An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews — Sitting Shiva for Waldman and Chabon
To my fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel and around the world,
Let us sit shiva for Waldman and Chabon.
The diatribe of August 16, 2017 published by these two is appalling. Their attack on the President and his family, over what they claim were the President’s initial comments on Charlottesville, falls into the category of sinat hinam — baseless hatred — particularly where they go off the rails and go after the President’s Jewish family members.
To Jews living outside the US, as repugnant as it feels, hate speech is protected under the Constitution in the United States. Note that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) went to court to defend the right of those protesters who were marching in favour of protecting the statue of Robert E. Lee and history. The ACLU also defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, despite it being home to many Holocaust survivors. The current president of the ACLU is Susan Herman, a Jewish Constitutional lawyer.
Not a word about her or the ACLU from Waldman and Chabon.
NPR did a story that sheds some light on the Constitutional issues and raises questions about the level of participation by police in Charlottesville. Clearly, many factors were at play and we are still learning more about it.
Contrary to Waldman and Chabon’s claims, the President did not give neo-Nazis a pass or a promotion. Who comes to his defence? Black author, media personality from Georgia, Herman Cain. His lengthy article is worth a read as he references statements the President actually made, instead of those made up by the ‘alternative universe’ of the media.
Why does a southern black man defend a white President? Cain was once a PR man. He sees how the propaganda machine is running the President’s reputation into the ground with falsehoods. Cain says: “He is a flawed man, but on balance I believe him to be a good man who wants to do the right things….But even if you think he is not a good man, I would tell you this: When a man is being slandered — being accused of doing a terrible thing he did not do, or of being a terrible thing he is not — the right and honourable thing to do is to defend that man, even if he is not a good man.”
President Trump condemned the violence on all sides because, yes, there were right wing, white supremacists at Charlottesville and there were left-wing fascists at Charlottesville — and there were people in between. There were people who wanted to defend the history of the United States by not taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. And there were people who see Confederate history solely as one of slavery, oppression and hatred of blacks.
Few people today appreciate that the American Civil War was about economic and political factors like taxation and succession. It was a power struggle between the industrialised north and the agrarian plantations of the South, powered by slaves, though in fact, the majority of Southern white people were poor subsistence farmers. Emancipation was an outcome of the Civil War, but not the goal.
The Southern states had a beef with the North and decided to secede. Jews everywhere should appreciate why that becomes problematic — think way back to Bar Kochba. Unilateral declarations of liberty or succession often lead to conflict, as Israel experienced in 1948 when claiming its own independence. Unlike the American South, Israel won its modern war for independence, but the many sites of lost battles are still marked and remembered today.
Like Israel’s Rabin, the peace-maker, who had been a military leader during the Six Day war, so Robert E. Lee is enshrined in American history both as a great military leader during the time of conflict, and then a great peacemaker who urged reconciliation, calm heads and the advancement of the unified nation once he’d laid down arms.
Surely, he is worth remembering.
History is something us Jews should cherish — knowing our history is what has kept this people alive through the darkest times. Why is it that we celebrate Passover/Pesach every year and retell that story of exodus and liberation to our young people? Why is it that we struggle to keep Auschwitz maintained, when of all places, if one wanted to erase the horrors of the Holocaust and the past, that might be a good place to start? Why is it that the story of Exodus was so inspiring to the black slaves who worked the plantations — that the spirituals of black America have their roots in Passover? And who carried that longing for freedom forward in time but the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had a dream of freedom for all Americans which was grounded in Judeo-Christian Biblical study.
“Free at last…”
We are free and must be cautious with those freedoms.
It is disturbing that Waldman and Chabon’s rail against the state and incite others against it.
As is the Jewish custom in prayer, even Reform Jews, the most liberal, pray for the nation and its rulers, asking that G-d bless them and that the leaders be examples of justice and compassion. Yet Waldman and Chabon vilify the President, his chosen councillors and those Jews who work with the President.
Again, it is in our Jewish history that we find wisdom. In “Ethics of the Fathers” Pirkei Avot 3:2 Rabbi Chaninah Segan HaKohanim said: “Pray for the welfare of the government, since but for fear of it men would swallow each other alive.”
We see that people daily attempt to ‘swallow each other alive.’ Freedom of speech is unleashed, but with no sense of moral or ethical restraint. Social media sometimes seems to be a solely a platform for wild accusations, false witness, ‘lashon hora’ (the evil tongue — bad-mouthing), all things that are principally forbidden to Jews who follow the Covenant.
Commentary like that of Waldman and Chabon encourages people to ‘swallow each other alive.’
We do not need more anarchy. We need more reason.
Should we argue about policy when we disagree? Certainly. Should we defame, smear and incite sinat hinam in the process? Certainly not.
Ivanka Trump has chosen to be a Jew. It is cruel and contrary to Jewish tradition to pick on her. We are told to remember our time as strangers in Egypt, to be kind to the convert who is defenceless as a newcomer in a new culture, and to love the new Jew as one who’s action of coming to the Torah is compared by the sages like that of our love for G-d. How does it serve us to welcome her into the argumentative Jewish family only to condescendingly and with cutting tone to say “Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase…” — one that is intended to cause dissension and hurt in her own family?
People who choose Judaism learn it from the ground up, and often are more conversant with rituals, customs and reasons for them than those born as Jews.
It seems clear that Waldman and Chabon wrote in the heat of passion. From the overview of Pirkei Avot we learn that Rabbi Yitzchok Ze’ev Soloveitchick of pre-Holocaust Brist in Lithuania was asked why, if character and ethics are so central to Judaism, why are these requirements not written as part of the 613 commandments of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses)?
He replied that “The Torah was given to people, not animals. Only by controlling and conquering the animal within oneself can a person become worthy of the wisdom and requirements of the Torah.”
The Torah and the Ten Commandments are not only about how people should interact with and understand G-d, but moreso how we should engage with each other in society.
Even though many people would have preferred a different president it is time those like Waldman and Chabon take the advice, again, of the sages. In Jeremiah 29:7, written to the Jews in exile in Babylon, he admonishes them to “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.”
Indeed, instead of gnashing their teeth over the political Babylon the Trump-haters find themselves in, how does it serve society to create chaos and drive dissension?
Shall we sit shiva for Waldman and Chabon?
Or shall we invite Waldman and Chabon to drop their weeping-by-the-waters of their political Babylon. Rather than picking on the Trump family who are strangers-to-politics in the strange land of Washington and doing their best; rather than singling out the one who is a relative stranger to the world of Judaism, maybe they could instead put their passion to work in support of the elected officials, for the welfare of America, so that in its prosperity, we may all prosper.
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