Loving the Stranger; Loving Our Neighbor

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1 Loving the Stranger; Loving Our Neighbor Temple Beth El, San Pedro CA Yom Kippur Morning, 5776 September 23, 2015 / 10 Tishri 5776 Judaism is demanding. The Torah records six hundred and thirteen mitzvot sacred obligations that guide and govern our lives. But nobody remembers all of them. Not even me. So our sages in their great wisdom helped reduce them down to their essence. The Prophet Micah taught that all of Torah could be summed up in in the commandment to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. 1 Isaiah based all of the commandments upon two: Keep justice and righteousness. 2 And Rabbi Akiva taught that the greatest principle of Torah is expressed in the mitzvah, V ahavta L reiacha Kamocha Love your neighbor as yourself. 3 To love your neighbor as yourself is to put yourself in their place. It means treating others with kindness, empathy and respect. It also means living by the lesson of Hillel who taught; do not do to others as you would not want them to do unto you. What, then, is the essence of Torah? Love your neighbor; love God; live justly; be kind; don t be cruel. However, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offers a challenge. It is quite easy to love your neighbor, he teaches, because he or she is usually like yourself. What is hard is to love the stranger, whose color, culture or creed is different from yours. That is why the command, love the stranger because you were once strangers resonates so often throughout the bible. 4 We know both roles. In some places Jews feel like neighbors; in other places we re like strangers. 1 Micah 6:8 2 Isaiah 56:1 3 Leviticus 19:18 4 From a commentary on the Syrian refugee crisis featured in the Guardian, Saturday, Sept. 5, crisis jonathan sacks humanitariangenerosity 1

2 Some European Jews still feel like strangers. Many of our European Jewish brothers and sisters live with more fear for their safety than you and I do in Los Angeles. In the eyes of many of their country mates, they remain strangers; unloved and viewed with suspicion as the other in a land they ve called home for centuries. Most American Jews today, however, feel like neighbors, and it only took a few generations to get here. Between 1880 and 1920, two million of us came as migrants and refugees fleeing Eastern Europe. Our parents, grand and great grandparents wanted a better life, free from persecution. Quickly, however, most of us assimilated into the predominant white, Christian culture which once treated us like strangers to be feared, but generally no longer do. It helps that many not all, but many of us look like our neighbors and can play the American part fairly well. We ve been able to maintain our Jewish customs and traditions at home, while living the American Dream on the street. An unintended consequence of our successful assimilation is that we often forget our history of being the unwanted and unloved stranger in this once strange land. Complacency, ignorance, even blindness to the plight of the stranger has set in. This is precisely why we need to focus our attention on loving the stranger. Yes, it s much harder than loving your neighbor. However, to be heard over the voices of intolerance and divisiveness we must raise our voices of inclusion and love the stranger as we love our neighbor. Who are the strangers we are commanded to love? Do we see the poorer and predominantly black and brown faces that live in San Pedro below Gaffey Street as neighbors or as strangers? When we read of the plight of Syrian refugees, and see horrific photos of death and despair, who do we see suffering? Strangers or neighbors? Our tradition commands us to love the stranger even when they don t love us back. You need only look to the brutal slaying of Jewish worshippers in Jerusalem last fall, or the targeted murder of Jews at a suburban Paris Kosher supermarket last January to see that these extremist Muslim terrorists continue to us see us as the stranger, and likely always will. But many Muslims see us as neighbors. Remember that it was a Muslim Druze police officer who was killed in the line of duty after rushing the synagogue to save the lives of more Jews from the terrorists. Remember that a Muslim store clerk saved Jewish lives by hiding them in a walk in freezer. In both cases, these young Muslim men, who, let s 2

3 be honest, many in our Jewish community often view as strangers, saw us as their neighbor. Why? Because they were proximate 5 to Jews. When we are not proximate, fear and mistrust take over. We are losing our humanity by seeing the stranger, not as one to be loved, even tolerated, but to be feared. A person, especially a young man, who has a different skin color, religion or ethnicity, is suspicious. Just ask Ahmed Mohamed, the fourteen year old engineering whiz arrested last week in his Irving Texas high school for making a homemade clock and bringing it to school to show it off to his teachers. Some teachers and administrators were worried it was a bomb. Worried enough to call the police, but not so worried to evacuate the school. Would they have had the same response if the kid who brought in the clock wasn t Muslim? How did you respond to that incident? Was Ahmed a stranger or a neighbor to you? If he was Jewish and the same thing happened, how would you have responded? When we see Jews suffering, our response is quick and resolute. Is it resolute when those who suffer are Syrian refugees trying to escape the horrors of war? Can we see in their faces shadows of our martyred Jewish brethren, whose fates were sealed by callous Western nations, including the United States, who closed their borders seventy five years ago? Can we see our image in the faces of others? When we see Trayvon Martin, can we see in his black face the justice denied white Jews like Leo Frank, who was lynched by a white mob in 1915? When we see Michael Brown, can we see in his black face the faces of white Jews, like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who along with their black friend James Chaney, were murdered in rural Mississippi in 1964 for helping to register black men and women to vote? It s easy to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially when they remind us of ourselves. But loving the stranger requires that when another person is oppressed, we respond. It s hard but it s what Jews do. To be Jewish, really to be human is to see the divine presence in every person. The great 20 th century German theologian Martin Buber teaches that God is found in the other, in the deep exchange between I and Thou. One cannot encounter the other unless he is treated as a human being. When God created the world, God created different kinds of plants and animals. In striking contrast, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, it does not say, God created different kinds of man, men of different colors and races; it proclaims, God created one single man. From one single man all 5 I learned this notion of being proximate during a presentation by Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy 3

