Friday, April 26, 2024. 

I’ll never forget the time I attended a major summit on racial justice in Denver as a young rabbi. I had been working with local clergy in the area for many months, and we gathered to codify a document charging our community to continue to fight racism. Wearing my kippa, I sat down at a table with several black men and started introducing myself. They seemed taken aback that I sat with them. I introduced myself as a local rabbi, and they explained that they were from the Nation of Islam. They continued to explain that the ultimate solution to racism in the US was for congress to pay to resettle all black people in Africa. I subtly googled “Nation of Islam” under the table, only to learn, that they believe Jews are central to Black oppression. It turned out that the fight for racial justice was far more complicated than I could have imagined. 

During my first three decades of life, I believed, that as the grandson of a holocaust survivor whose other grandparents had been segregated from purchasing housing in certain sections of Shaker heights in the 1940’s, and who was part of a small, and often targeted, minority, I fully understood racism toward people of color. My people were oppressed and they were oppressed – it felt like we were on the same team. 

In 2012, after Trayvon Martin was murdered, I started learning more about racism. From Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, I learned about the ongoing systemic racism that had occurred since the civil rights movement. Alexandar even drew a comparison of the extreme marginalization of Jews in the Holocaust to the Mass Incarceration of people of color in the US¹. Then I learned about Intersectionality, theorized by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality “is the study and perception of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.²” 

My assumption about the Jewish connection to racism against people of color was my own perception. To be fully present in antiracism work I learned to check my assumptions, and fight against antisemitism, at the door. 

Through this same lens I approach the students protesting on college campuses around the country including Northwestern. A friend wrote me a text on Wednesday saying “Do you have any way to help me find compassion for the student protestors? 

My answer came from my experience fighting for racial justice and other priorities of the American left. These protestors, I wrote, are reacting to their leftist sensibilities (and communities) which divide up the world into oppressors and oppressed – rich vs. poor, powerful vs. powerless, and literally White vs. Black. Informed by 2020, and misguided intersectionality, they feel a moral imperative to show up for the group they see as oppressed. They have been fed a simple and wrong story that paints Israel as the sole colonial White enterprise occupying and oppressing a marginalized Brown people. Sadly, as we know, Israel/Palestine is so intensely complicated and just as I had to set aside many of my pre-existing notions about racism when I got involved in the movement, they need to shed many of their assumptions.  

Furthermore, some of them believe Hamas to be similar to the Black Panthers. I have spoken to many activists in BLM circles who believe that the Black Panthers should have pushed harder, and that oppression and racism continued because of the non-violent movement. They view the US label of terrorist organization of the Black Panthers to be a form of racism. Today’s protestors believe Hamas to be legitimate freedom fighters, not the terrorist organization bent on destroying Israel through any means necessary. Not the group whose charter lays out actual committing actual genocide against the Jewish people. Not the group that killed hundreds of Palestinians forcefully consolidating control over Gaza. Not the group that brutally murdered 1200 Israeli’s on October. Not the group that sexually assaulted many of their victims. And not the group that currently holds over 100 hostages in their network of tunnels. 

From an American leftist perspective, Jews are not an oppressed minority. This is a direct result of both applying intersectionality to the Israel/Palestinian conflict and latent antisemitism in which people believe that because Jews are mostly white, they cannot be the target of oppression. Furthermore, so much of the ideas the American left espouse are informed by a decades long Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign created around the second intifada to delegitimize and eliminate Israel using the successful tactics of the west to end Apartheid in South Africa. Let us make no mistake – these protests are a result of many years of working toward this moment, and it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen.  

The famine and crisis in Gaza must stop, and I pray that it ends soon. At this moment Hamas, not Israel, rejecting a ceasefire. They don’t care about the Palestinian people and count each Gazan death as a martyr. Today a group of 18 nations, the United States, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Thailand and Britain, all who have hostages in Gaza, called on Hamas to accept this deal. They said: 

“We emphasize that the deal on the table to release the hostages would bring an immediate and prolonged ceasefire in Gaza, that would facilitate a surge of additional necessary humanitarian assistance to be delivered throughout Gaza, and lead to the credible end of hostilities,³” Senior Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Hamas would not be influenced by the statement and said the United States needs to force Israel to end its aggression.  

Even though Hamas has declared many times that there will be more attacks like October 7^th until they destroy Israel. 

All this analysis leads to one question: Why aren’t these students protesting Hamas for creating a network of terror and destruction instead of caring for their own people? Why not call for Hamas to lay down their arms and the PLO take over control of Gaza? 

Here the answer is clear – for we know that there is a steep slippery slope to antisemitism. When calls for freedom for Palestinians becomes a call to eliminate the Jewish State, such as chanting “from the river to the sea,” anti-Israel protests become antisemitism. Antisemitism was revealed today when the head of the Columbia protests took a video of himself during a censure hearing, in which he turns to the camera and declares, “Zionists should not exist.” He compares Zionists to nazis, calls for the murder of Netanyahu, and concludes: “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” “Be thankful,” they continue, “that I am not going out and murdering Zionists.”  

I don’t believe that many of these protests are going to result in violence against Jews directly, but I can tell you there are a lot of people who actually do want to murder Zionists and Jews, regardless of their connection to the State of Israel. They are eagerly standing by. My great fear is that White Supremacists will join these protestors and heed their calls to eliminate Zionists. A fear that reminds me of the men in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.” as the president declared that they were good people. 

For now, we pray first that the war ends, the hostages are returned and that the suffering in Gaza ends. Full Stop. I pray for this with my entire heart, every day. Next we pray that these protests continue peacefully, that the semester ends quietly, and that we all agree to create a peaceful world in which everyone has the right to self-determination.  

Sitting at that table, almost 12 years ago, with the men from the Nation of Islam, I realized that the people for whom I was fighting for believed that I, a Jew, was their enemy. But I didn’t stop fighting, because I believe that my Judaism compels me to fight for the freedom of all people. I continue to learn, ask questions, admit my mistakes (of which there were many), march, protest, challenge my assumptions, and use my power to make change and bring justice for all.  

On Passover we celebrate our freedom from slavery and our freedom to accept the responsibility to transform our world. That means we never    give   up.  [Holding up a piece of Matzo] This is the bread of affliction…this year we are slaves, next year we may all be free.⁴