Sunday, October 05, 2008

Rabbi Art: Moving Beyond Race

Moving Beyond Race: Say No to bigotry!
Rosh Hashanah 5769
Rabbi Art Donsky

This morning and tomorrow morning we encounter two very striking
and powerful stories in the Torah, from Sefer Bereshit, Genesis, chapters 21
and 22.  These stories examine the intensity of family relationships, among
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael, our blended first family.  Yet,
these stories I believe also speak to us about the complexities and pain, the
disappointments and prejudices experienced by the larger human family,
then in antiquity, and sadly still, today.  How honestly we are willing
explore these core narratives of our people and humanity in general, I
believe, can be critical for us as Jews and as Americans in the coming years. 
Let’s look at the text:

And Sarah saw the son whom Hagar, the Egyptian had borne to
Abraham playing.  She said to Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and
her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my
son Isaac.

What strong and awe-filled words from the ancient matriarch Sarah!
Distress is written all over Abraham’s face.  He had a close relationship with
Hagar and his son, her son, Ishmael. God reassures Abraham that Ishmael,
this son with Hagar will become a “nation, blessed and numerous, too, for he
is your seed.”

We have to ask what’s going on?  What precipitated this situation? 
What is the Torah and our ancestors, who, at first, orally communicated
these stories and then hundreds of years later, penned them onto parchment,
what are we being taught? 

First, just why did Sarah dislike Hagar so much and treat her so
harshly and want her “cast out”?  Remember Hagar had already run away
once because of being mistreated by Sarah and was told to return and to
submit what the Torah calls, “intolerable treatment.”

Many reasons have been offered by our tradition. Sarah, in her own
words, tells Abraham that she felt “lowered in her esteem” before the
handmaid who gave birth to her husband’s son when, she Sarah, couldn’t
give Abraham an heir. Sarah’s “self-esteem” was lowered? 

Curiously, the famed commentator, Rashi, and early rabbis in the
midrash offer the suggestion that Sarah caught Ishmael “taunting” her little
son, Isaac. They give no offer motives.

So what can we make of it all?  Let’s examine the Torah text closely. 
Who was Hagar?  She was an Egyptian slave girl given to Abraham to birth
a child, a male heir, when Sarah wasn’t able to do so. In that world not being
able to bring forth a male heir was devastating; grounds for divorce. I can
imagine there was much jealousy and envy on Sarah’s part?  Hagar was not
a Hebrew slave, rather an Egyptian slave, along with Canaanites, the lowest
of the lows in the eyes of the Hebrews and later Israelites. 

And let’s consider what Hagar’s name meant: stranger! She was the
ultimate Stranger from a different cultural, a different language, a different
skin-color – Egyptians were of African ancestry back then, not Arab
ancestry like today. 

All the Torah’s laws about not mistreating the stranger come much later, and
perhaps for good reason especially if we view several other examples in the
Genesis and Numbers.

Consider the tale of Noah and his sons.  His youngest, Ham, is cursed by his
father. Ham, whose name means, Dark-skinned, is the direct ancestor of
Canaan, the parent of the Canaanites, who along with Egyptians are
considered the lowest of the lows of human beings.

Skip ahead to Sefer Bemidbar, the Book of Numbers, Miriam speaks out to
Aaron against Moses. Why? Because we are told Moses takes a Cushite
woman, an Ethiopian woman as a wife. What happens? You may remember,
Miriam is punished by having her skin turn white and flaky and is put
outside the camp.  And Moses must beg God to heal her.

Finally, the prophets of ancient Israel, Amos and Malachi, for example,
remind the people that God teaches, “To Me, O Israelites, you are like the
Ethiopians,” and “Have we not one Father? Did not God create us? Why do
we break faith with one another?”

