An important takeaway from last week’s Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre: White Supremacist Nationalism views most minorities as inferior, as people that need to be subject to White domination. Though killing Black people, Hispanic people, etc. is not seen as problematic, the policy is one of subjugation over extermination.
Not so for Jews.
The ability of many Ashkenazi Jews to “pass” is seen as a direct threat to White racial purity, the Jewish genetic code, soul, and literacy a toxin of society. When the gunman barged into the Tree of Life Synagogue yelling “All Jews Must Die” he truly meant it.
In his mind, and in the minds of other White Nationalists, the problems of the world will continue if there is so much as one Jewish soul residing on this planet. This thinking is somewhat mirrored within Evangelical discourses that seek to return all Jews to Eretz Yisrael so that the second coming of Jesus can begin, ushered in, of course, by the combustion of the Jewish people.
Being aware of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred does not take away from the progress Jews have made in places like the United States and Canada or abdicate Jews from apprehending our own racism. But being unaware of how White Supremacy impacts Jews today make us unsafe.
As our Torah and calendar show us, life is cyclical – progress is not linear and threats do not dissolve into time. We must arm ourselves with intellectual, spiritual, and physical knowledge to combat the threats that others pose to our communities. This means learning Torah, questioning traditions, re-prioritizing community based care such as neighborhood EMT squads and an investment in Jewish birth workers, facilitating interdenominational and cross cultural education, and committing ourselves to practical self-defense.
The shooting last Shabbat reinforced, or reinvigorated, my understandings of how universal-ism and particular-ism interact. In order to advocate for the particular rights of others, one first has to recognize and advocate for the particular rights of oneself. If we do not appreciate how we are different, we cannot appreciate how others are different. It is only through celebrating our differences that true freedom can be realized.
So take it upon yourself to do a mitzvah.
PARTICIPATE IN OUR CULTURE.
Jewishness is more of a relationship than it is a religion, the atheists among us are no less Jewish than the most frum rabbi. We need our wicked and simple sons to have a complete Jewish community, but we all have the ability to be the wise son; to be the child that asks the important questions, the child that both celebrates and challenges God, the child that seeks to see the good.
Do not hide from yourself.
Engage.
