Statement from the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault on America, January 6, 2021

Statement by the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault
on the Nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021

23 Tevet 5781 | January 7, 2021

Like all Americans of good faith, the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis is horrified and appalled by the acts of insurrection in Washington, DC on Wednesday. We urge the members of our rabbinic council, and all the members of our communities, to renew the call for justice and decency in our country in accordance with our Jewish and American values:

1.    The perpetrators of Wednesday’s violence and their enablers are criminals and enemies of American democracy.

As Jews, we cherish dissent, differences of opinion, and the precious freedom to question authority and express unpopular opinions. Wednesday’s events, which included vandalizing the Capitol building, invading the offices of national representatives, and the clear threat of violence, violate each of these principles.

The Mishnah enjoins us: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if it does not inspire respect, people will devour one another” (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Today we pray for those who defend the nation’s laws and maintain order with integrity and evenhandedness, especially those who have been put in harm’s way.

2.    Wednesday’s violence was predictable and, considering the history of incitement,  sadly inevitable. We demand accountability from President Donald Trump and his enablers.

One resounding lesson from Jewish history is that violent words directly lead to violent actions. The President’s winks and nods to alt-right and white supremacist groups—from his refusal to disavow neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017, to his encouragement of the racist Proud Boys to “stand by”, to his feeble and cynical words of “We love you” for Wednesday’s insurrectionists—implicitly endorsed the assault on the Capitol.

We have no doubt that the President’s words incited Wednesday’s violence. Prior to the election, the President refused to indicate if he would support a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. Earlier this week, the President encouraged his followers to go to Washington to protest the election that he lost, insisting that the protest on January 6 would be “wild.” The President’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, likewise encouraged violence when he insisted the demonstrations would be “trial by combat.”

The President’s insistence that November’s election, which he decisively lost, was rigged and invalid has been proven unequivocally to be a lie. Over sixty court cases, and the affirmations of the election results by governors and election officials all over the country, have demonstrated that the elections were valid. The President’s public refusal to accept the results is not only a demonstration of his low character, but it also is an assault on the democratic institutions of our country, which directly led to Wednesday’s violence.


3.    We demand clarity about the clear racial disparity in the use of force by the authorities in responding to the attack on the Capitol.

Why were the responses of the Capitol Police and law enforcement so disproportionately mild compared to similar events of the past year, when Black Lives Matter protesters and other left-leaning protests were met with much more severe displays of force? MBR’s continued commitments to racial justice and our partnerships with our neighbors compel us to call attention, yet again, the unfair and unequal application of the law.

Our Torah insists: You shall have one law for stranger and citizen alike (Leviticus 24:22). We call for official investigations into the disparity of the applications of the force of law, and the apparent lack of security preparations, given the size and toxic incitement of the crowd.

We call upon our Rabbis and other leaders to name the transgressions that led to this moment. Rabbis should not engage in partisan politics from their pulpits, of course, but rabbis often feel constrained in voicing moral truths so as not to upset some members of their communities. But this is not a partisan moment: Democrats and Republicans, left-leaning and right-leaning constituents alike must be able to identify the profound offenses that have taken place in order to move our country forward.

Jewish tradition warns of “righteous people who had the power to protest the actions of others, but did not” (Talmud, Shabbat 55a). American democracy is resilient, and we are confident that the potential for national healing exists. But our shared future is in our own hands; we have much work to do.

This is not a time for  self-righteous pieties or genteel calls for peace. This is a moment to reclaim the integrity of our democratic institutions from those who would pervert them, and to demand accountability, even unto the highest office in the land.

Massachusetts Board of Rabbis Executive Committee
Rabbi Neal Gold, President (ndzahav@gmail.com)

Od Kahane Chai?: A Poison Weed in Israel

In the months after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ז״ל was assassinated, there was a well-publicized soul-searching among the Israeli right wing. There seemed to be a serious heshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of the soul, about group responsibility for nurturing hate. To what extent did extremist rhetoric (i.e., posters of Rabin wearing a keffiyeh, calling your opponents Nazis, etc.) foster violence? What did a murdered prime minister say about Israeli democracy, and how could pressure-cooker politics be conducted in a civil way?

If it wasn’t already obvious, any self-reflection from that time is ancient history. If there was any doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu is the coarsest sort of politician—one who has no lines he’s unwilling to cross if it serves his political interests—than surely that doubt has evaporated. All decent lovers of Israel should be united this week in expressing our revulsion of the most recent news out of Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, it emerged that the right-wing Bayit Yehudi (“Jewish Home”) political party would join forces and merge with the uber-right Otzma Yehudit party. By all accounts, Rafi Peretz, the leader of the right-wing Bayit Yehudi, was opposed to merging with these most extremist and violent elements—until Netanyahu mounted a desperate and cynical campaign to bring about the union. Bibi even cancelled a meeting with Vladimir Putin in order to make sure this deal among fanatics went through.

