Yom Kippur Morning Sermon 5780

10/17/2019

Antisemitism

House I live in
(by Abel Meeropol and Earl Robinson)
What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see
A certain word, democracy
What is America to me?

The house I live in
A plot of Earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
And the people that I meet
The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That's America to me

The short film The House I Live in, which we watched as a community on Selichot evening was made in 1945 and starred a very young Frank Sinatra playing himself. Taking a smoking break during a recording session, Sinatra steps out into an alley behind the studio where he finds a gang of young boys surrounding another boy who they have trapped against the wall of a building. When Sinatra asks the boys what is going on, they respond: We don’t like him; we don’t want him in our neighborhood and going to our school. We don’t like his religion. The boy they are chasing is Jewish. Sinatra then gives the boys a lesson in tolerance, sings the title song, and all’s well that ends well.

With its American as apple pie lyrics about the grocer, the butcher, and the children in the playground, The House I Live in, written by composer Earl Robinson and lyricist Abel Meeropol, became a patriotic anthem in America during World War II. Meeropol, a Jew of Russian descent who wrote under the pen name Lewis Allan, was a liberal Jew who loved the rights and freedoms America was based on, but was appalled by the way people of other races, religions and political views were often treated. The lyrics of The House I Live In reflect more the America he aspired to live in rather than the America in which he actually lived. In writing the song, Meeropol wanted to express why the war was worth fighting.[1]

Almost a year ago, at a vigil held at my congregation in New Jersey after the Tree of Life Synagogue tragedy in Pittsburgh, I spoke the following words:

Just 14 months ago, we heard the hateful words “Jews won’t replace us” spewing from the mouths of Neo-Nazis dressed in fatigues and carrying tiki torches and automatic rifles, marching in Charlottesville, Virginia. We were horrified when TV cameras filmed on Shabbat morning a group of men carrying guns standing across the street from Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, chanting Seig Heil and other anti-Semitic rantings. We were stunned as this wave of horror washed over us -- as if we had been thrown into a time machine and found ourselves in 1930’s Germany.

This past weekend on Shabbat morning, the נְתִיבוֹתֶֽיהָ שָׁלוֹם , the paths of peace were shattered -- the Shabbat Shalom, the Sabbath peace, was smashed into 11 pieces; 11 beautiful souls taken from their families, from their community at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and taken from the world.

Saturday’s tragedy has been described as the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. Antisemitism is on the rise. In 2017 anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses nearly doubled from the year before. From 2016 to 2017 there was a staggering 258% increase in White Supremacist incidents on college campuses.[2]

In 2016 more than half of the religious hate crimes in the US were directed at Jews. In 2017 anti-Semitic incidents against Jews increased 60%.[3] According to the Anti-Defamation League, this was the largest single-year increase on record since ADL started tracking this data in 1979.[4] This is not politics folks. This is not fake news. These are facts.

In the year since I spoke those words, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States during 2018, including the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue. But that attack was one of 39 reported physical assaults on Jewish individuals last year -- a 105% increase over 2017. [5]

Around the world, more Jews were killed in anti-Semitic violence in 2018 than during any other year in decades, according to a report released in May by The Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University. Assaults targeting Jews around the world rose 13% in 2018, with nearly 400 incidents worldwide.[6] The spike was most dramatic in Western Europe, where Jews have faced even greater danger and threats. In Germany, for instance, there was a 70% increase in anti-Semitic violence.

According to the ADL, just 13% of the attacks in the United States during 2018 were carried out by members of white supremacist groups. In the words of ADL’s chief Jonathan Greenblatt, this suggests more than a vast underground conspiracy and widespread recruitment by white nationalist groups. What we are seeing is much worse. What we are seeing is the normalization of antisemitism.[7]

Similarly, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress believes it is now clear that anti-Semitism in Europe is no longer limited to the far-left, far-right, and radical Islam. It is now becoming mainstream and often accepted by civil society.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines Anti-Semitism as: a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. That same definition was adopted by the European Parliament.

