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Modern Orthodox Racism
By Eli Valley / November 14, 2008
Kudos to The Jewish Week‘s Gary Rosenblatt for taking on an apparent wave of post-election racism among Modern Orthodox youth. He quotes Elliot Prager, the principal of a day school in Englewood, NJ:
"I cannot help but wonder if our concerns about prejudice and racism are valid only when it comes to our own people," he wrote. "I cannot help but wonder how we are supposed to succeed in our mission of teaching middot [values] when so many children are apparently being exposed to unwarranted distortions of information based not on political biases, but biases which go to the very core of common decency and respect for our fellow human beings."
Rosenblatt notes that much of the problem probably comes from students absorbing and repeating biases heard from their own parents. One wonders, then, what he would make of a blog post by his own Associate Editor, Jonathan Mark:Â
I’m proud to live in an America where my kids will grow up knowing they can accomplish anything, they can be anything, as I point to Barack Obama and say solemnly to my children: "He had a white mother, just like you; he had white grandparents, just like you, and he became president of the United States. Remember that."
I know Mark’s trying to be humorous — in the same way he was being "funny" when he once made connections between Obama’s mixed background and Jewish tolerance for intermarriage — but I’m not sure what Mark’s point was. Was he crediting Obama’s rise to the white side of his family tree? Or was he mocking the centuries-long struggle of African Americans to reach the milestone of Election 2008? Check his comments too. I don’t really understand it, but I do think if this is the kind of thing "Modern" Orthodox parents are joking about with their kids, it’s no wonder Rosenblatt felt compelled to write this week’s editorial.
[UPDATE:Â As of this posting, all the comments on Jonathan Mark's post have disappeared or been removed.]
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As an "insider" in the Orthodox community, my purely objective take on it is that many Orthodox Jews, even the Modern Orthodox ones, lead lives that border on insularity. To be fair, I can understand this. The secular world has reached a point where just simply going to the mall risks exposing your children to all sorts of things you would rather not have them see or hear until much later in their lives. This has caused many Orthodox Jews to severely filter their reading materials, the TV they watch (if they watch TV), and other places where they obtain information. However this is no excuse to allow bias to drive your beliefs.
Now my personal take is that I get very annoyed when I hear vehement anti-Obama rhetoric from Jews; yet they cannot really substantiate their opinion with anything stronger than, "well the economy sucks", "I don’t want socialized health care" or "he’s anti-Israel". Ok, so has there ever been a president with whom you agreed with on 100% of the issues? Do these differences in political opinions warrant the hateful tone by which you refer to our President? Can you be reverent for just one moment at him being a pioneer in American history?
Mikewinddale, I was looking for something else to read on Shabbos. Thank you for posting about this book.
Shabbat Shalom!
http://nehora.com/index.cfm/product/6996/exodus-and-emancipation-biblical-and-african-american-slavery.cfm?CFID=37628269&CFTOKEN=20425136
Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American
Kenneth Chelst
In
Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery, Rabbi
Dr. Kenneth Chelst presents a new perspective on the saga of the Jewish
people’s enslavement and departure from Egypt by comparing it with the
African-American slave experience in the United States, their
emancipation and subsequent fight for dignity and equality. The
comparison is designed to enrich the reader’s understanding of both
experiences. Both peoples suffered centuries-long oppression, with the
African-American slave population at the time of emancipation in the
1860s roughly double that of the Israelites at the biblical Exodus.Â
Kenneth
R. Chels…received the B.A. degree from Yeshiva University…rabbinic
ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of
Yeshiva University where he studied with Rabbi Dr. Joseph B.
Soloveitchik and Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein.
I remember a poignant passage from The Universal Jew: Letters to a Progressive Father from his Orthodox Son
by Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen (http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Jew-Letters-Progressive-Orthodox/dp/0873067266):
As related by the Orthodox author, in one of his letters to his non-Orthodox father:
The principal of a Beis Yaacov (right-wing Orthodox girls’) school walked past a classroom and heard the teacher yelling quite animatedly. He entered and saw that in fact, the teacher was livid with anger. He asked the teacher what had happened, and the teacher replied that one of his students had uttered a racist remark about blacks.
The principal thereupon entered into his own tirade: "I don’t know about your Torah, but my Torah says that Avraham was to be a "Blessing and father to the nations". Having been in exile and suffered persecution for 2000 years, we, of all people, know truly what it is like to suffer racism, and we, of all people, ought to be the last to practice racism and the first to sympathize with its sufferers. That’s my Torah, anyway; I don’t know about yours."
It’s really a shame that this problem exists within the Orthodox community. People seem to forget that not all Jews are Caucausian. It’s very hurtful for Jews like me to hear that fellow Jews are prejudiced against people because of the color of their skin. Thank Hashm neither I nor my children have experienced the racism first hand. There are a plethora of anti-semites out there. I hope people keep that in mind the next time they say something racist about African Americans.
Thanks to the author of this article for bringing light to this important issue.Â
Apparently it is perfectly fine for secular Jews to try to be humorous by being bigoted, sexist and hateful against Christians such as Gov. Sarah Palin as we have seen in numerous examples on this very website.
Now here is an assignment for you but it takes courage that many are lacking. Try being jocular as well as bigoted and hateful to President Obama in the next four years like many of you have been to Bush and Palin and see what happens.
The price may be too high as freedom of expression in the Obama era begins to cool.
Too bad allegations like this aren’t totally uncommon in a large part of the Jewish community, I have personally heard so many Jews that I know say similar comments as these parents are telling their children. My Rabbi said it’s an embarrassment of the Jewish Orthodox community to have been so opposed to Obama for these reasons. And for children to say these things at such a young age is really sad, because at that age we really only hear politics from our parents which is why so many children want to vote like their parents. I’m glad this principle is making an honest effort to denounce these comments.
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