4 men are descended. To think of man in terms of white, black, or yellow is more than an error. It is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul. 6 How then do we cure this cancer? We treat it with understanding and compassion. First, we become proximate to those who are other to us. We get closer to the issues affecting people and communities of color primarily, but that we are responsible to help solve through action and self-awareness. We learn and listen. Closely. My neighbor, Charles, is an attorney with college aged and adult children. One morning, shortly after I moved in we had a brief driveway conversation that has stuck with me. How s the neighborhood? I asked. His response was telling; I moved here from Inglewood so my kids would get a good education, but they don t like it so much. Why not? I asked, innocently. I thought to myself, quiet street, nice homes, safe community; what s not to like? There aren t any black folks around. He replied. My kids feel isolated. I saw Charles as my neighbor who, like me presumably, is doing well enough to live in this neighborhood. He and his children see themselves, not like me. I know of one other Jew on my street but being Jewish doesn t make us stand out. As the only black family on our street, and one of very few in Palos Verdes, Charles and his family stand out. Unless we are black, we will never understand how it feels to be the one or two black faces in a sea of white. We will also never understand the fears, frustration or demoralization of black men and women in communities like ours, in largely poorer inner city communities of color, or in the rural South. When I walked through North Carolina last month on America s Journey for Justice, a woman named Wilma shared a story that made me sad and angry. Her friend, a middle aged black woman, was driving home late one night after visiting a friend. She was pulled over by the local police for crossing lanes without using her signal a moving violation apparently. When s the last time you were pulled over for that? The police interrogated her asking what she was doing out late at night (because returning home after visiting a friend, I guess made her suspicious to the police.) When she began to protest too much she was taken into custody on a trumped up charge. She was placed in a cell with prostitutes and thieves. Because she was poor, it took two days until she could post bail. She missed two days of work and two days of needed income. When 6 From Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel s January 1963 essay called Religion and Race religion and race speech text/ 4

5 she came before the judge, he dropped the charges. However the humiliation and degradation shattered her dignity and broke her trust in the police. Materially, she lost her bail money and wages money that she works hard to earn. Psychologically she lost even more. Questionable stops happen in California too. I recently visited the office of State Senator Isadore Hall to lobby for State Assembly Bill 953 7, an important piece of legislation that addresses racial profiling by law enforcement officers. Senator Hall s aide told me a story of a police encounter in San Jose a few years ago. He was driving two of his San Jose State football teammates in his car. His teammates are black, he is Latino. He was pulled over for failing to come to a complete stop a typical California stop that we all do. Although he was the driver and he committed the infraction, the police removed his teammates from the car and frisked them, while he was told to remain in the car. Would that have happened if his passengers were white? Not likely. Let me be clear. These stories are not an indictment on law enforcement in any way. Police officers put their lives on the line every day and we appreciate what they do every day after all, no one calls the police when they re having a great time. Unless we are a police officer, we will never understand the dangers and stress they face. My focus is on what it says about us as a society, about systemic racism, when driving while black becomes widely understood shorthand for getting stopped or questioned much more often than others. Should we be surprised that many African-Americas have as much fear of as faith in the police? In the last fifteen months we ve come to know the names of Michael Brown from Ferguson; Eric Garner from Staten Island; Freddy Gray from Baltimore; Tamir Rice from Cleveland; Walter Scott from Charleston. These are just a fraction of the deaths of unarmed black men that made national headlines. All were seen as the stranger. We ve also come to know the name of Reverend Clementa Pickney, and the number nine, representing the number of parishioners murdered in Charleston s Mother Emanuel Church, by a young, white, racist terrorist who was first welcomed with open arms to study bible with them. What is wrong with our society when some groups see other groups as fundamentally different from ourselves, and fundamentally less-than or inferior to ourselves? 7 Link here for a fact sheet on AB 953, which Gov. Brown signed into law on Oct. 3,