Otzma Yehudit is the successor to Kach and Kahane Chai (“Kahane lives!”), the banned political parties of the racist demagogue Meir Kahane (yimach sh’mo, may his memory be blotted out). Its leaders are devoted followers of Kahane, who embraced violent and terrorist tactics until his existence on this earth was cut short by an assassin’s bullet in New York in 1990.

If Likud retains its power in the April elections, Bibi has promised Bayit Yehudi two seats in his next cabinet. If this union is allowed to proceed to its conclusion, the most fanatical and racist fringe of Israel will be empowered and granted legitimacy. Its leadership—potential cabinet members—would include:

·      Baruch Marzel, one of Kahane’s top aides, and a public celebrant of Baruch Goldstein (yimach sh’mo), who murdered 29 Muslims at prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.

·      Itamar Ben Gvir, who, just prior to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s murder in 1995, displayed the stolen Cadillac hood ornament from Rabin’s car on national TV and spewed, “Just as we got to this symbol, we can get to Rabin.”

·      Benzi Gopstein, leader of the violence-inciting, fanatical Lehava movement that attacks Jews and Arabs on the streets of Israel in order to prevent the mingling of races and cultures.

The United States considers the Kahanist organizations to be linked with terror. The overwhelming majority of Israelis consider this radical fringe to be abhorrent, perverted, and frankly dangerous to the Zionist endeavor. Their predecessors were banned from legitimate political discourse—and they should be as well.

Together, Kahane and Goldstein are surely the two biggest purveyors of hillul hashem, the desecration of G-d’s name, than any other Jews since Shabbatai Tzvi.

Now, if Bibi has his way, their loyal disciples are one step closer to being just another voice around the table of Jewish opinion—a voice with potential legislative power at that.

We expect other organizations and political parties to condemn and expunge incitement and bigotry from within their ranks. (See: Democrats who condone Farrakhan; Republicans who wink and nod at white supremacy; Women’s March leaders who demonize Israel; the British Labour Party.)  We should demand the same from the Knesset.

 American Jews simply must speak out. Jewish organizations, if they have any integrity, must declare that this is beyond the pale. I’d suggest:

·       A moratorium on any members of Netanyahu’s Likud, and of course the Bayit Yehudi party, from being invited guests or speakers at American Jewish events (AIPAC?) until a retraction is made;

·       A full-throated condemnation of this from every American Jewish organization;

·       Individual Jews should contact their local Israeli consulates and their Federation presidents, demanding that they convey our revulsion to Jerusalem.

This is not the Israel we love, defend, and teach about. We celebrate Israel as the culmination of the dreams of millennia, an open and diverse culture reared by the great leaders in the Zionist pantheon. No, this is a שֹׁ֛רֶשׁ פֹּרֶ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ וְלַעֲנָֽה (Deut. 29:17); a poison weed, one that previous administrations had striven to uproot. To see its toxic shoots again—this time with the legitimation of the Prime Minister—is dismaying, and we must commit this day to calling it out.

Look, It's about White Supremacy

No, the terrorist attack in Pittsburgh is not “incomprehensible.”

I write from the suburbs of Chicago, where I’m visiting for the weekend – not far from Skokie where, forty years ago, a band of Illinois Nazis sought to march in full regalia. Why Skokie? Because in the 1970s it was not only densely Jewish, but also because it had the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors of any other municipality in America. Sticking their hate in the faces of Shoah victims was a tactic for noxious, evil people to most provocatively display their message—one that keeps surfacing since the 2016 political campaign, and Charlottesville, and now Pittsburgh: “You (Jew) will not replace us.”

The massacre of Jews at prayer at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Shabbat morning was first and foremost a crime against Jews: the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. Victims do not appreciate having crimes against them universalized. This attack was specifically against Jews, in a Jewish place, marking a moment in Jewish time (Shabbat; and the bris celebrating a baby boy’s arrival into the covenant of the Jewish people).

It is crucial to understand that antisemitism is not “generic bigotry.” It is specifically anti-Jewish hatred, incubated throughout the centuries and always ready to take root in the fertile soil of the far left and the far right.

In the taxonomy of hate, antisemitism has specific characteristics. Similarly, Islamophobia has its own unique expressions, and Muslims’ experience of bigotry is uniquely their own. So, too, for anti-black racism. And homophobia. And all the other special hatreds that the human soul has devised for itself.

