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Recently in Washington, D.C., protestors in the Black Lives Matter movement marched through the streets, saying "Israel, we, we know you. You murder children, too."
On Juneteenth (June 19), Linda Sarsour held a rally with her group Muslims4Abolition, advertised as "open to all, minus cops and Zionists."
How did this happen? When the horrific murder of George Floyd at the knee of a police officer occurred, I had the immediate impulse to take to the streets, don a Black Lives Matter shirt and join in with the demonstrators.
I am far from the only Jew who felt that way. The Union for Reform Judaism put out a statement that argued "Black Lives Matter" is a Jewish value. And this is not limited to Reform Jews; some Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn were so moved that they demonstrated by chanting, "Black Lives Matter" and "Jews for justice".
The impulse towards social justice is extremely strong within the Jewish community. Ever since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., we Jews know what it is like to be a resented minority—whether in the Eastern lands, under the dhimmi laws, or in Europe, in the pogroms and inquisitions that culminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
We are constantly admonished in our teachings to always remember that we were slaves in Egypt. Empathy for the underdog is what led Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner to register Black people to vote in Mississippi in 1964—which ultimately resulted in their murder, along with their friend James Chaney, by the Ku Klux Klan. It is what led Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to link arms with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 and to march from Selma, Alabama for equal rights for Blacks.
And it is a beautiful impulse.
However, we have been told that if we want to participate in these demonstrations, we must check our Zionism at the door.
Read the full article here.
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