D'var Torah

The Torah is full of powerful moments, affecting us in deep and diverse ways. Some make us proud of our heritage, and others challenge us to reckon with our past. Parshat Mishpatim (Laws), which contains laws governing everything from festival holidays to judicial integrity, also includes ones that speak to the Israelite practice of owning slaves. 

Every year when we read these laws, we have the privilege to gloss over them. We should not. While we are powerless to address directly the damage done to those victims thousands of years ago, the same is not true of the slavery in America’s past and our role in it. Facing it and seeking to understand how it continues to affect the present are obligations we share as Jews and Americans, and this week’s Torah portion reminds us that we too are guilty. 

Earlier this month, I traveled to Alabama on a Jewish Federation trip with 20 other local Jewish leaders. We met with Black representatives in the state legislature; we walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; we toured King’s parsonage house in Montgomery and spoke with a woman who grew up in his congregation; we visited the National Lynching Memorial; we stood at the site of the Children’s March in 1963, when thousands of students defied police dogs and fire hoses in a demonstration that was a breakthrough for school integration. We met with Bernard Lafayette, whose leadership in training and preparing activists for their confrontations with police made him one of the world’s leading authorities on nonviolence. We were moved by the courage of so many Blacks of all ages who risked their lives and livelihoods during those years. 

We also met with leaders of two synagogues and learned about the Jewish role in this story. While Jewish leaders in Washington helped draft the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, and while Jews were prominent among the freedom riders and the civil rights lawyers who fought segregation and Jim Crow, Jews were also an important part of the entrenched system of racism in the south. Jews had owned slaves before emancipation, and plenty still profited from the post-slavery Jim Crow system. During the civil rights movement, many southern Jewish leaders, even if they opposed segregation, urged northern Jews not to travel there to protest. They feared the disruption of the relationship they had carefully cultivated with their White neighbors and the potentially dangerous consequences of being seen as allies of the Black community. 

Most importantly, we gained insight into the many ways the legacy of slavery continues to pervade American society, from access to good housing and schools to mass incarceration. We reflected on what it would take to play an active role in changing that legacy. In preparation for my trip, I read His Name is George Floyd, by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, which not only looks closely at the police violence that has killed so many, from Michael Brown to Tyre Nichols to so many others, but also explores Floyd’s life as a window into the Black experience in America. I also watched the documentary, 13th, which compellingly teaches about mass incarceration. As our nation recognizes Black History Month, we are reminded of the imperative for this kind of reflection, and for action. What aspects of our history have we not yet faced, and what are we ready to do?

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom, 

Rabbi Jeff Saxe