6 News reports only tell part of the story; however, when we watch a recording of Eric Garner being subdued, choked, then crying many, many times, I can t breathe and then read of the police buying a hungry Dylann Roof some Burger King after taking him into custody following his murderous rampage in a bible study class, we see a society that may, consciously or not, value one type of life, one type of person over another. Fifty years after the civil rights act, in overt and subtle ways, white Americans are still treated differently than black or brown Americans. Much of white America still sees black and brown America as the other. This is hard for us to hear and accept. However, we are all guilty of it, participating in these sins of omission or commission, whether we are aware of it or not. When we question claims and complaints as exaggerated and unworthy of serious consideration, we are exacerbating the distinction between us and them. This, my friends, is exactly what we need to get past. Many criticize the Black Lives Matter movement, countering with All Lives Matter. Instead, listen closely to what its proponents are telling us about their experiences as a black community that feels under siege. They are not saying that Black Lives Matter more than white or brown lives. They are simply saying that their lives matter just as much as our lives. We need to listen closely to their stories of being marginalized, categorized, or ostracized. We need to listen closely to their stories of discrimination in the housing market, public school system, work force, health care system and yes, even the voting booth. We need to learn of the crippling plague of mass incarceration, that Michelle Alexander 8 and Ta-Nahesi Coates 9 have written about so powerfully. Their stories which I ve heard from people directly and which I ve read plenty of are real and painful that again, unless we are black, we will never understand. The Black Lives Matter movement reminds us; you shall love the stranger because once you were strangers. Because as Jews we were once marginalized; because discrimination no longer informs our story as much; because we are commanded to love the stranger and love our neighbor; because of all this and more, I am commanded to speak out and act up. Pervasive, systemic racial injustice is a national crisis. We have a moral responsibility and a sacred obligation to respond. Judaism has always 8 Refer to her book on mass incarceration called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness; New Press Refer to his powerful book called Between the World and Me; Spiegel and Grau publishers,

7 defended the poor, disenfranchised and marginalized. The time is now for us to engage more deeply in this work. This crisis motivated me and 200 of my colleagues to carry a Torah scroll from Selma to Washington D.C. on the NAACP s Journey for Justice. For forty days, issues of racial justice were at the forefront. Our individual stories and collective experience is why 200 congregations are likely to hear sermons about racial justice this year. Our experiences, study and reflection will help us heed the words of our tradition; you must love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. There are too many others in our world. We need to change our attitude and transform strangers into neighbors. Rabbi Israel Salanter once taught: when we can t change the world we can still change ourselves. When we change, when we recognize our own attitudes and biases, conscious or not, we can then act. Here are three specific ways we can act powerfully together. First, we can educate ourselves. Over the next several months I will be facilitating an ongoing discussion and exploration about race and identity. Open, honest and hard conversations and a required reading list will guide us. We will look inward first, before looking outward. Next, we can develop relationships. This is the hard work, and it will take time to build trust. However, the more opportunities we have to enter into relationships with people whose stories are much different than our own, the more we can benefit from the sharing of life experiences. Inviting the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church choir to sing in our sanctuary on Martin Luther King Weekend Shabbat is all well and good. Imagine how much more enriching it would be to develop real relationships with members of their community? Finally, we can advocate here in California and nationally for legislation that helps eradicate subtle and overt forms of racism in our society. We can advocate on the federal level to restore elements of the Voting Rights Act that have been stripped away in some states disproportionately affecting Black, Latino and poor voters. Right now, you can make your voice heard with Reform California, a statewide advocacy arm of the Reform Movement. We are pressing Governor Brown to sign into law State Assembly Bill 953 which addresses issues of racial profiling in law enforcement. 7

8 It is new legislation that requires police departments to modernize its definition of profiling, create a system to collect data, and enacts comprehensive training programs that helps to enhance fair and impartial policing. If this speaks to you, pick up the information card when you leave, call Governor Brown tomorrow and urge him to sign AB 953 into law. We are more aware of the other today than we have been for some time. We are forging a new path in developing relationships with the other in our midst. We are working hard to transform the stranger into our neighbor. She may be a Syrian refugee. He may be a brown immigrant in San Pedro, or a working class black man in Compton. No longer can they be strangers to us; they must become our neighbors, whom we are commanded to love, as we love ourselves. Let us encounter the holiness of the other. Let us eradicate the cancer of the soul that is racism. Let us build this world with love, where we love the stranger because we were once strangers and where the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves rings loudly and true. Kein Yhi Ratzon 8

Rabbi David M. Frank, Temple Solel, Cardiff, CA Rosh Hashanah B Yachad, In This Together: The Challenge of Race in America

1 Rabbi David M. Frank, Temple Solel, Cardiff, CA Rosh Hashanah 5776 B Yachad, In This Together: The Challenge of Race in America This summer, I fulfilled a longtime ambition. After ten days of study at