In her book Antisemitism Here and Now Deborah Lipstadt writes: Imagine that someone has done something you find objectionable. You may legitimately resent the person because of his or her actions or attitudes. But if you resent him [or her] even an iota more because this person is Jewish, that is antisemitism. Imagine a driver who has been deliberately forced off the road by an erratic driver who happens to be black. The person who has almost been hit can legitimately complain to the other people in the car about the dangerous driver. But if he complains about “that black guy” who has done this, he has crossed the line into racism.[8]

Oddly enough, despite all these statistics, recent polls report that 74% of Americans have a favorable view of Israel and feel “warmer” about Jews than any other religious group, just ahead of Catholics[9]. Unfortunately and evidently, liking can co-exist with loathing. Jews have been the most victimized religious group on the FBI’s annual list for hate crimes since the year 2000.

Throughout history, Jews have been whatever a given civilization has defined as their most sinister and threatening qualities. Under Communism they were the wealth-obsessed capitalists opposed to the social and economic betterment of the poor and working class. In 19th century Europe those on the political right accused Jews of being Socialists, Communists, and revolutionaries. Under Nazism Jews were the race contaminators. In today’s world Israel has become the last bastion of white, racist colonialism.[10]

In a joke that is believed to have been told by Jews in 1930s’s Germany, Two Jews were sitting on one of the few park benches on which they were allowed to sit. One was reading the Berliner Gemeindeblatt, a Jewish communal newspaper; the other, the maliciously anti-Semitic Nazi publication Der Stürmer. “Why on earth are you reading that thing?” the Gemeindeblatt reader asked his friend. “When I read a Jewish publication,” his friend replied, “I hear of our woes and terrible fate. When I read Der Stürmer, I read how we control the banks, world media, international governments, and how powerful we are. I much prefer the latter."

So, how is it with such a difficult history that we Jews are still around? Surely there’s more to it than the old joke: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat. The writer Walker Percy once quipped: Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but not one single Hittite, even though the Hittites had a flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people?

Scholar Ze’ev Maghen writes: Why are we still here? What is the key to our unique, defiant, unparalleled survival against all odds and forecasts? ……..What is [the] ingredient that makes us the “Indestructible Jews?” What as Mark Twain asks, is the secret of our immortality?....Surely none of you will tell me…….it was our appeals, protests and screams for equitable treatment that sustained us, kept us in life, and brought us to this season. No…….[it was because the Jews] chose to build, to educate…………to defy antisemitism …… with Jewish learning, Jewish observance, Jewish strength and Jewish achievement.[11]

New York Times journalist Bari Weiss who became a Bat Mitzvah at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh offers, in her inspirational book How to fight Antisemitism, a series of instructional tips on forging ahead in our defiance of anti-Semitism. Here are a few – well more than a few. Let’s just say here are some good ones:

Trust your discomfort. Despite our reputation for anxiety and hysteria ala Larry David, most of us minimize our discomfort in our desire to fit in. Get over it. If an organization you support is joining forces with someone you believe is anti-Semitic, don’t try to justify it.
Don’t trust people who seek to divide us, even if they themselves are Jewish. For those of you who were here on Rosh Hashanah evening you know what I’m talking about.
Allow for the possibility of change. There are numerous examples of individuals who changed their ways including white supremacists and radical Moslems. Don’t assume change is not possible.
Follow the Pittsburgh principle. The reaction of the local community and the nation to the tragedy in Pittsburgh tells us we are not alone. What happened in Pittsburgh may have been one more pogrom in our history but think about Kristallnacht. On that night ordinary German citizens joined in or stood by to watch the fires burn. In Pittsburgh the entire community including Muslim, Christian and government leaders, politicians, even the Pittsburgh Steelers, stood up and said no.
Praise those who do the right thing. There are many Frank Sinatras out there ready to defend their Jewish neighbors. After Pittsburgh the Moslem community in the United States raised over $150,000 for the victims of the shooting. In 1993 thousands of menorahs appeared in the windows of non-Jewish homes in Billings, Montana, in response to a rock thrown through the window of a Jewish home decorated with a menorah, a Jewish star, a dreidel, and the words Happy Hanukah.
Resist hierarchical identity politics. On the right identity politics informs us that Jews can never be white enough or Christian enough while on the left identity politics posits the view that Jews can never be oppressed enough. Don’t succumb to a deal where you have to check your identity at the door. To do so means participating in our own destruction.
Never ever forget to love your neighbor. This is an easy one. When someone is attacked because of their identity and not their ideas, you should view that as an attack on you.
Wherever you are vote for freedom. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes: Jews have always been the irritant of empires because of our insistence on the dignity of the individual and his or her liberty. The more a society prizes freedom the more Jews thrive.
Support Israel. If we ever do have to pack up, we unlike many before 1948, have a place to go. And yes, we can support Israel while still demanding Israel live up to its ideals. In the words of NYT’s columnist Roger Cohen: to criticize Israel is imperative; to disavow it, for a Jew a form of ahistorical folly.
Build community. In Judaism ten people are needed for a minyan. The work of fighting antisemitism requires a posse of Maccabees[12]
Lean into Judaism. In Dec. 1897 Theodor Herzl wrote a short essay called The Menorah. It was written in the form of a parable. Here is a short excerpt: Once there was a man who deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew. His material circumstances were satisfactory enough………He had long ceased to trouble his head about his Jewish origin or about the faith of his fathers, when the age-old hatred re-asserted itself under a fashionable slogan. ….He believed that this movement would soon subside. But instead of getting better, it got worse……The secret psychic torment had the effect of steering him to its source, namely, his Jewishness…..He began to love Judaism with great fervor. …….his vague feelings crystallized into a clear idea to which he gave voice: the thought that there was only one way out of this Jewish suffering—namely to return to Judaism.[13]
Tell your story. The best and only way to respond to this moment is to practice a Judaism of affirmation not one of defensiveness. As Bari Weiss writes: What is the probability that the people of Israel driven, as Moses put it, out to the farthest parts under heaven, would, in fact come back to their ancient land…..after two thousand years of exile, of persecution, of destruction, of expulsion, and of near elimination? That a people so despised would survive and thrive?

