Another Tragedy and Business as Usual Unfortunately

Remember the Tom Lehrer song, National Brotherhood Week…. And then the song from Peter, Paul and Mary … when will we ever learn?

And here we are again. Too many tragedies…. Just to name a few, Charlottesville. Florida, Pittsburgh. New Zealand. This is not a matter of hate thoughts turning into hate speech and spiraling into deadly hate-fueled terrible actions being an infrequent occurrence, but rather a daily headline in our news throughout the world. WE ARE ALL CHARLIE to quote the outtake from the Paris terror in the beginning of 2016.

A chilling observation by a moderate and neutral news source (as much as possible in our reality): “Since the election of President Donald Trump, news outlets and social media accounts have swelled with reports of swastikas at schools, racist taunts, and other hate-fueled attacks and acts of intimidation. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has aggregated media reports and gathered submissions from its website, catalogued 1064 incidents.” That was just less than two years after January 20, 2017.

Let’s be clear. This did not begin with the election of this or any other specific official. In fact, if anything, the election of the person presently sitting as President of the United States and in many other such seats throughout the world can be credited to the hate and prejudice and lack of empathy for anyone different than self that is rampant in this country and our world. This is what is amplified and validated in his daily speech, unbecoming for any human being and horrifying for a national leader. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and too many others reinforce this, because this is what they see and there is implicit permission to speak uncensored as one wishes, regardless of the impact. Everyone hates the …. (fill in the blank as you wish) according to Tom Lehrer. While it was a social action and public conscience statement when first presented to the world, now it is clearly exposed as the all-too-sad fact of our existence as human beings. Here is what scares me. Add them all up – those who hate anyone not them. Pull them from the right and from the left and you will note that the center is being closed out. My husband often reminds me that he feels most people are good people who want the right thing. I am really sincerely wondering how this is playing out in this time of extreme and harmful positions that add to the rhetoric and to the hate crimes and deaths handily, but not to a new way to understand each other for increasing numbers of our collective community, country and world. Yes, many of us gather repeatedly to mourn and to share but that we are doing so too often is the problem.

I sit here once again with the past few days as busy as ever but clearly overshadowed by the latest tragedy in New Zealand at two mosques where forty-nine people of faith were gunned down and others were physically injured and an entire community, actually an entire world of Muslims and all people of faith are mourning. I have been involved once again (too often this happens) in mobilizing communities of Jews and multi-faith organizations to go to yet another Interfaith gathering of sorrow and support for our Muslim brothers and sisters in faith. I have just been in communication with many of my Muslim colleagues, supporting them as they did me a few months ago after the Pittsburgh massacre.

As Peter, Paul and Mary asked, “when will we ever learn?” Apparently, what is being learned is hate and intolerance and lack of acknowledging that we are part of a human family. This past Shabbat (Sabbath) was Parshat Zachor, in the Jewish community. On this Shabbat, always the one before our observance of Purim, we remind ourselves to destroy Amalek, the force that attacked the Israelites in the desert so long ago, going for the weak and tired, and killing them without mercy. When we remind ourselves to Remember and DO NOT FORGET what Amalek did, it is this hatred and lack of humanity that we are to continue to work to eradicate, wherever it is found, including in ourselves.

I am privileged and have so much gratitude for being able to be connected to so many wonderful people of faith. Whether we pray to HaShem or The Lord or Allah or any other Supreme Being, what my colleagues and people I am proud and honored to call friends and I share is a sense of humility that we are trying intentionally to live the life our Supreme Being wants us to. When one holds oneself accountable to that Higher Being, being careful with words and actions comes as a necessary part of one’s daily existence. The Talmud and so many other sources teach repeatedly that words that hurt, embarrass, minimize the other are as dangerous weapons as anything concrete, for which the punishment for use is significant, worse than many other misdeeds. What we also need to understand is that WORDS COUNT and our leaders and all responsible members of our community really have to go back to when we were taught to think before we speak. Communications theory teaches that what you hear is more important that what I say. I have written about this before, but I remember when Yigal Amir stated that his Rabbis and teachers at Yeshiva taught him that Yitzchak Rabin was threatening the lives and well-being of all of Israel by engaging in peace talks and initiatives. Amir used that as permission to assassinate him. For a few weeks afterwards, there was some reflection in the Orthodox Jewish community regarding how they taught, and then it was back to the business of hate and vitriolic diatribes as usual and in rather quick order.

