently shared with our community the story of my teacher Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, who demanded that his students attend a protest at the UN in 1968 when the black Ibo tribe of Biafra was being ruthlessly annihilated in the Nigerian Civil War. RAL taught us that we must care for all human life and that we thus must rally against this genocide. We arose early, prayed vatikin, had a shiur for two hours, and then made our way to the UN on a frigid morning. Of the 60 people who attended the rally, 47 were white YU boys with their rebbe.
There is a real history of racism in this country that Jews must actively oppose, especially given our own history of being victims of anti-Jewish racism. When our congresswoman, Kathleen Rice, organized a meeting with black clergy after the 2015 shootings in a Charleston, South Carolina church, Rabbi Kenneth Hain and I attended the meeting and we each expressed solidarity with the African-American community who were the victims of horrific racism. Our fellow black clergymen were deeply appreciative of this Jewish expression of solidarity.
Black Jews also matter. I went to Ethiopia in 2006 with Uri Ariel, an Israeli MK, to try to lend support to the remaining black Jews in that country, the state of Israel having engineered two major missions to bring tens of thousands of black Ethiopian Jews to Israel during the last two decades of the previous century. Unfortunately, there is racism in Israel as well. But the black community in Israel is an important part of a diverse Israeli society, both in the IDF and in all parts of the social fabric. We must oppose racism there too.
The response of small but very vocal and violent segments of society in America during the last week has brought shame to America. As America struggles to slowly emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, we were assaulted by lawlessness. The riots, the theft, the looting, the graffiti, the destruction of property and the uncontrollable violence is disgraceful. The indiscriminate attacks on police officers all over the country is outrageous. And the anti-Semitic references by too many rioters is frightening to all of us.
Let me acknowledge that there is a problem of police brutality that disproportionately affects African-Americans. We must oppose this. There are also a majority of police officers who are not racist and who are trying their best to protect all Americans and who are suffering deeply as a result of so much anti-police sentiment. We must support these officers. Violence and anarchy are never, ever the answer. Indeed, the violence is doing immense harm to the very people it claims to support. This should raise red flags for all Americans who oppose racism.
Who is responsible for these attacks? The riots are driven by extremists on the far left and on the far right who thrive on anarchy and chaos in American society. It is not a universal uprising of all black people! It must be noted that overwhelming majority of African-Americans have nothing to do with the chaos. They too are victims of the hooligans.
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From the perspective of our Jewish community, we must be wary and aware, because too often anti-Semitism converges within all of these movements, even though it has no rational or historical relationship with this American political and social problem. Although we as Jews must support measures to oppose racism in America, there is unfortunately a complicated history between Black Lives Matter and the Jews.
Wikipedia writes that “Black Lives Matter is “an international human rights movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people. BLM regularly holds protests speaking out against police killings of black people, and broader issues such as racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system.”
It is noble to fight racial injustice. I support this aspect of the BLM platform. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was a heinous crime. But the movement has also been implicated in anti-Semitism, and this creates a major problem for me.
The Movement for Black Lives a group affiliated with Black Lives Matter, issued a platform in 2016 which used the word “genocide” regarding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. They have called Israel an apartheid state and they have advocated for BDS. They have condemned Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in the Golan Heights.
In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe on Aug. 12, 2016, Alan Dershowitz wrote, “It is a real tragedy that Black Lives Matter — which has done so much good in raising awareness of police abuses — has now moved away from its central mission and has declared war against the nation state of the Jewish people.” Dershowitz added that Black Lives Matter is not monolithic and “is a movement comprising numerous groups. ... But the platform [which includes these statements about Israel] is the closest thing to a formal declaration of principles by Black Lives Matter.” He called on “all decent supporters of Black Lives Matter” to demand removal of the paragraph accusing Israel of genocide from the platform.
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There is unfortunately also more subtle anti-Semitism, perpetuated at times by well-meaning people who have come to see a false zero-sum game between blacks and Jews. For example, in an article in the Jerusalem Post, a well-meaning black reverend, Anthony A. Johnson, misses the point. He says, “Put yourselves in our shoes for a moment, imagine what the response of the Jewish community would be if George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery or Breonna Taylor were Jewish? No doubt it would reach biblical proportions.”
He is so off base. Countless Jews have been murdered in America, as a direct result of anti-Semitism. Did America burn? Did anyone riot or destroy property? Did the outrages of today occur anywhere? The Jerusalem Post also reported that in Los Angeles, “A number of kosher stores and synagogues were vandalized and looted [including] Congregation Beth Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in Los Angeles [that was] defaced with antisemitic graffiti that read ‘[expletive] Israel’ and ‘Free Palestine’ scrawled along its walls.”
Jews must stand with our African-American brothers and sisters to help make positive change for them, but we must ask them to quash all forms of anti-Semitism in their ranks, too.
This brings me back home and back to the riots.
We must know that what we are up against in these violent riots is an anti-American movement looking to disrupt normative American life, a movement that harms ALL Americans, including those it claims it supports. We must be prepared to articulate this to our elected officials and to the police pepartment. We must support the NCPD.
We also must put things in the correct perspective. This is harmful for black Americans too. This does not help solve the real injustices suffered by that community. The greater African-American community is not at fault. We must condemn racism and police brutality.
I am confident that this too shall pass. We must continue to pray and to trust in G-d.
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We have confronted the coronavirus, we have suffered painful losses of friends and family, and we have remained strong. We have shown how much human life matters to us. We must continue to uphold safety rules as we begin to emerge into a chaotic society. We must be strong and resolute in advocating for our civil rights, our stores, and our synagogues and schools. This too shall pass. I have full confidence in the Nassau County Police Department.
Before I conclude, I want to acknowledge an event of violent rioting that affected the Jewish community exactly at this time of year, 79 years ago. On June 1-2, 1941, on Shavuot, a violent pogrom was perpetrated against the Jewish community of Baghdad in Iraq. In the rioting and looting which followed, more than 180 Jews were murdered, more than 1,000 were injured, and Jewish property was destroyed all over the city. This event is known as the Farhud. It marked the beginning of the end of 2,600 years of continuous Jewish communal life in Baghdad. Edwin Black has written an excellent book called “The Farhud,” which I highly recommend if you wish to learn the details of this Jewish tragedy.
What America is experiencing now is its own “Farhud.” It is extreme violence with the goal of destroying the fabric of a great society. We must oppose this by working in peaceful and productive ways toward opposing racism and defending and upholding everything that is great in this great country.
