We missed each other last week because I was sitting Shiva. My topic this week begins with last week’s Parasha because of what was happening in the US over the last few weeks.
The Gemora says about the juxtaposition of the Sota and the Nazir in last week’s portion that one who sees a Sota in her humiliation will become a Nazir. That is, if someone sees how a woman can end up in a compromising position that threatens the integrity of her marriage, a witness will think about the possible causes of such behavior and separate themselves from wine. The Baal Shem Tov used to say that that means one is always supposed to take what one sees as if it was meant to be seen by you. It carries a lesson for you. If American cities are on fire (again) with racial anger, there’s something to learn.
As an extension of what I mentioned in my eulogy for my mother, a”h, about her joining the struggle for civil rights, let me give some background. In 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to the Northern suburbs of Chicago for the first time. It was two years after the bus boycott in Montgomery, AL, ended in success, but long before The Letter from the Birmingham Jail, the March on Washington and “I have a dream,” the march in Selma. He spoke once during that trip to the area, as the invited guest of the synagogue in Evanston, IL, where I had my Bar Mitzva 17 years later.
That synagogue was then in its first decade, in a modest building which later grew much larger. But the main thing was its location, in Evanston in general and on Dempster St. in particular. Until the mid-50’s Evanston realtors prevented Jews from buying homes there. In the late 50s, when middle class Jews managed to infiltrate Evanston, they were restricted to the south side, contiguous to Chicago. The furthest northern point was Dempster St., and that’s where the synagogue sat, after fighting explicit anti-Semitism to secure zoning permission.
It was like this up and down the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. When Jewish families left the South and West Sides of Chicago to come north, they were welcome only in Skokie or Glencoe (sometimes dubbed “Glen Cohen”). There were, of course, exceptions: Henry Crown, who once owned the Empire State Building, had an Evanston mansion on Lake Michigan, and across the street from him was the inventor of an early precursor of the sippy cup. But the ban held for many decades for most other Jews.
In 1965, Dr. King returned to Chicago. Whereas his main focus in the South was voting rights and school desegregation, the issue in Northern cities was mostly about fair housing. I was put into daycare in 1965 as my parents marched for the end of real estate practices that limited the possibilities for minorities. The two northern suburban cities which allowed blacks at all -- Evanston was one of them -- did so only in certain neighborhoods reserved for those who worked as domestic labor. Overall, these cities were closed off to African Americans just as they were to Jews.
I take you through some of this history because of what can be learned recalling the days when Jews found easy common cause with the African American community. Today, one hears, “what does this have to do with the Jews?” Slavery, among the original sins in the founding of the US, had little to do with the Jews; the same can be said of Jim Crow laws in the South, and the virulent rejection of school desegregation in Northern cities like Boston.
There are two possibilities for why we should care. We all know that the Torah reminds the Jews often not to oppress those who are less fortunate “because you were once slaves in Egypt.” There are at least two approaches to this reminder (Shemot 22:20). Rashi says that we are supposed to remember that experience in a way that makes us sympathetic. Many Jews in the northern suburbs of Chicago indeed felt a common cause with the African American community. But those days have passed, and most Jews no longer feel the economic sting of prejudice. That is, the threat of anti-Semitism is no longer understood as analogous to the African American experience because economic oppression is no longer a prominent part of Jewish American life. Nevertheless, Rashi says, one can always be reminded that you too were once outsiders.
But the Ramban takes a different approach. He does not believe it is possible to maintain empathy for something you did not experience or personally witness. That would be superhuman. Therefore, he says, the verse must be reminding us that just as Hashem heard our cries in Egypt and responded not just by saving us but by punishing the Egyptians, so should we (of all people) know that He will hear the cries of those who suffer without response throughout history.
Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it in a letter to President Washington (and is today inscribed on his monument): “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that G-d is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever… Commerce between slave and master is despotism.” The reason we should care is that America’s welfare, like any nation’s in the moral universe, depends on rectitude in dealings between neighbors.
I’m intentionally not going into questions of what our response should be. That would take away from the point, which is that turning away is not an option. Large swaths of the African American community continue to miss out on the advantages most Americans enjoy when they finish school and raise children in a stable home. In addition, one must concede that common cause is complicated as the days of Dr. King have given way to Minister Louis Farrakahn and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
A few minutes of the talk Dr. King gave in the synagogue in 1958 have been preserved. His overall subject was integration, but he mentions fearing at times for his life. (A deranged person stabbed him later that year.) However, he says repeatedly, “I believe in the future because I believe in G-d.” That is something Jews and African Americans should still share. That was a faith born out of the study of the Jewish experience in Egypt, a faith too dangerously at risk today in both communities.
