THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICS, IT IS ABOUT….
Wearing a mask to protect one’s health and that of those around us is being prudent, a good citizen and in appropriate self-interest at this time in our reality. AND YET, there are those in our country who would have us believe it is a political statement. Really?
Being horrified at police brutality is about caring about human beings. BLACK LIVES MATTER is about being appropriate citizens and good human beings. Holding individuals who carry accountable for being responsible and controlling their own tempers is about observing the laws set for the country we all share and so much else. It is NOT a political statement!
Loving a country that is a democracy in the Middle East and a homeland for Jews and so many others, by the way, from so many other lands, is about identifying with the land of my history, my religious identity and so much else. It is based on foundational principles of justice and concern for all human beings that are fundamental to all monotheistic religious codes. It is NOT a political statement!
I have been reading Susan Rice’s book, Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, have watched the documentary of Richard and Mildred Loving’s story, on which the movie Loving is based, and have watched numerous you tube recordings and read memoirs and writings dedicated to peoples’ understanding of their identity and what in the larger stage on which we live threatens that identity. Rice speaks of a time when Democrats and Republicans got along well, had meaningful debates about their differences with respect and reasonably pitched voices. THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER from my years in the middle of so much between the mid-sixties and early seventies, when I was in Baltimore and Washington DC. We all had our political affiliations and perspectives but our friendships WERE NOT based on politics. Our statements and precautions we took for our health WERE NOT seen as political. We were all part of the family of people that call the United States of America home.
I know too many people who have died from COVID 19 and protecting all of ourselves, our families and our communities is about using the common sense that G-d is kind enough to bestow upon us to act sensibly and responsibly. No amount of shouting, name-calling and disrespectful tweets and barbs will change that.
I am profoundly worried about our country. I am proud of the MANY, MANY people who are working to hold the reasonable and moderate middle and are using their voices of sanity and reason. That being said, we CANNOT ignore the hatred, prejudice and violence that has been unleashed in this country. NO ONE PERSON no matter what position, has created that. It has always been here. BUT, the responsibility each of us have to respond to this in a way that is healing and restorative is critical and anyone who allows voices of authority to claim that “there are very fine people” in all groups including the Ku Klux Klan and other white extremist groups validates and gives tacit permission to all those who hate us to act violently and THEY ARE doing just that -- because we are Jews, because we are Muslims, because we are people of color, because we are LGBTQ -- because we are not part of the White America they want to fight for . DO NOT take this glibly, we all know previous chapters of history when this was done, certainly in the later 1930s in cultured and well-educated Germany, and we know where that led.
Use your voices! Write, teach, read, learn … and remember that if, in the words of Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, we do not rise to stand with each and every group who is maligned, than we have no right to ask that they do the same for us. And anyway, it is the right thing to do, it is the moral and just thing to do, it is the HUMAN thing to do. BLACK LIVES MATTER! LGBTQ LIVES MATTER! JEWISH LIVES MATTER! MUSLIM LIVES MATTER! ALL LIVES OF MORAL JUST HUMANS MATTER! KEEPING OURSELVES HEALTHY MATTERS And this is NOT political!!!!!!!!