I am hurting as are many people in my world. Many of us will be gathering in a few hours to share and mourn together. When will they ever learn in our world that it is not our purpose as human beings for X to hate Y and Y to hate Z. As I often say, if we do not learn to play nicely on the playground called world nicely, we will have no playground. May we all try to reach as far as we can and share the message of the necessity to roll back the words we speak and consider what impact they have on others. We all need to go back to the pre-school basics and what Robert Fulghum calls the curriculum of Kindergarten in his book Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, including such things as saying nice words, not hitting, sharing one’s space, etc. because too many adults in our world are not doing these most basic things so well.

Another Round of Lessons from the Talmud about Interaction and Relations with Others

I am presently studying Masechet Avodah Zarah. One might think given the name of the Tractate, it’s about all of the awful things that people who worship idols do. But that is absolutely not the subject as I have been studying this text (I am presently past the half way point). Quite the opposite! Much of the discussion is dedicated to how we interact with others respectfully and with honor while maintaining our own identity. The degree of interaction that is assumed and accommodated as well as structured is really quite remarkable and speaks to the point that inclusion and interaction is the desired way to go, not excessive exclusion and separation. As I listen to the vitriolic speech and watch the horrible way people are acting towards each other in our world today, it is clear to me that there is a clear delineation between what one is to do to protect and insure their identity and the need we have to be a respectful member of our larger world.

The discussions amongst the Rabbis in this Tractate are truly instructive with regard to not separating ourselves too much and not assuming the worst in other people, but rather practice the dictum of giving the other the benefit of the doubt, maintaining the core of one’s own identity and practice, and remember that all of us are here with a purpose and hopefully, a code of ethics. It is too easy to walk away from those who are different than we are, but this does not build society. Maintaining the balance of respect for the other, confidence in one self, and the conviction that we are all here to teach each other something may require work, but this is work that has rich rewards embedded in it on so many levels.

Frances Kissling is president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007. In a conversation she had some time ago with Krista Tippett of “On Being,” she explains that we would all do well to have a bit of doubt about what we know to be certainly true within ourselves, while thinking about what we admire in the other. By engaging in this exercise of questioning ourselves and valuing others, we can truly build important bridges, with no need for walls that divide us, often due to unfounded fears.

In Avodah Zarah, there are discussions about what foods one can eat that are prepared by those who are not Jews and therefore not accountable to or observant of the dietary laws that charactize religious Jewish life, Kashrut. There are deliberations about when one can do business with those who are part of other peoples, yes including those engaging in idol worship. In all of these negotiations, there are clear lines of the importance of maintaining one’s identity and sanctity while not going overboard in separating oneself from those around us. There is an understanding that much is to be gained by interaction, and that it is to be done carefully and within certain established parameters. But, and this is what is most important, those parameters are precisely what allow us to interact with those around us.

Complex discussions of the involvement of idol worshippers in any aspect of preparation of food (known as Bishul Ackom) clearly show what is allowed and what is not, and more important, why. For example, there is a desire to maintain a bit of a distance in some instances due to worship practices of the other people that are not the same or not acceptable within a Jewish context. Fair enough. Other instances are given of boundaries to be set so that intermarriages do not happen. Also a fair concern.

Reasonable and appropriate concerns are valuable and needed. Interactions with our neighbors who are different than us in their faith communities, political beliefs, values and life styles are also valuable and needed. As I often say, we can clearly celebrate where we are similar to others, and we must also have respect and regard for where we differ. When we understand and have an appreciation for the complexity and intersection of all of these concerns, we will be able to be constructive members of society. When people are so sure of themselves, there is no room for doubt; and so convinced that the other has nothing to offer us, this is where we lose hope in our present situation and cannot see a vision for our future. That is NOT the message of the important Jewish texts that are so foundational to who we are and how we live.