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A Sermon for Bahaalotecha 2009 - Rising Above Hate: A Response to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Shooting
Rising Above Hate:
A Response to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Shooting
Rabbi Susan Grossman
Beth Shalom Congregation
June 13, 2009/5769
A Sermon for Bahaalotecha
This week we witnessed the continuing impact of the ugly and dangerous face of organized hatred in our country. An 88 year old man, armed with his intolerance and a rifle, opened fire at the US Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard, Stephen Johns, before he was gunned down by a fellow security guard. If not for the courage and quick actions of the guards, many more of the hundreds of visitors in the museum could have been injured or killed.
If this wasn’t bad enough, there was another hate crime covered in the news this week. Just two Sundays ago, a gunman shot and killed a medical practitioner, Dr. George Tiller, long targeted by anti-abortion groups because he put women’s health ahead of his own safety by continuing to provide late term abortions to women who needed them. Dr. Tiller was not Jewish. He was a Methodist. He was shot as he served as usher in his church during Sunday services, May 31.
Two shootings within two weeks. Both motivated by intolerance.
I think it is important for us to look at these two shootings together this morning because it would be too easy to respond to the shooting at the Holocaust Museum by saying, “Here is another example of how so many people hate us,” “us” meaning the Jews. Sometimes students ask me, after learning about the Holocaust, after learning about rising anti-Semitism in the world, “Why do they hate us? What have we done to deserve this hatred?”
I pair these two shootings this morning to answer those students: there is enough hate to go around in the world; you do not have to be Jewish to be the target of hatred. You can be black and the President of the United States. CNN reports that affiliation and activity in hate groups have risen since the election of our first African American President. You can be an African living in Darfur where other blacks, of a different tribe or language (the Arabic speaking, Muslim, Janjaweed) systematically are killing you and your people. You can be a Shia or Sunni Muslim living in Iraq where both fractions are killing each other.You can be a Methodist doctor ushering at your church and standing up to intimidation in order to protect the women who come to you for help. Or a Jewish doctor who protects women’s lives by performing abortions, returning home from Shabbat services only to be shot in your home while surrounded by your family. There are people who hate so much they are willing to kill, ironically often for a cause they claim respects life. There are people who hate so much that they are willing to kill to get into the news to spread their lies and the poison of their intolerance. And there are people who hate so much they are willing to kill because they believe the death of their “enemies” will improve their own lives.
There is a whole lot of hatred going around and enough guns to keep those who hate in business.
Today is not the time to talk about gun control, as important as that is. Today our subject is hatred and what we can do about it.
Yes, it is true the gunman had a list of several targets, most having nothing to do with Jews. However, if the shooting at the Holocaust Museum teaches us anything, it is that the message of the Museum continues to be so timely and relevant: intolerance is a contagious disease that, when left unchecked, continues to spread and become emboldened bringing only death in its wake.
My friends, we are living in difficult times, times that are somewhat similar to those on the eve of the Holocaust: Rapid social and technological change breeds uncertainty and insecurity. On top of that, the economic downturn has left so many hurting. When faced with such challenges, it can be comforting to have simple, uncomplicated answers, to have someone to blame, to be offered a way to take some control when you feel out of control.
The superb propaganda exhibit at the US Holocaust Museum shows how easy it is to spread lies and innuendos, and how such lies remain culturally alive in at least segments of every population. Here in the US, between 100-200,000 people are members of our home grown hate groups. Their numbers are on the rise. Some of these groups are of the kind responsible for the Oklahoma City bombings. The Museum shooter, James W. von Brunn, is an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland who served time when he tried to capture members of the Federal Reserve because of high interest rates, which he blamed on Jews and blacks.
This stuff may sound crazy to us but you may be surprised how many people give some credence to such beliefs. We saw a little of this a few years ago, when the movie “The Passion” about Jesus’ crucifixion, was showing. We saw an immediate rise in anti-Semitic comments and incidents in our Howard County public schools. No one was beaten but it is still chilling that in tolerant, multi-cultural Howard County so many kids were making snide and bullying comments to our Jewish students about being Christ killers or money lenders.
The historian Arnold Toynbee once commented that civilization is a thin veneer that can all too readily be cracked by human savagery. The shootings over the last two weeks remind us how thin civilization’s veneer really is. It helps us appreciate the need for a strong central government and police force, something lacking, say, in Afganistan where the Taliban are currently intimidating local villagers into cooperating with them through the threat of force. It helps us appreciate how truly courageous Dr. Tiller really was, to continue to give medical care to women despite threats on his life, something we now know were clearly not idle threats. He has paid the ultimate price for his courage. It helps us appreciate how truly important the Holocaust Museum is and how much we have to thank those who spend their lives protecting us and our Jewish institutions, a dedication which may cost our protectors their lives, as it did Stephen Johns.
So many people hate the Jews because we have survived long enough to survive many of our enemies and because we remain an identifiable and active presence on the world stage. While our survival as a People may be unique, the fact that some people hate us is not.
People naturally hate anyone who is different. A psychological study once found that people will always find something to distinguish between us and them, if not skin color, or faith, then country of origin or political party, hair or eye color. The Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosinsky, in his book The Painted Bird, sees it as part of human nature, the oldest, instinctual part of our nature.
Kosinsky shared it in the form of a metaphor, the image of a bully who captures and then paints a bird. When the bird is released, it tries to return to its flock, but the flock does not recognize it and therefore attacks it. But the bird knows it is part of the flock and keeps trying to be part of the flock, until the other birds finally peck it to death.
That is the animal nature in every human being: us and them; protect our own. That is the hard wiring that feeds intolerance, the power behind the hatred that gives birth to the violence we have seen over the last two weeks. In some ways, it is a miracle we do not see more of such violence, more examples when the thin veneer of civilization is destroyed in destruction. Given our hard wiring, tolerance is a miracle, cooperation is a miracle. It is a miracle when people of different backgrounds get along, respect each other and work together.
That miracle is God given, my friends. The beauty of Judaism, the beauty of Torah, is that it says we are more than our animal nature. We human beings are also made up of an angelic nature. This angelic self is selfless, filled with love and tolerance for other human beings.
While it is true our angelic selves do not always control the steering wheel, more often than not in the course of human history most people are more often than not able to conquer that animal nature within themselves and act on the angelic nature with which God also endowed us.
I think this is one of the messages of our Torah portion, Bahaalotecha, this morning. Our parsha begins with the words Bahaalotecha et ha nairot: which can loosely be interpreted as “in causing yourself to rise (you become) the lights.”
In causing ourselves to rise above our animal natures and embrace our angelic natures, we become the light the world needs by which to see clearly the difference between right and wrong, between justice and injustice, between love and hate, between tolerance and intolerance. Judaism teaches that all people are children of the same God, who loves them equally, and that we are our brothers and sisters keepers. That is the light the Holocaust Museum tries to share. That is the light each and every one of us carries as Jews, in order to raise up ourselves and the world.
These shootings help us appreciate the special role we have as Jews in the world, to be a light unto the nations. How do we shed such light in the face of intolerance?
One member suggested we start a collection for the family of security guard Stephen Johns. You can send donations into my discretionary fund if you would like to contribute to it (please mark it as such). We can also try to interact with others in a tolerant way, and just as importantly, show zero tolerance for language, comments or jokes that show intolerance for others.
It is not that people hate us that is important. It is what we do in the face of such hatred. As Jews, our mission is to shed light on the darkness that exists under the surface of our civilized lives and to do everything we can to raise up all of society so that everyone can hope one day to live in a world without hate.
Shabbat Shalom |
