Rabbi Stephen Weiss
Parshat Naso 2020
There is not a single black family in this country who has not struggled with the violent loss of someone close to them who was killed by police. Not one.
In last week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, we read that God instructed Moses to take a census of Israel. This week’s portion, Naso, opens with a census of the Levites. There are many censuses that take place during the time of the Israelites in the wilderness. We read in the book of Exodus that the Israelites carried out a census just one month earlier, before the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). Our Sages ask why does God require the Israelites to be counted with such frequency? The midrash provides the answer by analogy to a King. A king, says the Midrash, counts the money in his treasury repeatedly, turning each coin over in his hand and examining it lovingly, because his money is so precious to him. But the King of kings does not count money. God counts each Israelite again and again, one by one, giving each God’s full, loving attention, because we are so precious to God.
The Torah’s message is not just that each Israelite is precious to God, but that each human being is infinitely precious to God. In Genesis, we are taught that all humanity descends from one person: Adam. The rabbis taught the reason God created humanity from a single person. is so that no one could claim that they are better, more important than anyone else. The rabbis said the miracle of creation was that — again relying on an analogy to a king — a human king makes a mold to produce coins and every coin he makes from it is exactly the same, but the King of Kings makes a mold, Adam, and the coins that come from that mold, humanity, each one is different. The sages celebrated the differences between human beings. Differences in color, in shape, in language… each bringing beauty and their own special gifts into our world.
The Torah teaches that we are all created in God’s image and contain God’s spirit within us. Each human being has immeasurable sanctity and worth. God commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to stand up for the downtrodden and the afflicted. God commands that there should be one law for you and the stranger in your midst. Ours is a tradition that is built upon compassion, love, honor, and respect for every person. That is why God commands us to love your neighbor as yourself because every person is as worthy as you, and all human beings deserve mercy, compassion, love and justice.
As I think about the beautiful expression of God’s love for all humanity reflected in our tradition – and contrast that with the events that cumulatively led up to this past week’s protests — my heart breaks.
My heart breaks for our brothers and sisters in the black community who fear for their lives, the lives of their husbands, sons, and fathers.
My heart breaks for the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.
My heart breaks for those in Cleveland, the families of Tamir Rice, and Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, and just this past April, not even two months ago, Desmond Franklin.
Desmond was a member of Elizabeth Baptist Church in Slavic Village, a congregation affiliated with Greater Cleveland Congregations. He was shot in the left side of his head by a Cleveland off-duty police officer as he was driving down West 125″ street. My dear friend Pastor Richard Gibson of Elizabeth Baptist has had the unenviable task of seeking to bring comfort to Desmond’s four children, ages 3 months to five years, who now have no parents.
Yes, my heart is breaking.
My heart is breaking for the families of the thousands of black boys and men who over many years have been shot and killed by police officers for the crime of being black.
We should all recognize that most police are good. It was comforting to see images on the television of police officers and National Guardsmen expressing empathy for the protesters, shaking their hands, embracing them, taking a knee, even marching with them. But the horrific scenes of violence against peaceful protesters just underscores the reality that there is much that is broken in our justice system which allows hatred and violent temperaments free reign, placing those who hate in positions to wield lethal power and failing to hold them accountable.
According to statistics from the Center for Disease Control, getting killed by a police officer is the number one cause of death for young black men. One in 1000 black men and boys can expect to be killed by law enforcement officers.
Twenty-six percent of those killed by police officers are black, even though blacks make up only twelve percent of the population. This makes the percentage of blacks killed by police 2.5 times higher than that of white men killed by police. Yet blacks who are killed by police are 1.3 times more likely to have been unarmed than are whites killed by police.
Think about how many family members, friends, and community members you know who died of heart disease or cancer. There is no one whose life has not been touched by death at the hand of these two diseases. There is not a single black family in this country who has not struggled with the violent loss of someone close to them who was killed by police. Not one.
Imagine the collective pain and trauma. The grief and the anger. The fear. New York Times Columnist Charles Blow wrote:
We can bemoan the violence that has attended some of these protests, but we must also recognize that to have to live in a world, in a society, in which you feel that your very life is constantly under threat because of the color of your skin is also a form of violence
It is a daily, ambient, gnawing violence. It is the kind that makes a grown man’s shoulder draw up and his jaws clench whenever officers approach, even when there has been no offense or infraction.
