Black lives matter to Jews

After the following was submitted by Rabbi Goldwasser, groups associated with the Black Lives Matter movement released a platform accusing Israel of "genocide" and supporting the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel. In response, Rabbi Goldwasser states, "I take great offense at the anti-Semitic accusation of genocide against the State of Israel and denounce those, like the BDS movement, that seek to vilify Israel with one-sided attacks. My letter in support of black lives is a call for Jews to respond to the imperatives of our tradition to stand up for individuals whose lives are threatened. I am grateful that, in Rhode Island, the relationship between the Jewish community and the African-American community has been strong and is growing stronger. I denounce and do not in any way endorse organizations that attack the Jewish community and the Jewish state."

The Black Lives Matter movement is controversial among Jews, just as it is for many Americans. There are Jews who are angered by racial profiling by police and incidents of violence by law enforcement officers against people of color. There are Jews who charge that the rhetoric and tactics of the Black Lives Matter movement have escalated tensions and instigated violence against police. However, there is no doubt that the phrase "Black Lives Matter" resonates with Jewish beliefs and history. Jews hear these words not as divisive, but as a call to moral action.

Our tradition stands for the ideal that every human life is sacred; that we are all created b'tselem Elohim, in the image of God. Every year, on Passover, we are commanded to see ourselves as if we personally had been slaves in Egypt. Every Yom Kippur, the prophet Isaiah cries to us to "break the bonds of injustice and remove the heavy yoke; to let the oppressed go free and release all who are enslaved" (Isaiah 58:6).

As Jews, we are practiced in taking the side of the vulnerable to protect them from the threats of the powerful. We identify with the downtrodden.
Identifying with the victimization of black people does not, in any way, mean taking sides against law enforcement. Jews serve proudly on police departments in Rhode Island and as officers of our courts. We identify with all who work faithfully and with integrity to protect and serve our communities. That, too, is a Jewish value. We reject the idea that black lives can be protected only at the expense of police lives, or vice versa. We stand for peace and justice for all.

While our society has addressed historic wrongs against black people, it is undeniable that inequity and racial oppression still exists. Black American men are five times more likely than white American men to be incarcerated. In Rhode Island, 7 percent of all black men are in prison. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot dead by police, and black people are twice as likely as white people to be unarmed when killed by law enforcement officers.

But Jewish empathy with blacks is not just based on statistics. It is based on our own visceral experience of being hated just for being who we are. Painfully, we know what it is like to be singled out for violence. Images of smoke rising from crematoria chimneys are etched in our psyches. We have felt the trembling awareness that it was the bodies of our brothers and sisters that fed the fires.

As Jewish immigrants coming to America from the late 1800s through the 1940s, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents faced harsh discrimination and exclusion from jobs, from higher education, and from neighborhoods. We scrambled for low-paying jobs. Our children worked long hours. We lived in poverty. All this while also suffering from horrible acts of anti-Semitism. We remember.

Jews have come a long way toward social equality in America, but we still feel heartache when we see negative Jewish stereotypes on the internet and in the media. We recoil bodily when we see anti-Semitic brutality today in Europe and the Middle East. We are sickened when anti-Semitic graffiti is spray-painted on synagogues and sidewalks here in Rhode Island. We know from our history – and many of us from our personal lives – what it feels like in our bones to be treated as "other."

When the contemporary African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that the economic and sociological oppression facing black Americans is an experience of "violence upon the body," we know what he is talking about.

Do black lives matter to American Jews? Yes, they do. Yes, they must. When black lives are threatened and black bodies and psyches are savaged by intimidation and violence, we have an obligation to join others in affirming that we stand with them.

In Rhode Island, the Jewish community has built lasting and meaningful connections of support with communities of color and our friends in law enforcement. I am deeply grateful to my colleague Rabbi Wayne Franklin, at Providence’s Temple Emanu-El, and to Marty Cooper, the community relations director at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, for their work in forging such connections. They were among the first in Providence to bring law enforcement, communities of color and faith leaders together for dialogue and cooperation. Their work is not just helping to prevent "another Ferguson" from happening in Rhode Island, it is helping to answer the ancient call of our tradition to break the bonds of injustice.

RABBI JEFFREY W. GOLDWASSER is the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai, in Cranston. He is the social action chairman of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island’s Community Relations Council.