The cadence has of course risen in this past year as fear, anger and frustration rose up around the spread of coronavirus. Last week, on a popular evening television show, a young character with Asian mother was told by classmates to wear a mask during school - on Zoom! My stomach knotted watching this scenario play out. The naive child complying. The parent and colleague sharing stories of growing up with shame and embarrassment, being told to blend in and not stand out in their uniqueness. Entertainment reflects reality. Hatred fueled violence against the Asian American Pacific Islander community (AAPI) is soaring. One need only turn on the news to know this is happening in our own backyard. These behaviors are not from some far off land or relegated to our television or computer screen. This does not happen in a vacuum. The surge in hate crimes against Asian-Americans since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is a shameful stain on the nation....These horrific attacks do not occur in a vacuum: they spring from the same climate of xenophobia, bigotry, and white supremacy that led to hate-fueled killings in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso, and too many other communities (Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director of RAC).
In preparation for Yom HaShoah, Josh Gad (the voice of Frozen's Olaf!) spoke of his grandparents' experiences as Holocaust survivors and shared his own experiences of antisemitism growing up in the United States. In fact, his story about whether he had horns mimics my own that I experienced in college. When asked How did this happen? How did the world stand by in the face of hatred, bigotry and horror, he replied, We normalize things.
We cannot afford to normalize hate. We cannot afford to normalize terror. We cannot afford to normalize gun violence. We cannot afford to normalize hate speech. We cannot afford to normalize xenophobia. As we count the omer each day (from Passover to Shavuot) on our journey from our first steps into freedom, we commit to building the world we want to inhabit. Elie Wiesel reminds us that humankind must remember that peace is not Gd's gift to his creatures. Peace is our gift to each other. Kindness, grace, and the open heart are muscles that must be nourished and cultivated. How else will we know what to do with our freedom as we claim it on our walk towards Torah.
As Jews, we know what it is like to be the stranger. I encourage you to read, We Too Were the Stranger by my colleague Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl. Learn more about how to fight Anti-Asian Racism and discuss this with children through the downloadable book Young, Proud, and Sung-Jee . Join me in reading Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels by Catherine A. Sanderson - available here and through other online booksellers.
Paulo Freire writes, If I am not in the world simply to adapt to it but to transform it, I must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia but also to engage in practices consistent with it. It is up to us to live open minded and open hearted lives that honor humanity. It is up to us to see humanity in one another. It is up to us to stand together for safety, dignity and love. Freedom demands that we move forward, learning from the past and building the future.
Shabbat Shalom,
rg