It is the kind that forces mothers down to pray whenever a child is out late, pleading to the gods for his or her safe return.
it is the kind that makes a child think to write a parent’s phone number on their skin when they sense trouble brewing, just in case.
This is also violence.
Mr. Blow’s description is not something to which we easily relate. Over the millennia our people have suffered unspeakable treatment at the hands of those who hate us. In 21st century America, however, despite the steep rise in anti-Semitism, most of us have never experienced that kind of daily degradation and fear. When anti-Semitism raises its ugly head here, a shiver goes down our spine because we fear the country will slip backward into wide-spread hatred of Jews, but to date it has not.
Think about how uncomfortable – how angry, how pained, how afraid — you feel when you experience a single act of anti-Semitism. Yet by and large Jews in America enjoy the same white privilege as do Christians who are white. These are privileges that we take for granted as part of the gift of living in a free democratic society.
But for blacks, those privileges do not exist. African Americans routinely face being hated, marginalized, demonized, and disempowered. Ask someone African American that you know to tell you the ways in which they have been wounded by acts of racism, and they will have a long litany to share with you.
Blacks are incarcerated at six times the rate of whites despite the fact that studies show that the same percentage of whites and blacks use and sell drugs and engage in fighting and violence. They still face discrimination in housing access, education and the workplace.
Blacks have been disproportionately affected even by the coronavirus pandemic because of inequities in our healthcare system and other inequities that affect their health, such as living in areas with greater industrial pollution, less access to healthy foods at affordable prices, and less green spaces for exercise. Blacks are suffering disproportionately from the economic fallout of the pandemic as well, because they are, as the saying goes, “last hired and first fired.”
Just yesterday, the labor department released figures showing that employers added two and a half million workers to their payrolls last month, giving cause for hope that the economy is recovering, and dropping the unemployment rate from 14.7% to 13.3%. At the same time that the unemployment rate was finally falling for the majority of Americans, unemployment for blacks rose to 16.8%.
To be clear, I am not saying that this means that all white people are racist, nor even the majority. There is a lot of conscious racism in our society; but there is also unconscious racism and systemic – or structural – racism.
Unconscious racism refers to the ways in which our view of blacks is colored by the subtle messages conveyed by our culture, media, and the societal assumptions that have been handed down to us. Blacks are often seen as less intelligent, more lazy, dishonest, and violent. Those stereotypes are so pervasive that they manage to linger in the subconscious of even those who do not see themselves as racist. A person may see themselves as valuing and treating all people of color with respect but may on a subconscious level still fell prey to these stereotypes which influence their thinking.
Systemic – or structural – racism describes the ways in which assumptions, policies or cultural norms that discriminate against blacks and others of color, separating them out and placing them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their white counterparts. Sometimes structural racism was put in place intentionally, like redlining. The post-civil war practice of marking black neighborhoods as undesirable for investment. Red-lining meant that blacks were unable to buy their homes and to build equity and wealth. The result is that for every $100 in wealth held by a white family, black families have only $5.04. That is 1/20th of what white families have. A study in 2017 showed that past practices of red-lining continue to affect property values and access to loans for blacks today.
In the words of basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar:
“Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it – until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere.”
That is how it is possible that a woman walking with her dog unleashed in central park can call the police and claim that a soft-spoken black gentleman who was simply birdwatching — and who asked her to put her dog on a leash in accordance with park regulations — was a black man assaulting her.
That is how the son of my good friend and neighbor Pastor Freed of Garfield Church at Lander Circle and Chagrin, could find himself surrounded by policemen with guns drawn simply because he was walking on the street to a friend’s house in a neighboring community, and a white woman saw him walking on the street. She called the police and said a young black man was walking outside her house and she was afraid. Pastor Freed’s son is lucky to be alive.
There is an assumption in our society that African Americans are less intelligent, more lazy, dishonest, and violent. Those stereotypes are so pervasive that they manage to linger in the subconscious of even those who do not see themselves as racist.