However, there is a line that connects modern American hate together, and that line is white supremacy, which has plagued this country from its founding to today.

It’s a thread that runs from the days when Americans owned people of a certain color skin. It was enshrined in a Constitution that considered such a man 3/5 of a human being. It is self-evident on the slobbering faces of white celebrants at lynchings.

It was there when an antisemitic mob murdered Leo Frank in 1915. It runs through the internment camps in which Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II. It was on the MS St. Louis which was turned away from Florida’s shores, bringing its doomed passengers back across the Atlantic to the clutches of the Nazis. It lingers in Quran-burnings by hypocritical preachers, and in vandalized mosques.

It was there in Skokie, and in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Miami. And it’s there in the denigration of refugees as something less-than-human.

The perpetrator of the Tree of Life slaughter made his motivations perfectly clear (no, the crime is not “incomprehensible”). He despised Jews in general, and in particular for their perceived role in protecting refugees from seeking sanctuary in America. He called out HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), and claimed a last straw to save America from invading armies of dark-colored immigrants, as manipulated by sinister Jewish forces.

He told us why. It’s not incomprehensible. Just evil.

White supremacy, white nationalism, whatever you want to call it: it’s the moral rot eating at American democracy since the beginning.

The only peace I can find is that another parallel line likewise runs through the American soul. From the unique experience of a specific group, we can come to partially and incompletely come to understand the suffering (and, I hope, the aspirations and joys) of another group. This is empathy, the greatest of human virtues. Occasionally we confront fellow humans who are completely lacking in this trait. But the gatherings and the vigils of the past few days tell me that it’s possible, at least, that a coalition of decency can arise.

Jonathan Greenblatt said it quite eloquently: You have to have zero tolerance for this.

If your candidate is attacking George Soros or the “globalists,” or a member of Congress from your party is embracing Holocaust deniers, you must stand up and tell them to stop.

If your allies in a range of social justice causes either explain away the anti-Semitism of the Nation of Islam by citing the good work they may do or justify demonizing the Jewish state of Israel and its existence, then they need to know that they can no longer be your ally.

If your favorite social media platform continues to refuse to remove anti-Semitic garbage from its site, then vote with your clicks and deactivate your account.

When we consider this horror in the days and weeks to come, we should keep that in mind. It is about the poisonous sprout of white supremacy – and those who would enable it with their silent nods and coded dog whistles.

A Thought for MLK Day - King & The Jews

Thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy today. How willing would much of the Jewish community be to embrace his message? This day always reminds me of this passage from Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg (z"l)'s memoir. King asked Hertzberg, at the height of the struggle, why he cared so much. Hertzberg didn't respond with pious passages from the prophets, or the Declaration of Independence, or anything like that.

Instead, he spoke about his father. Herzberg's father was a Hasidic rabbi, a descendent of Elimelech of Lizhensk, and the leader of a shul in Nashville, Tennessee.

Here's what he wrote:

One Friday we came to synagogue for the evening service to find that an imposing black man wearing a very high yarmulke was there. He introduced himself as Rabbi Matthews and added that he was also a cantor. To prove his self-description, the visitor produced documents from a very respected rabbi in Toronto who attested to the fact that he had officiated at the conversion of Rabbi Matthews, in order to remove any doubt of his Jewishness… and that further training as cantor had been imparted to Matthews in Toronto. What all this meant was that the visitor had the right, in well-established Jewish practice, to claim the reading desk so that he might lead in the chanting of the service—and, ultimately, claim a donation for his sustenance.

My father looked at the certificate and said very quietly (when he was quiet, I knew he was at his angriest) that he was the rabbi of this synagogue and it was his duty and prerogative to decide questions of religious practice. The congregants refused. They pretended that they did not believe that the visitor was indeed a Jew, and they barred the way of this Black cantor to the reading desk.

My father put his arm around this man, whom he had met just ten minutes before, and headed for the door. He stopped and said, very quietly, that he would never come through that door again, because they had insulted a human being made in the image of God. We said prayers at home that Shabbat. My father had thrown his job away over a principle, and he did not find another for many months. I expected my mother to berate him, but she did not say one word, that day or later.

(Arthur Hertzberg, A Jew in America, 2002)

I should probably just let it sit on the page, but it triggers some other questions in me. What would happen in an Orthodox shul if the same scenario unfolded today? And as for liberal synagogues - what lines in the sand are left that would make a rabbi say, "I can never step foot in here again"? And why, fifty years on from MLK's death, do we still have to march for such obvious matters of civil rights?  

After Charlottesville

I’ve been reticent to write about the horrors of the past few days. Not because I haven’t been completely obsessed with it all; simply because I didn’t think I had anything new to contribute.

