I suspect most of us watched the life run out of George Floyd while one policeman's weight-thru-the-knee pressed the life out of him. Onlookers begged — as Mr. Floyd begged himself — for his life. As Jews, did we not think of Daniel Perl's execution? The Gestapo? Egypt? Pogroms? R. Akiba publicly incinerated. We then watched people gathering … a strong majority out of a need to mourn-together, some maybe who wanted out-of-the-quarantine, many who were equally mourning what they saw as a sick nation, some angry and a small percentage criminally piggybacking on the situation. The Kitty Genovese clause of Leviticus 19:16 warns us not to stand idly by as our neighbor bleeds. It doesn't tell us not to do so only for our Brother or Sister but like the Torah says in Exodus, Leviticus 7:7 and in Numbers 15:16 and 15:29: One law shall there be for the stranger and the visitor and the neighbor … Equal protection under the Law. Equal requirements to abide by the Law.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, President Emeritus of Yeshiva University who died during the past ten days, in a speech for Shabbos B'ha'aloscha given during the primary elections following the Nixon debacle noted: "We suffer from … economic difficulties which, in their complexity, are probably unprecedented. We are in the category of Isha Maksheh Lay'layd (a woman struggling to birth): a new World is bloodily and painfully emerging from the womb of the present, and we cannot tell whether our World will survive, or whether the new one will be a healthy World or a monster … our society is largely a rudderless and leaderless ship: storm tossed, uncertain and unsure." Could this have really been written in 1976?
Near the end of the same week's parsha that Norman Lamm addressed, we see Miriam and Aharon's perfidy. They publicly spoke, it would appear "about the matter of the black woman he (Moses, their sibling) married: (they spoke) because she was a black woman. In the rules for biblical exegesis passed down, when a particular statement follows a general one, only the particular applies. Aharon and Miriam were chastised for casting aspersions on a woman because she was Black. All this prefatory to my singular query: what do we Jews do with our biases … against people who are other to us. Black or Black Hat … or otherwise?
Disclaimer: I've lived as a freier yid in Melrose Park, PA, USA for 43 years and have learned among other things that: more or less, only Black People speed on Old York Road (for they are the only ones who are stopped). In my clinical practice, I've discovered that my Black and Brown visitors are followed in Bloomingdale's and stopped by the Police at the bottom of the path leading to my office. I hear how their sons and spouses are rousted by the police; White folk don't report that to me. I recognize, too, that I open the door more hesitatingly to Black People. Then there's the argument of my White Privilege. Painful to hear and communicated out of their own pain. My Black colleagues and friends think they know what I'm made of … my original sin, of sorts. Bias and Prejudice are all around me. I'm learning about it and it all and much more makes me uncomfortable. The word I hear in my Heart and my Patients' Hearts is, … indeed, heartbroken.
I know, equally well, that each year, as a Jew, I read of the destructive sequelae of preferential treatment and biases … whether it be Miriam accusing Moses of bringing a Black Woman into their family … the denigration of Cham, Noah's Brown Baby … the choosing of Abraham over Lot, Sarah over Hagar, Isaac over Ishmael, Rebeka's preferring Jacob over Eisau and Isaac choosing Esau over Jacob, Rachel the Pretty chosen over Leah the Plain even in modern prayer books, and Joseph chosen over them all. It's almost a relief that in the end of the story, a new Pharaoh arises in Egypt who doesn't give a rat's taches about Chayim over Shmeryl or Shmeryl over Beryl … All are slaves, all objects, none are Subjects in their Own Right.
I wonder. Is the Geneological Book of Genesis that was written after our emancipation from slavery written as a corrective? Could it have been named: Jewish Lives Matter! Could it be a compensatory saga that both reminds us and helps us forget that we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt? Helping us to forget our shaming past by constructing a new and quite convoluted narrative?
Consider our own post slavery experience?… After pillaging Egypt, we hightailed it out of there as an acting out and violent collection of mobs, spewing at our leader who spewed pretty good back at us, needing to be separated by tribes lest we slaughter each other, a mob complaining about the menu like spoiled diners one sees at restaurants returning the not-hot-enough mashed potatoes … rioting in the desert. Did we not satisfy a bloodlust by killing the resident tribes? … sometimes even the women and children and cattle?
When we got to the Holy Land, we hired sons-of-whores (Jepthah in Judges 12) to lead us into battle and wondered why one of them killed his nameless daughter. We elected bawdy and violent kings … one wrote the rap music of his day while his son wrote some pretty erotic stuff; most bedding a whole bunch of baby-mamas. The kids fought and split up the Nation … Civil unrest and war ensued. Invading hordes enslaved us, again.
We did, in time, substitute a scholarly class for our warrior-class and came to live among the nations …. betimes tolerated, accepted occasionally and not infrequently persecuted? We were among the so-called Sub-Whites in America and maybe still are. Then came 1948; that's another narrative.
I will end with a very brief thought about hatred and disdain for the other. I once wrote that it came in three varieties; racism comes in these three flavors, to. I don't like thinking of Racism as "You have it" or "Y'don't." I feel the same about antisemitism. So, here are the three flavors, as I see them:
The most primitive is Naziism: The Dominants tell the Subjugated not to convert, just to die or to be slaves with no sense of agency and subject to abuse and murder;
Slightly less sadistic is Crusaderism: Here, the Powerful demand that the subjugated convert or die; and finally, there is …
American Tolerance: A system in which I may think you're a worthless fool … but I'll let you play your game if you let me play mine.
American Slavery, unlike the indentured slaves mentioned in Torah, felt free to utilize all three forms of malignant intolerance.
It seems to me that the notion of 'One Torah shall there be for you and the stranger in your midst' is our aspirational goal as Jews. We seek to move towards a place of understanding that the predominant reason I think "mine is better" is the same reason that you think "yours is better" … just because! Jew to Jew … Jew to White … Jew to Black and all permutations, thereof.
Somewhere in the mix, I feel a personal need come to grips with the way I and MY COUNTRY have treated the Black and the Brown. L'Shannah ha'Ba … next Passover I will, for the first time, perhaps, be able to feel that I was indeed a slave to Pharaoh in Egypt. I was subject to objectification. I and my children were gratuitously murdered, there. Harangued and Rousted! … I'll need, then, to put away my Maror (horseradish) and Salt Water and stop pretending that symbolic tastes and genealogical preferences can ever approximate the pain or remove the shame of slavery or its aftermath.