My Rosh Hashanah teaching:
This summer, while scrolling through random Facebook posts of some of the young people who I am connected with in different ways, I happened upon a classically anti-semitic post. It was written by a young Black man, someone who I do not know personally. It was apparently in response to something happening in pop culture, something about a sports celebrity. I didn’t know the details, nor did I need to.
When I say it was a classically anti-semitic statement, I mean right out of the medieval Church playbook. No attempt at oblique dog whistling here – just openly slamming “The Jews” directly.
As we say in Yiddish: Oy.
This is not a congregation, thank God, where people tend to say things like “Why should Jews bother caring about Black people and racism?” But I know that the question is being asked by some Jews elsewhere, and I can imagine that after reading this young man’s post, and the many others like it, some of us might begin to wonder “why bother.” Yes okay Black lives matter, some Jews are saying, but anti-semitism is a more important issue. Why should we care about them if they don’t care about us?
I’d like to dig into that question a bit.
Why should Jews care about Black people and racism?
The first reason is that a notable percentage of the American Jewish population are Black Jews. So “they” are us. In this congregation, in every congregation.
The second reason is what I've been saying for years about how we Jews should know, more deeply than other people, what it means to be oppressed. What it means to be targeted, hated, shunned. To be Othered. We carry that consciousness in our DNA.
Why should Jews care about Black people and racism? There is a third important reason which is less well known, and that is the connection between racism and anti-semitism in America.
The Black scholar bell hooks said it clearly, twenty five years ago:
“White supremacy relies on the maintenance of anti-black racism and anti-Semitism, hence there will never be a time when these two struggles will not be connected.... Wherever there is white supremacy, there will be anti-Semitism and racism.”
Wherever there is white supremacy, there will be anti-semitism and racism.
In a workshop for community organizers, I learned two sentences that brought this reality into sharp focus for me:
The function of racism is exploitation.
The function of anti-semitism is to protect power.
By focusing on the function of racism and anti-semitism, we can begin to see how both are manifestations of the culture of white supremacy.
The function of racism is exploitation. Much has been said and written about the exploitation of Black people in this country for hundreds of years; if you don’t know, please go and learn. We all need to keep learning.
I want to focus more on the second statement, because it may be less well known and less well understood: The function of anti-semitism is to protect power.
We, and our media, tend to notice the individual manifestations of anti-semitism: synagogue attacks and other acts of terrorism, crude statements by celebrities, job discrimination, expressions of hurtful stereotypes, etc. We think in terms of antisemitic individuals.
But looking from a systemic perspective, the function of anti-semitism is to protect power. What this points to is that anti-semitism has for centuries been a tool of men in power to deflect attention and rage away from themselves. Frustrated, exploited people are taught to focus their rage on the mythic target of The Jews - demonic source of all the world’s problems - rather than on those who are actually creating the conditions for everyone’s misery. Jews have historically been set up as the “buffer class,” the face of white supremacy: the landlords, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and other “middle agents” who become targets of rage as economic inequality skyrockets. The scapegoats.
Much has changed in the past thousand or so years, but this dynamic has not. Those in power periodically stir up anti-semitism among exploited working class and poor people of all races, to deflect attention and rage away from themselves and their actions. And they’ve done it so successfully that the system now works basically on autopilot.
The function of anti-semitism is to protect power. So when I hear a working class young Black man mouthing medieval christian anti-semitism, I am not surprised. And I don’t blame him personally, or his generation. They are being taught what their parents were taught, and what their grandparents were taught -- taught by wealthy white christian men in power who are more than happy to have Blacks and Jews turn on each other rather than unite. Who are more than happy to have poor and working class people of all races turn on each other rather than unite. Because this is the ultimate function of anti-semitism: to keep exploited people from uniting and turning on those who are doing the exploiting.
It happens over and over. It is happening right now, in 2020, here in America.
So what can be done? Honestly, I don’t know.
We tend to speak of anti-semitism (and racism) in terms of personal ignorance that could be resolved through better education about cultural differences. Certainly a “cultural competency” focus in school curriculum would make a difference in fostering respect and understanding. But that lens still does not teach people to see the underlying power dynamic.
There is another level of education that might make a difference. When Blacks and Jews learn together about this deep connection between racism and anti-semitism, the possibility arises for uniting in solidarity. The possibility arises for understanding that prejudice, name calling, and angry words only deflect attention from the people in power who benefit from our lack of unity.
When that young Black man posted his hateful words on Facebook over the summer, I was heartened to see that two of his friends took him to task for it -- by pointing him towards resources that clarified the function of anti-semitism in white supremacy culture.
Why should we Jews care about Blacks and racism?
1. Because “they” are us.
2. Because we Jews should know. And
3. Because wherever there is white supremacy, there will be anti-semitism and racism.
So the next time you hear about a Black person making an anti-semitic statement, ask yourself: Who benefits when Jews and Blacks turn against one another? And then let’s see what more we can do to build bridges and unite in solidarity.
Ken yehi ratson / so may it be.