After all, when my family and neighbors and I were at our town’s rally against hate on Sunday night after Charlottesville, I was in kind of snarky mood. (It happens.) My overwhelming sense was: “Really? We still have to do this? We have to protest the KKK and American Nazis? In 2017?” What was running through my head that evening was the voice of John Belushi ז״ל: “I hate Illinois Nazis.”

And of course, I’m appalled by the moral black hole that is the Executive Branch of the government.

So I’ve read the articles (obsessively), and the op-eds, and the letters from rabbis to their communities, and the statements from community organizations—all of whom appropriately have expressed revulsion that Nazi slogans and symbols are resurging and that the White House can only muster half-hearted condemnation (at best; at worst, “they made me do it!”) of the most appalling people in America. The movement to normalize white supremacy in the highest level of governments is terrifying.  This meme by satirist Andy Borowitz kind of summed it up for me: “Man with Jewish Grandchildren Reluctant to Criticize Nazis.”

But it turns out that there are a couple of wrinkles I’d like to see get some more attention, so here goes:

(1)  The Jewish members of Trump’s inner circle—and I mean National Economic Council chairman Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—what are they still doing there? They should follow the lead of the CEOs who resigned from presidential advisory councils and resign their posts. Collaborating with evil is evil; this is no time to say, “Well, maybe I can change things from the inside.” 

Just as it was the moral responsibility of Jewish board members to resign from the Carter Center when it became apparent that former President Jimmy Carter was irredeemably anti-Israel, there are bigger things at stake. You can’t say, “Well, in my little corner of the administration, we had a different agenda.” 

(2)  Domestic terrorism:  You don’t like American Nazis and the KKK? Great—that shouldn’t exactly be controversial.  But legislatively speaking:  Now we must be calling out the administration for its proposing to remove domestic groups from certain anti-terrorist organizations, in order to focus solely on Islamic terror. I don’t think this actually went into effect—this administration is insidiously non-transparent—but it did openly propose the idea. Reject it; make sure that lawmakers keep all these groups on domestic terror watchlists (and having the funding to do something about it).

(3)   Don’t change the subject. I was bemused to watch yesterday’s press conference with the President, where at the beginning, middle, and end of the questions-and-answers it was clear that he wanted to talk about anything other than Charlottesville. “How about a couple of infrastructure questions?” he kept asking to reporters who weren’t interested in discussing infrastructure while the residue of a Nazi march in Virginia lingered.

And kudos to right-wing pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, with whom I agree practically never.  But on Fox, Krauthammer wasn’t standing for any dissembling from Trump apologist Laura Ingraham:

Ms. Ingraham, a Trump supporter who has been courted by the White House, allowed that the president’s remarks might have hurt his agenda [my italics]. But she also offered a partial defense, saying of Mr. Trump, “He made some points that were factually right.”

Mr. Krauthammer retorted, “What Trump did today was a moral disgrace,” and said that the president had broken from his predecessors who recognized the history of civil rights.

“I’m not going to pass moral judgment on whether Donald Trump is morally on the same plane as you are, Charles,” Ms. Ingraham replied.

Don’t let them change the subject. That goes too for the likes of Rabbi Marvin Hier—whose moral blinders let him intone a bathetic prayer at the Inauguration—who this morning on CNN condemned Nazis, but tried as hard as he could to change the subject to Iran’s pursuit of nukes. Iran is a horror—but Hier's desire to talk about anything other than the topic at hand was pretty transparent.

We know what we have to do—stand with those of our neighbors who are most likely to be disenfranchised; have zero-tolerance for leaders’ racist dog whistles; sign petitions, attend rallies, write letters and op-eds. Remain aghast, don’t be silent. But I hope drawing out some of these points above is useful. 

And a reminder:  in this week’s Torah portion we read two seemingly contradictory verses:

אֶ֕פֶס כִּ֛י לֹ֥א יִֽהְיֶה־בְּךָ֖ אֶבְי֑וֹן
There shall be no needy among you (Deut. 15:4)

כִּ֛י לֹא־יֶחְדַּ֥ל אֶבְי֖וֹן מִקֶּ֣רֶב הָאָ֑רֶץ
There will never cease to be needy ones in your land (Deut. 15:11).

Which is it? Will there be people in need in the future or not? 

Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman addressed this in his Torah commentary: Verse 11 doesn’t mean that there will always be people in desperate straits; the Hebrew word yehdal ("cease") means that it won’t come to a stop on its own. If you want suffering to disappear, you’ve got to do something about it, reaching out to hurting brothers and sisters.

So it is with extreme hate. It isn’t just going to go away—not unless people of good faith come together and clearly articulate our vision of a decent and just society, and demand that elected leaders make it so.