Shalom, thank you

It is an honor and privilege to address you Jewish leaders and Jewish

leaders in formation. I appreciate the opportunity and feel humbled

by the responsibility.

Responsibility because racism has been called variously the core

wound of American society, the cancer at our core, our original sin,

deepest shadow, fundamental contradiction - choose your language-

they all convey the same message that the United States can not and

will not be a spiritually healthy just society unless and until we put an

end to all forms of racism.

I will address today some of the different aspects of racism, the

process of racialization, how racism and its corollary white privilege

constrict the spiritual growth of each one of us and some suggestions

of what we can do, in between you will have opportunity to speak with

each other and at the end there will be time for some questions.

Racism’s clearest manifestations are on the physical bodies of black

people- African people were brought to these shores and treated as

“bodies” -- not as human beings, and, racism was burned into the

soul of the United States. Slavery was a system that could only be

maintained by extreme violence and that has left a legacy that leads

directly to the way the law enforcement and penal systems treat

Black people in America today.

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Violence and murder are the most glaring but consider this, black

people die younger, are hungrier, sicker, have a lower birth rate, a

much higher rate of infant mortality, and have a much higher chance

of breathing toxic fumes, and living near a superfund site.

That is why it is so important to declare that Black Lives Matter.

Racism constrains the soul of America as a whole, of each group

within this country, including we Jews and of each person. The full

spiritual development of each of us is hampered by racism. Our

spiritual growth is in part gauged by our ability to feel compassion for

an ever-growing number of people, and racism constricts that.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:

Racism is worse than idolatry. Racism is Satanism,

unmitigated evil. Few of us seem to realize how insidious, how

radical, how universal an evil racism is. Few of us realize that

racism is humanity’s gravest threat to humanity, the maximum of

hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a

minimum of thinking.

I believe it is useful to tell you a little about why it is important to me.

My parents were both Holocaust survivors, each the only surviving

member of their respective families. I grew up knowing the effects of

extreme racism.

They were refugees, we lived for the first ten years of my life in the

1950’s in Brownsville in Brooklyn – classified at the time as the most

rapidly deteriorating neighborhood in New York- I still remember the

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fires. We moved out when the landlord sold the building, we were the

last white family to leave the block. I saw first hand the effect of what

I later learned was redlining.

Then, living in East Flatbush, I went to Erasmus Hall High school and

our perennial rival for the basketball championship of Brooklyn was

Boys High, an all black, boys only school in Bedford- Stuyvesant, a

dense, very poor all black neighborhood- what used to be called the

ghetto. During my senior year on an afternoon in- February of 1965 –

a month before the march and bloody Sunday in Selma- about dozen

or so of my friends and I decided to go to the game at Boys High.

Our starting five were all black as well- (with a couple of future All

Americans)- it was a close, tense game in a densely packed gym of

hundreds of students, chanting and clapping, it felt like the floor and

walls were undulating. We were the only white spectators, and sitting

at the furthest point from the exit. Our team won in the final minute.

The crowd was angry. By the time we got to the exit we were walking

single file with our hands on each other’s shoulders, I had the

misfortune of being last in line. When we got out into the street all I

could hear was people chanting, “kill whitey” I was terrified. I was

pushed down into the street, lying in fetal position, being kicked and

punched, tasting my own blood, while people continued to chant kill

whitey.

Suddenly, these two black young men reached down, each one

grabbing an arm they began lifting me up- and shouting, “don’t kill

him”; as they were carrying me others reached in to punch me- those

two fought them off and got me out of their safely. They saved my

life- they risked their own safety, possibly their lives, to save me.

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Later I thought it is easier to understand getting caught up in the

violence of a crowd, than to understand two black young men risking

their lives to save an unknown white guy.

Though it certainly took me a while to sort it all out, I experienced the

rage the black community feels because of oppression and the grace

of being saved by two people able to step outside of the black-white

dynamic and act in a fully human way. I think this background helps

explain my commitment to the issue.

And here we are fifty years later, still struggling as a nation with

racism.

Let’s take an overview of the problem. I think seven definitions will be

helpful, forgive me if some of this may be obvious but I think clarity of

terms is useful. We have been taught to think of racism simplistically

as the overt racist language or actions of an individual, it is far deeper

and more subtle.

First, race is a social construct, there is no biological category of race;

it was created by society. I know for some people this is hard to

understand, biologists are very clear and emphatic that race is not a

biological category, there are not enough similar genetic markers.