I am not suggesting that our ancestors of Biblical times were raging racists
of the worst kind, ready to wear KKK garb. Not at all, instead what I am
suggesting is that the very human writers of Torah and the Bible understood
that their societies had very real ingrained prejudices against strangers that
existed and that they had a duty to struggle against such bigotry.  Expose the
problem, in this case hatred and prejudice, don’t sweep them under the
proverbial rug, that’s how the Bible deal with difficult concerns.

Within the same scroll of the Torah that refuses to hide from us, the tragic
and painful episodes of Sarah and Hagar, Noah and Ham, Miriam, Aaron
and Moses, the same Torah gives us the Holiness Code of Sefer Vayikra, the
Book of Leviticus, chapter 19 and elsewhere, 36 times, in fact, the demand
not to do anything to hurt, harm, or mistreat the stranger!  These teachings of
Leviticus didn’t cover over, white-wash or ignore the societies prejudices.
Our ancestors confront this baseless prejudice and hatred head on, over and
over. The stranger, the widow, the poor, and the orphan all need protection.

The rabbis of the Mishneh and Talmud, over 1500 years ago amplify the
sacred obligations offered in Leviticus not to mistreat or hurt stranger.  “we
learn that all people are descendants from a single person so that no person
can say, “my ancestor is greater than yours.” God created humanity “from
the four corners of the earth - yellow clay, and white sand, black loam and
red soil. Therefore, the earth can declare to no part of humanity that it does
not belong here, that this soil is not their rightful home.”

And the rabbis add, ““Just a single person was created, for the sake of peace
– so that no one could say to another, “My parent was greater than yours.”
Moreover, only a single person was created, in order to emphasize the
greatness of God. For whenever a mortal stamps many coins using one die,
all the coins are alike; but when God stamps all human beings with the die of
the first person created, each one of them is, nevertheless, unique.”

Okay, if prejudice and mistrust were the norm in biblical and rabbinic times,
what about today?  How do we treat “the stranger”? Do we heed the mitzvot
of the Torah? Do we love the stranger? Do we protect the stranger? 

We know that America does not have the best record with regard to
strangers. In fact, throughout this country’s history the record is awful, we
must be honest, especially at this season of the year. 

Slavery.  Internment camps during wartime. Closing of our borders to those
fleeing persecution. Mistreat of immigrants. 

Sadly, Biblical times have very little on us.  And its not any better if you
look around the world.  But what about us, those of us sitting here today, we
must ask.

Consider the following situations:

You are walking one night in the city and you turn a corner and in front you,
you see six large black men walking toward you; what is going through your
mind?  What are you feeling? 

Or:

You are waiting to board an overseas flight, and boarding has been delayed
and then you see a Muslim couple wearing traditional garb called out by
name to come up to the check-in counter; what is your reaction?  What are
you feeling?

Or:

You are trying out a new Chinese restaurant, you seat yourself, waiting for
someone to bring you a menu and some bring you tea and those crunchy,
fried noodles.  You notice that all the employees are speaking loudly and in
animated fashion, and staring directly at you; you wonder what you have
done?

Or:

Your landscaping company has hired some new employees they are all
Mexicans, and they a boombox with them playing music loudly. In the past
you always would go out to speak landscape workers and bring them
something to drink and eat, sometimes you let them into your house to use
the phone and bathroom; what are you going to do now?  What are thinking
and feeling?

Now let’s reconsider these four scenarios with some additional
information:

In the first instance as the large men get closer and closer to you and
your pulse is racing, you notice that they are carrying Bibles with big crosses
on the cover coming from a church Bible study– now how do you feel?  Or
what if as they get closer you recognize them as some of your favorite
players on the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Now to the second scenario:  because you are nervous about seeing a
Muslim couple in traditional clothing getting on your flight, in the first
place, you decide to approach the check-in counter too, with the pretense of
checking your seat location, while really hoping to hear what’s going.  You
discover they are being told that there isn’t a Hallel meal and would they be
okay eating a kosher meal?  What’s going through your mind now?

