Shabbat Pesach 5774: The Anti-Semitism Hot Button, Week 2

We all have hot buttons: words, phrases, images that evoke passionate visceral responses in our guts.  A person whose beloved pet was hit by a car will feel a tightening and churning in their gut at the sight of any animal's body at the side of a road.  A family that has lost their home in a fire will experience a physical reaction to the sound of sirens on a fire engine.  An adult who was beaten as a child will involuntarily tighten up all over if they are near a mother hauling a child forcibly by the arm and screaming.  For all that we may intellectually understand, and have moved past, events like these in our lives, we have no control when our memories rule our bodies for a split second and we're back at a worst moment.  These are our individual hot button issues.

We have collective hot button issues as well: events and phrases and words and images that are indelibly written into our very beings.  You'd think that the distance of time or geography would lessen the power of these memories, but when we identify fully with the collective that has weathered the trauma, the gut reaction to reminders of that trauma remains.   At the moment when we perceive those evocative images or sounds we find out how deeply our identification with our group (whatever group that might be) really goes.   You are likely to witness a micro-expression of pain or anger on the face of a black friend hearing the "N" word, of a gay friend seeing a photograph of Tyler Clementi*, or a Haitian friend hearing a report of an earthquake....and on the face of an American Jew reading that Jews in the Ukraine are going to have to register, list their assets and pay a fine.

A few members of my congregation e-mailed links to news articles about the incident of the flyers being handed out to Jews leaving synagogue on the eve of Passover in the Ukraine.  I admit, my stomach wrenched at those very evocative phrases: registering, bring your passport and your id card, list your assets . . . . I read and re-read.  Of course my mind's eye delivered a slideshow of images from Nazi Europe, the Holocaust, the concentration camps . . . all in seconds before I had a chance to think.  After a few deep breathes and reading a few articles, it became clear that no one is rounding up Jews in the Ukraine this week.  It seems doubtful whether there was ever a serious intention to round up Jews in the Ukraine at all, but rather a heavy-handed attempt to influence the internal struggles over the fate of Donetsk.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to reporters in Geneva after conducting talks with leaders from the Ukraine on the lowering of tensions there, said exactly what needed to be said: "In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable; it's grotesque.  It is beyond unacceptable. And any of the people who engage in these kinds of activities, from whatever party or whatever ideology or whatever place they crawl out of, there is no place for that. " 

Which doesn't mean, of course, that the situation should not be watched, or that anti-Semitism in Europe doesn't exist.  But it does mean that the Jews of the Ukraine in 2014 are not in the same danger as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents during World War II.  For lots of reasons.

All this during the same week we are settling our stomachs over the murder of three people at two Jewish facilities in Overland Park, Kansas.  By a person with a decades-long record of both racism and anti-Semitism.  The horrible irony of the murders committed by this man is that two of the people he murdered were members of a United Methodist Church and one was the member of a Catholic church.  

Anti-Semitism is most certainly a hot button:  our guts, our hearts, our memories all kick into action immediately when we hear of violence or threat or attacks on Jews.  And there is good reason for our visceral reactions; they don't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, as in the cases of both anti-Semitic episodes this week, things are not always what they seem in the moment and we need to step back and apply perspective and intelligence to our reactions.  And be smart and aware.  And not over-react.  Not easy, but very important.




*Tyler Clementi was the gay Rutgers student who committed suicide in 2010 when his roommate posted videos of Tyler in acts of sex with a male partner.  

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