I’ve written before on how sinat chinam, the “baseless hatred” that is cited as the cause for the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, does not only refer to raw hatred, but also apathy and a lack of concern for the pain of one’s fellow.
It is a rhetoric that has sadly been increasingly present in our current society, particularly around the issue of racial inequality in general, and specifically Black Lives Matter.
It is a certain kind of disheartening cognitive dissonance for Jews of Color in the spaces where we find this ideology espoused, and its accompanying dismissal, denial, or outright antagonism. Yet, here we are, on the Ninth of Av, spending the night and day in laments and prayers, asking Gd to remember us, avenge us, forgive us, and restore us. We cry out against millenia of detailed atrocities perpetrated against us, despite–and even alongside–the laundry list of things we’ve done wrong.
We cry out “Our Lives Matter! Our Jewish Lives Matter!”
But what if Gd replied in turn the same way too many of us have to the similar cry of others in our present climate?
“Our Jewish Lives Matter!”
What about Jew on Jew crime? What about the Sicarii/Siqariyim and the Zealots/Biryonim, and their leaders Menachem ben Yehudah and Eleazar ben Ya’ir, who carried out assassinations of their fellow Jews, including the High Priest Yonathan? Why do Jewish Lives Matter only when it’s Romans killing Jews?
What about Ananus ben Ananus, one of the heads of the Judean provisional government and former High Priest, who engineered the Zealot Temple Siege, which massacred over 6,000 Jews?
Why do you uplift the murderer and criminal Eleazar ben Ya’ir and his followers as martyrs at Masada? The Jewish community needs better role models, not uplifting thugs.
“Our land is being taken! We can’t live!”
If you Jews had simply followed The Law, then you could live quite easily. All you had to do was follow shmitta, or yovel, or ma’aser. But you pretend to seek Me every day and desire to know My ways.
Simple: follow The Law, and you’ll be able to live.
“Our women are being raped! They ravaged women in Zion, and maidens in Judah!”
It seems like they were asking for it, what with all the adultery and sexual immorality running rampant. Because the women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, strutting along with swaying hips, with ornaments jingling on their ankles.
What did they expect to happen?
Now reading these answers read as shockingly, unfathomably cruel, yes? Regardless of our own intra-communal failings, they have no bearing on our treatment as Jews over centuries, correct?
Yes, today is about what Jews have done to Jews and our relationship with Gd, and what we’ve lost because of it. Yes, centering Kamtza and Bar Kamzta and the communal lack of empathy is relevant. But the point of that centering and criticism is for us to engage in. Internally. It doesn’t absolve or justify anything the Romans, Nazis, or others have done, nor does it provide reasons for others to turn a blind eye, nor does it stop us for praying for vengeance and justice against them for the atrocities committed against us.
Yet, despite our documented history of failing after failing, we can still stand up and cry out to the heavens “Jewish Lives Matter!” and not only expect, but demand justice. However, too many of us deny it to others, explaining away the actions of an oppressing group as justified or negligible because of how the oppressed group treats itself.
And, as Jews, even those of us who skew more traditional/religiously, and see misfortunes that befall us as due to our own shortcomings, we still acknowledge that punishment will also come to those unfortunate enough to have been the tool.
The communities of the African Diaspora, both here in America and abroad, demand–and are owed–no less of a right to demand justice, unhampered by whataboutism or intellectual-enough sounding justifications why that claim is irrelevant, unreasonable, unjustified, or undeserved.
Black Lives Matter.
