Reform Reflections: Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness

The recently-issued Annual Report by the Association of Civil Rights makes grim reading. In the section on racism in Israeli society, it notes that there has been a steep rise in expressions of hatred by Jewish Israelis towards Arabs. 2006 saw a 26% increase in the number of racial incidents directed against Arabs; the intensity of feelings of hatred towards Arabs has almost doubled. Over half of the Jewish Israelis polled said they would not live in the same building with Arabs, that they opposed the inclusion of Arab parties in the government, that they approve of plans to encourage Arab emigration, and so on. The report also talks about the systematic degradation of Israeli Arab citizens when they want to get on an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport. Most of those interviewed thought that Arabs smell, and are unclean.

In Israel, this report has been met by what might be described as a 3-D response. I don't mean to suggest by this that we have all decided to engage in a three-dimensional soul-searching treatment of the weighty and distressing evidence before us. Rather, the three Ds we prefer to employ are Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness. We deny the veracity of the evidence, suggesting that whoever could claim that such views abound in Israeli society must be a self-hating traitor. We dismiss the data – clearly those interviewed were not representative of most people, or they were joking when they answered the questions. That so-called increase in incidents, we say, it is just our Arab neighbors being over-sensitive over nothing.

And we defend ourselves, using the usual apologetic tools. What do you expect, we ask with a shrug of the shoulders, with missiles raining down on Sderot and the memory of the Lebanon War still fresh in our minds (at this stage in the conversation, we are very upset if it is pointed out that a disproportionate number of Israeli victims in the last war were Arabs). The typical next argument goes like this: where are all these bleeding-heart liberals when Jewish blood is shed, and when Arab leaders and opinion-makers say beastly things about the Jews?  Then we say: by engaging in this kind of self-reproach we are lending succor to our enemies. In these and other ways, we try to put the figures into a context, a perspective.

There have been 3-D responses around ever since the Bible began, and they are not likely to disappear in a hurry. The essence of Judaism, at least in my understanding, has always been an urgent and insistent call to overcome the three Ds, and stare uncomfortable realities in the face. I believe that we are commanded to face up to our diseases and shortcomings. If we do not replace those three Ds with a genuine three-dimensional view, we will lose all vision and all insight.

In January 1963, some 45 years ago, Abraham Joshua Heschel addressed a conference on Religion and Race. The most immediate issue was the struggle for Civil Rights among African Americans, but Heschel was at pains to point out that he was referring to "the plight of all individuals belonging to a racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural minority." Listen for a moment to Heschel's voice, before activating the typical 3-D response:

"Let us dodge no issues. Let us yield no inch to bigotry, let us make no compromise of callousness."

"Let us cease to be apologetic, cautious, timid. Racial tension and strife is both sin and punishment…"

"…an honest estimation of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual's crime discloses society's corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common."

"God seeks out him who is pursued (Ecclesiastes 3:15), even if the pursuer is righteous and the pursued is wicked, because man's condition is God's concern. To discriminate against man is to despise what God demands."

It is my belief that the core teaching of Judaism is of the common humanity of all, even as it focuses in on the specificities of the Jewish condition. It is my belief that whoever wraps their own bigotry up in a prayer shawl and invokes the name of Jewish tradition to lend luster to their own hatred, commits a Hilul Hashem, a desecration of the Divine Name.

What’s the Jewish thing to do in the wake of this disturbing report about rampant racism in our society? We have to face up, to fess up, and to get to work. Denial, dismissal and defensiveness will only leave us groping in the dark.