Yet we visually see skin color and race is a social reality because

humans made it so; perhaps the primacy of visual information has

played a role- two thirds of the electrical activity of the brain is related

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to vision; and more of our neurons are related to vision than the other

four senses combined.

•Second Interpersonal Racism: it is prejudiced and discriminatory

behaviors where one group makes assumptions about other groups

based on race and this the result of explicit conscious bias. And

this is what ordinarily comes to mind when we think of racism.

• Third- Internalized Racism: occurs when a group is consistently

bombarded with negative messages about their own appearance,

abilities and intrinsic worth, and then internalizes those negative

messages. It holds people back from achieving their fullest potential

and reinforces the negative messages which, in turn, reinforces the

oppressive systems. An example in the Jewish world- many Jewish

women don’t think they are attractive in a culture where northern

Europeans are the standard of beauty.

• Fourth Institutional Racism: it occurs when assumptions about

race are structured into the social and economic institutions in our

society; when organizations, businesses, or institutions like schools

and police departments discriminate, either deliberately or indirectly

against certain groups of people to limit their rights or opportunities.

Think how stop and frisk tactics disproportionately affects people of

color or about how few black women there are in the sciences. This

type of racism reflects the cultural assumptions of the dominant group

and is often not recognized.

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Diads please as silently and quickly as possible turn to someone near

you to be partner, who doesn’t… one person please tap the other-

the tapper is now Aleph and the other Bet, each will have 4 minutes

and I will time, do not switch until I ask you to, when aleph speaks bet

just listens attentively no dialogue, Aleph please say what is hard for

you in talking about race- what is hard for you in talking about race,

please begin bet just listen attentively until I call time.

Thank you- if we had more time…. I will continue with some terms

• Fifth Structural Racism- this is the accumulation over centuries of

the effects of a racialized society. After WW II the GI bill enabled

millions to buy homes- and to go to college- it fueled the creation of

the broad middle class in America. The black community was largely

excluded from these benefits through a variety of racist practices and

this prevented most from joining the middle class.

Think about what it means today to have been left out of that process

of wealth-creation, home ownership, college education, etc.

The median wealth of white families in the US today is 11 times the

median wealth of black families. $110,000 verses $10,000.

The critical aspect of racism that we must address today is the

accumulation and incorporation of long-standing racialized practices

into all of our social and economic structures, or structural racism.

Sixth- Implicit Bias

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This refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our

understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. 

These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable

assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s

awareness or intentional control. They have been implanted by all

that we have ever taken in, and remember we live in the context of

society that is continually producing and reproducing racist images.

Residing deep in the subconscious, these biases are different from

known biases that individuals may choose to conceal for the

purposes of social and/or political correctness.  Rather, implicit biases are not accessible through introspection.

They are pervasive.  Everyone possesses them, even people with

avowed commitments to impartiality such as judges.

The implicit associations we hold do not necessarily align with our declared beliefs or even reflect stances we would explicitly endorse.

We generally tend to hold implicit biases that favor our own in-group, though research has shown that we can still hold implicit biases against our in-group- the deepest form of internalized oppression dolls study

If you like there is a simple set of on line tests you can take that

reveals implicit bias on a wide range of issues just google Harvard

implicit bias- and I can almost guarantee you that you will be

surprised.

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Implicit bias is the cause a significant amount of the discrimination

that people of color experience, for example this has been proven

over and over again by investigating bias in hiring.

The good news is that implicit biases are malleable.  Our brains are

incredibly complex, and the implicit associations that we have formed

can be gradually unlearned through a variety of debiasing techniques.

The seventh is a term you may not be familiar with- Racialization- developed by john a powell, a professor at Berkeley and social

justice advocate, in his very insightful book Racing to Justice. And I

thank my friend and colleague Rabbi Toba Spitzer for turning me on

to this.

He wrote, “Racialization or ethni-ci-zation is the processes of

ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a group that did not identify itself

as such.[1] Racialization and ethni-ci-zation is often born out of the

desire for domination or division. Often the racialized and ethnicized

group gradually identifies with and even embraces the ascribed

identity.” These processes have been common across the history of

colonialism, nationalism, and racial and ethnic hierarchies. Please

note that it is a verb- it is the process of setting up a group as other

and less than in order to dominate or weaken them.