In the words of basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar: “Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible – even if you’re choking on it – until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere.”
That is how it is possible that a woman walking with her dog unleashed in central park can call the police and claim that a soft-spoken black gentleman who was simply birdwatching — and asked her to put her dog on a leash in accordance with park regulations — was a black man assaulting her.
That is how the son of my good friend and neighbor Pastor Freed of Garfield Church at Lander and Chagrin, could find himself surrounded by policemen with guns drawn simply because he was walking on the street to a friend’s house in a neighboring community and a white woman saw him. She called the police and said “a young black man is walking outside my house and I am afraid.” Pastor Freed’s son is lucky to be alive.
The challenge of systemic racism is that no one person or institution is to blame. But until we tackle systemic racism, blacks will always remain second class citizens in this country.
In this week’s Torah portion, Naso, we also read of the Birkat Kohanim, the blessings that the priests were to recite over the people each day after the sacrifices were offered in the Temple. These blessings are among the most cherished of our traditions. They have found their way into our prayer books, our Sabbath tables, baby namings and weddings.
The final words of that three-fold blessing asks God to plant peace among us. The first two lines of that blessing are a prescription for how we achieve that peace.
The first blessing – May God bless you and guard you or protect you (v’yishmerekha) asks God to protect us physically from harm and to protect our belongings. What good is any other blessing when our very life is in jeopardy? Yet our African American friends live without that security. The first of the three blessings reminds us that there can never be true true peace if people are forced to live in fear.
The second blessing’s meaning is ambiguous and is debated by Jewish commentators. The Hebrew word vichuneka either means that God should cause us to receive grace from others or that God should implant within us an attitude of grace toward others. Grace – chen in Hebrew – refers to undeserved, unconditional love.
This blessing, then, asks God to ensure that we are treated with love, respect and kindness and asks God to so move our hearts that we treat those we encounter every day with the same unconditional love. Beyond ensuring each other’s physical safety, peace demands that we learn to empower and respect each other, to lift each other up, to embrace each other.
The final blessing of peace can only come after we have achieved the first two. When we work hard to protect the life and welfare of everyone, when we work hard to see that everyone is treated equally with love and respect, that everyone is equally included and empowered, then and only then can there be true peace. The root of the word peace — shin lamed mem — shalem – means “whole.” Right now, our society is torn apart. Only in making it whole can we achieve the peace we that we truly seek.
Achieving a just society in which every human being — regardless of their color, their culture or ancestry, their gender or orientation, or their belief — feels secure, embraced, empowered, and loved is a daunting task. That task requires that we shine a light into the darkest corners of our souls, and that we turn that same light on our society, so that we see the “dust” that we must clean out. It requires us to confess the failings of our society and to commit to radical changes in its structure that will root out inequality. It means we must be willing to risk trusting in each other and in our future.
I had the privilege of knowing and working closely with Coretta Scott King and the King children, who became good friends when I was a rabbi in Atlanta, Georgia. I think often of their father’s famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” In that speech Dr. King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Coretta sadly has passed away. Their daughter Bernice has taken up leadership of the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta. She has been on the news quite frequently as of late, commenting on the current situation.
Every time I see her, I think about her father’s words. His dream was not fulfilled for his children or even for his grandchildren. But Dr. King reminded us that “though the arc of history is long, it bends toward justice.” Though these days may feel dark, I can see the light of that arc shining through.
I can see the light of that arc in the huge number of peaceful protestors that continue to gather in the streets every day for over a week now, tens, hundreds of thousands nationwide, refusing to let up even in the face of curfews, demanding accountability and change.
I can see the light of that arc in those police and protestors who have found common ground in the shared respect for the positive role police can play in providing security, and the shared anger and frustration over those police and members of the justice system who have not carried out justice.
I can see the light of that arc of history in the courage of black Americans to tell their stories, and the number of people who are listening, sometimes hearing the story of blacks they know for the first time, opening to the recognition of the two very different worlds we live in.
I believe we will yet see that day that Dr. King dreamed of when he concluded that speech by saying: “And when this happens, and when we allow 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!’”
Please God, so may it come to pass speedily in our day. Amen.