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Praying with Our Feet

Shabbat Chol Hamoed 5778 / 7 October 2017

October 17, 2017

The last time I did not spend Yom Kippur fasting and praying all day must have been in 1970.  At that time I was already in the process of returning to Judaism, but I don’t think I had quite managed to get myself organized enough to get to shul.  I may be wrong; it could have been a year earlier or a year later.  Back then I would have been far more comfortable attending a demonstration than I would have been attending a synagogue.  Perhaps that’s why, as I boarded the train to Washington on Yom Kippur morning, it did not feel strange.  All of the time I spent in the Civil Rights Movement and protesting the Vietnam War made it like riding a bike.  It came back to me and felt as at home if not more so, than going to shul.  That very thought contained a bitter-sweet insight: over 50 years ago I was working on the streets of Queens, New York, trying to convince white homeowners to resist the blandishments of unscrupulous realtors who were trying to get them to sell their homes at fire sale prices in anticipation of African Americans moving into their neighborhoods.  When I wasn’t doing that I was busy on the streets of Manhattan protesting a futile war in Asia or helping to commandeer the Dean’s office at Queens College in support of both causes.  And here I was, too old to be marching almost 7 miles through the streets of Washington, still demanding that America recognize the racist infrastructure of our national edifice (and in my heart wondering why after 16 years of another futile war in Asia to which we continue to send our young people, no one was in the streets protesting that) I was not filled with optimism as I boarded the train. So, what was it like?  Why did I go?  Was it worth it?

I left on the 7:32 train scheduled to arrive in D.C. at 9:30.  We arrived at 11:00 AM.  If America’s moral infrastructure is broken, it is no more so than its physical infrastructure.  And just to get this part of the story out of the way, our train home was also about an hour and a half late.  Unfortunately for some of the folks who came with me, this will be their central memory of the day.  At the station there were two folks from the BZBI community and one from the Mussar community.  Two more BZBI and Mussar folks took the next train and met us in D.C., as did my two sons.  It was the first time we’d spent Yom Kippur together in some years.

We walked to the starting point of the march, about a mile from the station.  We’d planned to meet up with another group of Jews from Philadelphia, but we were much too late and the crowd was much too big.  An earlier march of only black women concluded at the starting point of our march, filling Lincoln Park with a sea of people.  After some chanting and speeches, the assemblage began the march through the streets.  Again there was chanting, drumming, some singing.  The march was (and was intended) to be peaceful.  There was very little palpable anger.  There was only the barest of police presence.  I remember marching with much angrier crowds past waves of police and police equipment.  This was more pleasant and suggested that, at least for now, the Black Lives Matter Movement and the supporting movements around it are still confident that the changes in American society that need to be made can and must be made through peaceable persuasion.  As a society we should thank God for this.  In other nations the grievances of America’s citizens of African descent would long ago have violently rocked the society.  I remember when it did for a few years.  And when one reflects on the real positive changes for black Americans that came about after those turbulent years, one has to be astonished that more such turbulence has not followed.

Of course, there was the now de rigueur stop in front of the Trump International Hotel where the assembled crowd took a knee as somewhere off in the distance someone, I think, was singing the National Anthem.  Then it was on past the Justice Department and eventually to the Mall.  It was a very long route of marching, over 6 miles, and by the time we decamped at the Mall many folks had either peeled off or did so then, as did I.

Why did I go?  After the events in Charlottesville and the despicable response of Donald Trump I felt I had no choice.  Did I think it was going to change anything?  Not really, certainly not in the short run.  Still, I felt that not to publicly act to call out the evil rot that continues to eat away at this country’s soul would make me complicit if, God forbid, that rot eventually spread to engulf us all as Americans and, of course as Jews.  I hoped to assert that as a Jew I am aware of how easy it has become for us to distance ourselves from the scourge of prejudice even as it grows in the form of anti-Semitism among the same groups that are bent on persecuting Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants and anyone else who doesn’t conform to their fantasy of a White Male Christian America.  I wanted to go as an example to my children and was deeply gratified when, without my suggesting it, they decided to come with me.  Finally, in addition to all of that, I was glad and might almost call it providential that the march was called for Yom Kippur.  After years of reading the admonition of the prophet Isaiah regarding the hypocrisy of the fasting, sacrifices and prayers amid the plight of the poor, the stranger, the fatherless and the persecuted, I felt I might get a taste of what the prophet envisioned for the observance of the day.

Was it worth it?  For all the reasons listed above – yes, without a doubt.  On the other hand, there were some disappointments.  The lack of publicity both before and after.  America’s media memory is shrinking smaller and smaller.  Since the outrage of Charlottesville, now far away in the rear-view mirror of the news cycle, we have moved on to multiple Hurricanes and earthquakes and nuclear brinkmanship, all for good reason.  But somehow it would be nice if we could juggle more than one crisis in our minds at a time.  The President communicates in 140 syllables, I think, because he knows this is the average attention span of America.  I would have liked more people from our community to attend or, barring that and assuming that they sincerely disagreed with my violation of the holiest day of the year, to attend the alternative march that was held in New York on the Sunday following.  And, of course, I wish the trains had run more smoothly.  Otherwise I hope it was very much worth it.  At least I won’t have to explain why I didn’t go but only why I did.

That is the official end of my report.  However, I cannot refrain from adding one more point that has been bothering me more and more for some time and does not appear to be addressed anywhere.  Watching the recent Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War has only heightened my need to mention again our war in Afghanistan.  This time, however, in the context of racism.  Currently one of the most pernicious forms that America’s recent history is taking is the existence of the volunteer army. And not only racist but classist as well, for the poor blacks and poor whites who are dying in Afghanistan for who knows what reason. To save face again?  The reason both Johnson and Nixon gave for pursuing their war?  There is no doubt in my mind that if our sons and daughters were being drafted to fight we would no longer be involved in this war.  Who knows?  Perhaps the money going to fight it might go toward paying some of the reparations for slave labor that a true national commission on reconciliation to confront slavery and Jim Crow might recommend.

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