The process of racialization is baked into the origins of America, our

cultural DNA. Let’s briefly examine the early history of our country.

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When the European colonists arrived on this land- their basic premise

was that the Native people were less than human and this- justified

dominating them, taking their lands, and eventually the destruction of

their culture. The indigenous people had no idea that they were being

considered as less than human.

Christopher Columbus was acting as a Spanish agent in accord with

a Papal Bull of 1452 that declared the Christian Doctrine of

Discovery whereby Christian nations could "capture, vanquish, and

subdue the saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ," to "put

them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their possessions and

property."

Please note how strong these words are: capture, vanquish, subdue,

perpetual slavery, take their property.

In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery became part of U.S. law

by the Supreme Court case, Johnson v. McIntosh. Writing for a

unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall observed that Christian

European nations had assumed "ultimate dominion" over the lands of

America during the Age of Discovery, and that - upon "discovery" -

the Indians had lost "their rights to complete sovereignty, as

independent nations," and only retained a right of "occupancy" in their

lands.

Remarkably the doctrine of discovery is again cited by no other than

Ruth Bader Ginsberg in a 2004 Supreme Court decision in ruling

against native claims. The Vatican still refuses to rescind the doctrine

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of discovery. At the very beginning the original occupants were

declared as less human than white Europeans. This has never been

healed and it set the stage for the treatment of Africans.

In the early 17th century many of the English who came were

indentured servants or poor workers, while an elite group ran the

society. At that time many of the Africans who came to America came

by way of the Caribbean where they had learned to speak English.

The concept of race had not yet been developed. Workers,

indentured servants and blacks began cooperating. In 1676 this

group joined forces in a rebellion against the elites in order to gain

some rights, it was called Bacon’s rebellion and caused fear among

the ruling forces.

Bacon’s rebellion was recounted to the English public as an armed

rebellion of African slaves against English Christians and not as a

worker revolt. Edmund S. Morgan' one of our nation’s greatest

historians, noted that in Bacon's Rebellion the danger of lower-class

revolt was seen by the ruling elite, he wrote quote “…But for those

with eyes to see, there was an obvious lesson in the rebellion.

Resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment

of an upper class.”  [2It resulted in the Virginia slave codes of 1705

and racialization became codified into law

Prior to this there had been no mention of whiteness or race.

Whiteness as a category developed as a deliberate strategy to keep

English workers and African slaves from uniting. With whiteness

came the right to never be a slave.

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The governing councils strengthened the racialization process by

forming the poor whites into patrols with the power to police the slave

system. Poor whites now had a stake in the system to think of

themselves as white and that there was a need to regulate and police

dangerous blacks- a belief that has lived for over 300 years. What

made blacks dangerous in the colonial period was their desire for

freedom and full membership in a newly forming democratic society.

Powell shows that Racialization is a dynamic process, - as each large

wave of European immigrants came to America- they were seen as

other the Irish, Italians, Slavs, Jews, - were all racialized, made

separate and less than, and all aspired to whiteness- another word

for assimilation into mainstream culture. As a new group arrived the

previous group became closer to being seen as white. By the post

war era all European ethnic groups had become white.

Those are the seven concepts and now a word about Jews- there has

been much written and said about Jews not identifying as white

people because of our history of oppression. Today Jews of

European origin are white people in this country, we have all of the

privileges of whiteness, we benefit from being white; whiteness is not

equivalent to being Christian. A little more on this later.

Black people were unable to assimilate. After the civil war, Jim Crow

laws legalized segregation, the dominant narrative was that Blacks

were inferior; explicit bias and racism were socially acceptable,

economically profitable and politically rewarding.

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After the supreme court overthrew ‘separate but equal’ in the 1950’s

and the civil rights movement forced America to come to terms with

overt racism, legally explicit racism has been outlawed, and explicit

interpersonal racism has become socially unacceptable and viewed

as morally wrong by the mainstream.

Powell wrote, “Virtually all sectors of society now renounce racism.

To call someone racist impugns not only the legality of the person’s

actions but also his or her morality. Indeed, to call someone racist

today is seen as incendiary and a form of character assassination.”

The overt racism of Jim Crow has been outlawed, the direct

expression of racism is considered immoral, the white dominated

society is eager to say racism is behind us, we are beyond it. That is

in part why it is difficult to talk about.