Scenario number three:  You’re an African-American man sitting in a
Chinese restaurant and it’s not the first time you’ve encounter this problem. 
Again, you approach manager to ask for service and you wonder will this
prejudice ever end!


Finally, you look out your kitchen window into the garden, it’s a very
hot day, you are trying to decide what to do. You are going to fill up some
glasses of water, when the phone rings; it’s a neighbor complaining about
the kind of music blasting. Do you listen to her complaint and whatever else
she might offer the immigrant laborers in your garden? Or do you hang up
and fill up the glasses!

So where do we stand, each one us?  How we would deal with these
situations?  How do we wrestle with our own demons or our own
prejudices?  What is in our hearts and minds when we encounter the
“stranger in our midst?” We, the historic suffering stranger, we the ultimate
outsider, we, the people to whom the Torah commands, “don’t mistreat the
stranger because you know the heart of the stranger,” how do we measure
up? 

Living in North Carolina in the early 1980’s I can remember the day
that Suzanne and I were driving along a two-lane rode and saw a fire blazing
into the sky. At first we slowed to see if someone needed help, then
suddenly we saw before us a horrifying site, it was a giant cross aflame, a
cross-burning with people dressed in white robes and hoods.  Both of us
were speechless (I know that’s hard to believe) I never pressed the gas
peddle so fast and so hard. For me witnessing such an event only confirmed
the values instilled by my family and my Judaism that prejudice and bigotry
have no place in the human heart.


Let me say, that some of us here and throughout America are not
doing too well. Our years of internalized, perhaps now unconscious
prejudice seems to be surfacing as we approach November 4th, the day when
Americans will go to the polls to choose between Senator John McCain and
Senator Barack Obama. 

Post-Gazette columnist, Tony Norman, writing in a recent column on
racism, tells us, “according to an AP/Yahoo News poll, a third of white
Democrats (not to speak of white Republicans) admit that the color of the
presidential candidate will determine who gets their vote on November 4th.”
1/3!  Other surveys uncover similar results.

Norman goes on to say that “this is better news than its looks initially.
We had to wait 100 years after the Civil War ended for Congress and a
Democratic president to agree on landmark voting rights legislation that
upheld the sanctity of the 14th Amendment by enshrining every citizen’s
right to vote.” He goes on to suggest with a tone of surprise that so soon
after Jim Crow that the percentage isn’t higher!  Norman also reminds us
that Republicans share this phenomenon as well.  He concludes his
challenging commentary as follows: “don’t think of the biracial candidate as
a black man; think instead of him as three-fifths a white guy. That will get
you through Election Day with a clear-conscience.”

I am not suggesting that if Obama loses the election to McCain that it
will be only because of racism, not at all.  What I am suggesting is that we
are obligated by our tradition to remove from our hearts and minds any
vestiges of prejudice and bigotry and if this means being on constant guard
against it such feelings and thoughts, then that is our sacred obligation.


This election or any other election should not be about race.  (Or for
that matter ethnicity!  Substitute Arab American for African American? )

No, this election should not be about race, rather is must be about who
will lead us at this difficult time, home and aboard. 


Friends, we in the Jewish community should especially be colorblind
when we enter the voting booth, as we should be in our homes. 

Our biblical ancestors did not live in a colorblind world. They lived in
a tribal society, close-knit, exclusive of outsiders and wary, distrustful, even
hateful of strangers.  I believe that the Torah’s brutal honesty in the
narratives about Sarah and Hagar, Noah and Ham, Miriam, Aaron and
Moses and the prophets thunderous condemnation of the peoples behavior
toward the Other has been passed down so that we can do better, much
better. 

As the preacher proclaimed 45 years:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

This is now the season for our community to free the heart, to cleanse it, so
that we may stand before God on Yom Kippur, ready for a new year filled
with joy, with health, with life and with a commitment to a better world,
closer to the ideals of our tradition.