I walked toward the forest in St Ives, this
past Monday, as I do most mornings, but this time tentatively. Australia is
burning! A place that is usually a refuge for me, teeming with bird sounds,
animal life and tranquility, now feels ambiguous, even somewhat threatening,
possibly on the verge of igniting with deadly fire. Many Australians have lost
their lives, many more their homes or farms and we have lost so many animals.
A week earlier, I walked toward another oasis
of nature: Prospect Park, at the edge of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where I
visited my parents over Chanukah. It is
usually a calming walk and I often like to go when I visit. This time was
different. Religious Jews were being attacked on the streets of New York, one
had been murdered in a shop in New Jersey and another was stabbed at home in
Monsey. I hesitated as I thought: was I safe? Would I be attacked?
These two causes call me as I write. Living in
Australia, I feel empathy with my fellow Australians. Their suffering and
terror stirs my heart to compassion and concern. Yet, I am also a Jew from
Brooklyn, and my recent visit is pulling my attention to the simmering
situation there.
Navigating between our ties to, or
disconnections from, various places is explored in my Jewish tradition. Our
patriarch Jacob, born in Canaan, is said to have only truly been alive during
his last seventeen years, living in exile in Egypt (1) where he finally found
happiness (2). Yet, his new home was not
where he wanted to be buried, among the fundamentally different Egyptians (3),
instead he insisted that his body must be returned to the Holy Land (4). Even
when Jacob was alive, he considered it important that his family remain apart
from the Egyptians (5).
This way of being in a place but not of the
place (6), reflects my own experience growing up in Brooklyn, which came back
to me on my recent visit. While I was there I caught up with a black friend
from Sydney, Mohamed. I showed him around Crown Heights, starting with my
childhood home. I showed him a large apartment building with black families
near our old home, and reflected how, in the twenty years I lived there, I
never learned the names of any of my black neighbours. This wasn't unique to
me. This kind of disconnect from our non-Jewish neighbours was a common feature
of growing up as a Chasidic Jew in Crown Heights.
I find it hard to write about my old
neighbourhood. It is simple enough to speak about my experience, to acknowledge
that I was racist then, and felt fear and loathing of my black neighbours. It
is also a matter of historic fact, that in 1991 an Australian Jew, Yankel
Rosenbaum, was killed by a black man, part of a hateful anti-semitic mob. I
will never forget the terror I felt in 1991 when I returned from Australia, to
what felt like a war-zone, and came to be known as the “Crown Heights riots”.
In 2020, another black man from Crown Heights is in custody for stabbing a Rabbi in his home, over Chanukah.
But there is so much more to this tension, both past and present, that is
contested and sensitive.
Ultimately, this blog post is far too brief to
fully explore the painful history or current dynamic between Jews and African
Americans in Crown Heights. However, I want to at least take an interest here
in the efforts to bridge the divide between the two communities (7). It is good
to see role models of inter-communal friendship going to schools and engaging
children in conversation. However, as someone who has been using this approach
- going to schools as
Muslim-Chrisitian-Jewish panels modelling goodwill, for almost two
decades, I have learned that this strategy, while valuable in its own right,
needs to be part of a multi-faceted approach (8). One important element that
research recommends is ensuring that participants in intergroup contact, in
cases where there has been tension, are assured that this contact is sanctioned
by authority figures on “their side” (9).
One suggestion I offer to my old community is
to utilise religious education to guide children how to truly coexist, while
also honouring our religious traditions of being separate. This is not at all
simple, but it is eminently doable. It could begin with discussion of
behaviour, such as the halachic principle of supporting needy and sick
non-Jewish people, not only Jews, as part of 'the ways of peace' (10). It
should involve exploration of what it means to be truly ethical in our ways of
thinking and behaving toward one non-Jewish or black neighbours, to strive to
make them so “beautiful” that G-d Himself would be proud of us (11). The
children might be invited to ponder how it came to be that so many Egyptians
deeply mourned the death of a Jewish man, Jacob (12). Perhaps, as one
commentary suggested, throughout the years Jacob lived in Egypt, he spent time
sharing his wisdom with wise Egyptians (13), not just hanging out with his
Jewish grandchildren.
Eventually this discussion arrives at the
question of identity. Who are we as Jews and human beings? G-d created humans
with a common ancestor to prevent discord (14) based on beliefs in superiority
(15) or ideas of purer lineage (16).
As for me, like people of various faith
backgrounds and none, I must turn my attention to the needs and suffering of my
fellow Australians at this difficult time.
Notes:
A big
thank you to my learned and skillful editor, my son, Aaron Menachem Mendel
Kastel.
1) Midrash
Hagadol, in Torah Shlaima to Genesis 47:28, 81, p. 1724.
2) Lekach
Tov, in Torah Shlaima to Genesis 47:28, note: 81, p. 1724.
3) Old
Tanchuma, in Torah Shlaima to Genesis 47:29, 114, p. 1730, "they are
compared to Donkeys and I am compared to a sheep..."
4) Genesis
47:29-31.
5) Midrash
Hagadol, in Torah Shlaima to Genesis 46:34, 188, p. 1700.
6) See also
Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 20, pg. 235-242 and especially pg. 241.
8) Halse, C
(2015), Doing Diversity, report on research project, Deakin University, https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/principals/management/doingdiversity.pdf.
9) Alport,
G. in Pedersen, A., Walker, I., & Wise, M. (2005). Talk Does Not Cook Rice:
Beyond anti-racism rhetoric to strategies for social action. Australian Psychologist, 40, 20-30.
10) Talmud
Gittin 61a. See Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' elaboration of this concept in The Home
We Build Together, Continuum Books. See also statement in the Talmud Gittin
59b. That all of the laws of the Torah are for the sake of the ways of peace.
11) Kedushas
Levi, end of parsha Vayechi, Sifrei Ohr Hachayim edition, Jerusalem, p. 116.
12) Genesis
50:3.
13) Rabbi
Moshe David Vali, Ohr Olam, Genesis Vol. 2, Hamesorah edition, p. 464.
14) Talmud,
Sanhedrin 38a.
15) Rashi ad
loc.
16) R. Yosef Hayim (1835 –
1909), better known as the Ben Ish Chai, in Ben Yehoyada, ad loc.