White people easily get defensive in conversations about racism, we

hear it as a moral critique of ourselves, rather than just people of

color reporting on their experience. My colleague Rabbi Fred Dobb

told me about Jay Smooth – hip hop DJ, vid-blogger, and trenchant

social commentator.

Smooth says think “of being a good person” as “you think of being a

clean person…. something you maintain and work on every day…

when someone suggests that we’ve got something stuck in our teeth

we don’t say, “what do you mean, I have something stuck in my teeth?

I’m a clean person!” 

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“You will never bat a thousand when dealing with race issues,”

says Smooth.  “The problem with that all-or-nothing binary, is that it

causes us to look at racism and prejudice…akin to having tonsils – you

either have tonsils or you don’t – ...and if someone says “I think you

may have a little unconscious prejudice” – you say, ‘no, my prejudice

was removed in 2005’!” Yet “many things in our day-to-day lives…

cause us to build up little pockets of prejudice every day, just like

plaque develops on our teeth.  So we need to move away from the

tonsils paradigm of race discourse, toward the dental hygiene paradigm

of race discourse.” 

Connecting the dots, Smooth exhorts: “shift away from taking it

as an indictment of our goodness, and move towards taking it as a

gesture of respect and an act of kindness, when someone tells us that

we’ve got something racist stuck in our teeth.” 

My experience is that it is an ongoing process, the need to step past

shame or discomfort- ultimately this is not about me- to learn what the

experience of another person is. This is not one and done.

Diad- easiest to have same partner- now bet will begin- why do you

think it is important to talk about race- I think it is important to talk about

race because… same rules as before, I will call time. Please begin

Wish we had time to harvest…

This brings me to the sometimes sensitive subject of white privilege.

Some definitions of privilege from the dictionary Privilege is a right or

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advantage that you have others may not have.

Another one: Privilege a special right, advantage, or immunity

granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

Note that both of these say right or advantage- white people have an

advantage in this society any examination of health, , education, the

legal system, employment, housing, indeed any marker of well being

reveals how the African American community is disproportionately

suffering.

The activist and commentator Van Jones said “ A socially just world

is a world in which, if you had to draw a lot, and it would put you

anywhere in that society, you would feel perfectly confident, you

wouldn’t be worried, because you knew whatever lot you drew would

be a good lot. It doesn’t mean everything’s equal -- it just means that

every single person in that society has a decent shot at living the

fullest life that they can. But if you close your eyes and you think to

yourself, would you want to be black? Would you trade places? Well

if you wouldn’t trade places, then there’s work to be done.”

One great advantage white people have is Psychic

freedom: Because race is constructed as residing in people of color,

whites don't bear the social burden of race. We move easily through

our society without a sense of ourselves as racialized as being white.

Race is for people of color to think about -- it is what happens to

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"them" -- they can bring it up if it is an issue for them (although if they

do, we can dismiss it as a personal problem, the race card, or the

reason for their problems). This allows whites much more

psychological energy to devote to other issues

Racism in this country produces stress. In a recent study of birth

weights when every factor was controlled- wealth, health of mother,

medical care available etc, black babies had a lower average birth

weight, the researchers concluded it was the result of stress. There

is also a significantly higher rate of hypertension in the black

community. Its something that white folks don’t worry about- we can

choose not to think about – black Americans don’t have that choice

that is an advantage a privilege whites have.

My experience is that for many if not most Jews the thought arises, I am

not white, I am Jewish. That is deep within us. Just this past week in

my study action group- we are all Jewish and many of have been doing

anti-racist work for years- we did an exercise about whiteness and it

was surprising for how many of us still the thought arose I am not white

I am Jewish. Jews of European ancestry in the US enjoy all of the

benefits of whiteness, regardless of our history of oppression. We are

the beneficiaries of a system of white domination whether or not we

helped create it. As Heschel wrote, “In a free society, some are guilty;

all are responsible.”

Hear the title of anthropologist Karen Brodkin Sacks’ book: How Jews

Became White Folks, And What That Says About Race In America. For

example, Jewish men benefitted from the GI bill while African American

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men did not. How many of your fathers or grandfathers, went to college

on the GI bill or bought a first home with VA loan?

