Politics & Society

Editorials & Actions

Charlottesville: Where Do We Stand by Arthur Green

By Arthur Green | August 15, 2017

WHERE DO WE STAND? by Rabbi Arthur Green

 

 

American Jews looked on with horror at the events unfolding in Charlottesville – and elsewhere – over this past weekend.  Indeed, we have felt a shudder ever since the awful campaign of 2016 and much that has followed it, while our communal leadership has remained mostly silent.  There were, after all, some Jewish voices in the White House, and it was best not to alienate the Republicans.  “And who knows?” it was whispered, “maybe this crazy guy could do something for Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

 

But in Charlottesville the masks were off.  Neo-Nazis with their swatstika flags were a welcome part of the celebration.  You heard the k-word along with the n-word quite frequently, we are told.  There was no longer any hasty “Judeo” hyphened on to the calls for a Christian America.  Not among these folks.  

“Blood and Soil!” they were calling out in repeated marching chant.  Hitler’s Blut und Boden, which meant, of course, that only “Aryan” blood truly belonged to the sacred German soil.  Can you imagine the nerve of these people, saying that the beautiful God-given landscape of America belongs to white Anglo-Saxons, not to the native peoples whose blood indeed soaked the land as they were displaced and slaughtered by European invaders?  Can they really claim that this soil belongs to the slaveowners whom Robert E. Lee was defending (his statue was the center of these events) and not to their victims, the poor slaves who died anonymously, so many of beating and lynching, pouring their own blood into the American earth?  How dare they!  

I was proud that there were rabbis and rabbinical students (including some of my own) present in the line of clergy who stood as the voice for human decency and sanity on that terrible morning.  Yes, even though it was Shabbat, I am glad that some made that decision, one I would not permit myself to do.  Shabbat was given us, we are told in the second version of the ten commandments, to help us recall that we were slaves in Egypt.  That is a message too often forgotten by many achievement-driven (and often success-drunk) American Jews.  

Charlottesville forces us to take a stand.  It reminds us that we are a minority in American society, a religious and ethnic community that chooses to maintain a distinct identity.  There is a price to be paid for that, one forgotten amid the great wave of acceptance into “whitehood” that has engulfed us in most American circles since the 1960’s.  We need to remember how recent that acceptance was, and how it took the horrors of the Holocaust and the battle against Hitler to push most American Christians across the finish line of opposing anti-Semitism.  Moments like Charlottesville remind us that we are a minority among minorities, and that a threat or an insult to any minority – African-American, Muslim, Latino, LGBT, or any other – is a threat to us all.  To be a proud American Jew is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who defend diversity and equality in our country.

Editorials & Actions

Jews Are NOT “White” in 21st century USA

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 14, 2017

Take a look at the alleged white privilege of Jews in Charlottesville, Virginia

At Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, VA, we are deeply grateful for the support and prayers of the broader Reform Jewish community. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Heather Heyer and the two Virginia State Police officers, H. Jay Cullen and Berke Bates, who lost their lives on Saturday, and with the many people injured in the attack who are still recovering. The loss of life far outweighs any fear or concern felt by me or the Jewish community during the past several weeks as we braced for this Nazi rally – but the effects of both will each linger. On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services. (Even the police department’s limited promise of an observer near our building was not kept — and note, we did not ask for protection of our property, only our people as they worshipped).

Editorials & Actions

Trump’s Christian Nationalism–and how to effectively counter it

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 8, 2017

Editor’s note: this important article below shows a troubling development in American society. Yet like so much that comes from our leftwing allies, it shows no understanding of why these scary politics have emerged and how it could be responded to by the Left. Please read my book The Left Hand of God–Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right. For 31 plus years we at Tikkun have been sharing an analysis which emerged from the research I led at our parent body, the Institute for Labor and Mental Health: capitalist society’s scientism (not science but the creation of a religious worldview we call scientism–the notion that everything that really exists or can be know must be verifiable or falsifiable by empirical observation or be measurable) reduces all values to merely subjective emotional preferences that have no place in the public sphere, thereby freeing the capitalist order and its corporations and super-rich to accumulate money (the ultimately real and measurable reality) without regard to the human consequences. The result is to create a huge crisis for people all around the world and in the advanced industrial capitalist societies as they are told that their lives have no meaning or purpose except to serve the powerful and rich and to strive to become one of them.

Editorials & Actions

Republicans’ Immigration Plan: A Whiter America

By Tikkun | August 8, 2017

Republicans’ immigration plan: A whiter America 
By Emile Schepers
Jeanette Vizguerra, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in a church to avoid immigration authorities for the past three months, speaks after leaving the church May 12, in downtown Denver. Supporters say that Vizguerra has won a two-year deportation delay. | David Zalubowski / AP

On Wednesday August 2, President Trump announced his supportfor Senate Bill 1720, which aims to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act in line with the aims of a so-called “skills-based immigration system.” It purports to re-center U.S. immigrant admissions with a focus on those with high levels of education or in-demand economic skills, limit family-sponsored immigration to spouses and minor children, and sharply cut the number of people granted refugee status. Trump was flanked at the announcement by the bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and its only co-sponsor to date, Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga. The bill, also called the RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act, which was originally introduced in February and is now re-introduced with Trump’s blessing, is not aimed at undocumented immigrants, but at people trying to come legally to the United States.