I’m watching “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a three-part, six-hour documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. It’s powerful and painful. Through interviews with historians and scholars, along with compelling evidence gleaned from newspaper articles, radio, film, and photography, one cannot help but conclude that hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of lives could easily have been saved had the United States government not intentionally made it more and more difficult for Jewish refugees to procure visas. Isolationist voices, anti-immigrant sentiments, economic concerns, and—of course—antisemitism combined to make it politically expedient to close our doors to those whose lives otherwise could have been saved.
My experience watching the series was made more poignant this week as my news feed filled up with story after story about antisemitism in America. President Trump and Kanye West’s anti-Semitic postings and comments over the past 10 days have focused a great deal of media attention on the disturbing rise in antisemitism across the political spectrum, on college campuses, and—perhaps most virulently—on social media.
Your clergy have spoken and written a great deal about the world’s oldest hatred over the years. (You can access some of these statements and programs here.) There is no silver bullet or magic elixir that can cleanse our world of Jew hatred or any other form of xenophobia for that matter. We know that, tiring as it is, we must continue to speak out, educate, and build alliances with good-hearted people of all faiths and backgrounds so that we can, if not eradicate antisemitism, at least limit and marginalize it. We must hold to account those who spew such hatred, whether they be candidates for office, elected officials, celebrities, or colleagues.
This week’s Torah portion, the first of our Bible, reminds us that we are all deeply connected. The rabbis in their commentary on the text note that God could have chosen to create the world fully populated. Instead, according to our creation story, God brings humanity into the world through one shared set of parents so that “no one could say, ‘my ancestor is better than yours!’”
It’s painful to learn about what could have been done to save members of our people as the Shoah unfolded before the eyes of the entire world. It’s painful to witness the persistence and resurgence of the same type of insidious, hateful rhetoric that ultimately led to such terrible violence. We will continue to respond as forcefully and effectively as we can, and we will continue to find comfort and hope in the words of our tradition that remind us of our shared humanity, the consequences of ignoring it, and the possibilities of embracing it.
In that pursuit of comfort and hope, join me tomorrow for the launch of “Spirit of Shabbat,” an opportunity for study and reflection—and the chance to be together in community—on Shabbat mornings in-person and online from 8:45 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi