September 2015 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

Heshbon HaNefesh; Soul Accounting

Sunset - August 15 marked the beginning of the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, which is devoted to preparation for the coming Days of Awe (Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur) to celebrate the beginning of the year 5776 - (according to the way the Rabbis determined the time of the creation of the world). Penitential prayers (s’lichot) are recited during this month and the twenty-seventh psalm is included in every service until Yom Kippur, to support us as we try to count our negative actions of the past year so that we can make restitution to those we have abused or hurt. Jewish tradition teaches that one cannot receive forgiveness from God if we have not made amends to others. My personal focus for this penitential month is a reflection on racism and a serious search for ways to amend as I prepare to welcome the New Year.

The past year has given us many reports of active racism in the world. Many public school districts are now more segregated than ever. Black Lives Matter has grown as a movement in response to the many men who have been killed by police in the past year. Michelle Alexander’s book has helped to make decarceration part of our consciousness. Trump and others who want to be president advocate revision of the fourteenth amendment to remove automatic citizenship for children born of foreign parents. European ports are overflowing with refugees fleeing from the narrowness of ISIS; and they are not always welcomed by the countries where they seek refuge.

Racist thinking has too often supported white people in their negative treatment of people of color and of those who are different. Most of our families arrived here to escape the poverty and the limited economic opportunity in ‘the old country’ and faced discrimination in some ways for too many years. After the Civil Rights Act was passed this began to fade and we became white. (When I was growing up in the forties and fifties many Jewish immigrant families experienced college quotas, restrictive covenants in purchasing houses and faced restrictive quotas on admission to the colleges and universities. These experiences helped to sensitize many of us to the inequities of segregation in this country. We frequently supported African Americans in their demands for justice.)

Racist violence toward Palestinians has been alive in Israel in the past year! A baby has been incinerated. A sixteen year stabbed in Jerusalem at a Gay Pride parade. Even Netanyahu who justified last year’s inhumane bombing of Gaza which killed almost two thousand people and destroyed much of the housing and infrastructure of an already impoverished and over- populated area, called the acts of the Israeli extremists ‘terror’. The holocaust and expulsion from long-standing homes in Muslim societies has made much of World Jewry fearful of destruction.

European Jewry experienced a diabolical attempt to destroy it completely under the Third Reich. After the war there was no focused effort by the western nations to resettle many Jews who had lost their homes. Too many were placed in Displaced Person camps. The UN declaration of the State of Israel allowed many who were detained in these camps in Europe and on Cyprus to be freed! Seven hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced from their homes and most of the world remained silent again. Traditional Jewish communities that had lived in Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East for centuries suffered racist attacks that made it impossible for them to continue to live in them.

Racism is embedded in the foundation of western democracies. There has been much money made through the exploitation of the ‘other’. Ta Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me (p. 6) says :

*Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism — the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them — inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle

Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men.

But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—

There are many who actively question the racism that is too present in the world at large and in Israel.

Rabbi Brant Rosen, who recently left his congregation in Evanston, Illinois to work with AFSC in Chicago for justice for all in Palestine/Israel routinely preached that Zionism is idolatry. "My Torah," he said, "is the Torah of universalism and humanism." Bradley Burston, a writer for the Israeli paper HaAretz asked these questions on March 24, 2015:

“Which is worse?

A: Members of a mob in London yelling "We'll kill you" outside a synagogue. Or

B: The Foreign Minister of the state of Israel declaring, in a reference to Israeli Arabs whom he deems disloyal, "Those who are against us, there's nothing to be done – we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head."

Which is the more abhorrent?

No one of us can solve all of these problems! But each of us can: become more conscious and active in defending the humanity of all people; respect every person as a reflection of God’s image; work actively for justice! It seems to me that the human race is overdue for ‘soul accounting‘ about the treatment of Palestinians in their ancestral homeland; for acknowledging our governments’ role in perpetuating racism here and throughout the world. I hope that each of us will take some time to examine our attitudes and behaviors toward others. The future of our planet and the human race demands cooperation and respect for all!

Cy and Lois are founders of Bubbies and Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East

Cy Swartz