I think some of us have the fear that our “white card” will be pulled

and we will once again be discriminated against; all the more reason

to understand racialization as the process that divides our society and

has thwarted every large-scale movement for full democracy and

justice in this country.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that according to the best

estimates approximately 10% of the Jews in the U.S. are people of

color - and this does not include Sephardim. And they experience

racism within our community on a daily basis. This was reaffirmed for

me just a couple of weeks ago as I heard two black Jewish

professionals talk about their every day experiences. For example,

Jews of color are routinely asked how did you become Jewish- when

many have been Jewish for generations, they are usually assumed to

be outsiders.

If Jews of color experience racism within, then they will leave our

communities. Our liberal denominations have done a lot of good work

to make our communities safer for gay and lesbian people, and are

now working on transgender issues, we know how, yet how many of

our synagogues have worked to become a safer space for Jews of

color? We are creating painful situations.

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Moreover, If we will loose them, we loose our natural bridge builders

to communities of color and loose our credibility as allies in those

communities.

Black Jews are as vulnerable as any other black person to racial

injustice, police brutality and vigilante murders. The silence of most

Jewish institutions on these pressing issues leaves black Jews and

other Jews of color — already marginalized in the mainstream Jewish

community — rendered invisible and without communal support.

That is why our institutions need to say Black Lives Matter.

Even as I feel honored to be here today to speak about this, I suggest

that if you decide to go more deeply into this you will, also, involve

Jews of color as teachers.

This brings me to the final section, our spiritual health.

One way I understand God is as the connective tissue of the

universe, the life force. We are most fortunate in our time that Science and spiritual wisdom come together to teach that everything

is connected and mutually inter-dependent. Nothing in the universe

can exist on its own. Absolutely everything exists only in relationship-

every sub atomic particle, every molecule, every cell, every blade of

grass, every person, the planet itself, can only live, be, exist in

relationship. I understand God as the energy in between, that makes

everything a whole, a One, both immanent and transcendent.

Racism tears at the connective tissue of the universe, it violates the

Divine, it creates separation.

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We believe that human beings are created btzelem elohim in the

divine image; we are taught the importance of seeing the divine in

each person, that it is through our relationships we bring God into the

world. Perhaps most famously Martin Buber taught us that it is in

creating I-Thou relationship that we manifest holiness.

Quoting Powell, “Racism is a systematic denial of a mutual human

relationship with the other except for purposes of exploitation or ego

gratification. In giving in to its demands we not only deny the other

person’s humanity and interconnectedness but also cut ourselves off

from our own humanity. “

Each of us is shaped and situated by social and institutional

structures, shaping that leads to implicit bias and situating that

creates privilege. We need to dismantle the system of racism that

limits and frustrates our multiple evolving ways of embracing love,

hope and caring in our routine human relations. Our spiritual

journeys require that we open ourselves up to engagement with all of

humanity.

Buddhism is explicitly about relieving suffering in the world through

both spiritual practice and action. Judaism focuses more on justice,

and isn’t the purpose of our social justice work to alleviate and

prevent suffering-that is the purpose of don’t oppress the stranger,

feed the poor, pay your workers fairly and promptly so they can eat,

etc. There ought to be no separation between working for justice and

spirituality.

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One example: Tzedakah has been understood by many of our rabbis

as a spiritual practice- the Rambam taught it is better to give away 1

coin a thousand times, than to give away a 1,000 coins at once,

because it trains you to open your heart. Tzedakah is not only about

justice, it is, also about developing compassion and opening our

hearts.

A central aim of Judaism as most other spiritual paths is to help us

cultivate compassion and love- our central commandment according

to Hillel- vhavta rechau kocha- love your neighbor as yourself.

Part of our work is to allow ourselves to feel the pain of separation.

We live in a culture that normalizes separation and discourages us

from feeling any pain- one that promotes every form of addiction

imaginable so that we will not feel pain. To do the work necessary to

dismantle racism, white people need to, also, feel the pain of the

system- the pain of separation from a large part of humanity; the pain

of knowing that some of the wealth, opportunities I have came at the

expense of others- even though I didn’t cause it or want it- feeling the

pain does not mean feeling guilty or ashamed- just take the time to

feel the pain.

In America in general, the ideology of individualism, the lack of

awareness of our connection to others, to the Earth is one of the

major causes of suffering in both the spiritual and secular realms.

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It is love that heals the pain of separation. It is love that requires us

to engage with the other. It is love that gets us past our own small

self and connects us with the Divine.

To seek a world with justice is to seek a word that provides for our

spiritual expression.

Rabbi Mordechai Leibling

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