In these difficult times our best strategy is to build without shame, a Judaism capable of lighting a fire in every Jewish soul—and in the souls of everyone who throws their lot in with ours.[14] As Debra Lipstadt writes: I have repeatedly stressed that antisemitism is a delusional form of hatred. It conjures a malign image of the Jew that does not in fact exist, and then it proceeds to find it everywhere. But we cannot allow this delusion to lead to another delusion—that because this hatred is unfortunately, ever present, we must make fighting it the fulcrum upon which our identity exists…..What is necessary for Jews to survive and flourish as a people is neither dark pessimism nor cockeyed optimism, but realism. It would be ludicrous to dismiss as paranoid the concerns of those who react strongly to the escalating acts of antisemitism in recent times….But at the same time, it would be folly for Jews to make this the organizing principle of their lives. The need for Jews to balance the “oy” with the “joy” is an exhortation on the fight against hatred.[15]

Let us instead strive for the America Abel Meeropol longed for when he wrote:

The house I live in
A plot of Earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
And the people that I meet
The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That's America to me…..

Gmar Chatima Tova

Ellie

[1] https://www.songfacts.com/facts/frank-sinatra/the-house-i-live-in (accessed August 2019)
[2] ADL finds alarming increase in white supremacist propaganda on college campuses across U.S. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-finds-alarming-increase-in-white-supremacist-propaganda-on-college-campuses (accessed August 2019)
[3] Anti-Semitism in the US https://www.adl.org/what-we-do/anti-semitism/anti-semitism-in-the-us (accessed August 2019)
[4] Audit of Anti-Semitic incidents: year in review 2018 https://www.adl.org/audit2018 (accessed August 2019)
[5] Antisemitism on campus up by 70%--AMCHA Initiative report. https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism-on-campus-up-by-70-percent-AMCHA-Initiative-report-602018 (accessed August 2019)
[6] Aron Heller. “Anti-Semitic attacks spike, killing most Jews in decades.” https://www .apnews.com/0457e96b9eb74d30b66c2d190c6ed7e5 (accessed August 2019)
[7] Bari Weiss. How to fight Anti-Semitism(New York : Crown, c2019) 82
[8] Deborah Lipstadt. Antisemitism here and now. (New York : Schocken Books, c2019) 13
[9] Bari Weiss. How to fight Anti-Semitism(New York : Crown, c2019) 21
[10] Ibid. 31-2.
[11] Ibid. 166.
[12] Ibid. 194.
[13] Ibid. 199-200.
[14] Ibid. 205.
[15] Ibid. 240.

Reflections