No Beautiful Day in This Neighborhood

By Hank Silverberg

I am writing this on Sunday morning in the social hall at my temple. There is a group of students nearby practicing for their B’Nai Mitzvah. It is a cold fall day with rain in the forecast, and two Stafford County, Virginia, Sheriff’s deputies are sitting in their patrol cars in the parking lot. On the other side of the wall, in the sanctuary, sits a Torah scroll that was rescued from the city of Nymburk, in what was once Czechoslovakia, during the Holocaust.  It has found a safe place at this temple, which is a place where I too feel at home while my wife helps run the congregation kitchen.  My four-year-old grandson is in nearby classroom learning the Hebrew alphabet, and his younger brother is crawling on the floor near his mother's ever-watchful eyes. It is 10 a.m. on Sunday when millions of Americans are at church or temple in what has been labeled as the most segregated hour in America. Yet I must question what they are praying for. 

(Part of the upgraded security at my temple) 

   For Jews, Saturday’s massacre in Pittsburgh is a reminder that anti-Semitism did not end with the Holocaust. It is horrifying to learn that several of the victims in Pittsburgh were Holocaust survivors or their siblings. Four of them were over 80 years old.   Jews have always felt safe in America.  With the exception of a few short periods, it has been a welcoming place for more than 200 years. I sit here this morning wondering if that has begun to change. A recent poll by the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai Brith found a 57 percent rise in actual anti-Semitic incidents in 2017. 

https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/anti-semitic-incidents-surged-nearly-60-in-2017-according-to-new-adl-report

In Charlottesville, Nazis and white supremacists came out in significant numbers to  protest the removal of Confederate statues in a park across the street from a synagogue. It was the wake- up call for many Jews and other minorities, especially after Heather Heyer was run over and killed.   

If you include the vitriolic posts on social media, the effort to spread anti-Semitism seems prolific. In another report released last Friday by the A-D-L, researchers analyzed more than 7.5 million Twitter messages from August 31 to September 17 and found nearly 30 percent of the accounts repeatedly tweeting derogatory terms about Jews appeared to be automated "bots". That means millions of people were reading them.   

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/10/26/study-onlines-attacks-on-jewish-people-ramp-up-before-election-day/

If you watch TV or listen to people talk, they will say the man who legally purchased guns, walked into Tree of Life Temple in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 Jews, is a loner and a deranged anomaly in a complex and divided political climate.   

But this incident came just days after a serial bomber sent explosive devices to13 Democrats or democratic fundraisers and CNN --all of whom have been targets of verbal assaults by the President of the United States. One of them was the right’s favorite target, billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor. 

It comes at a time when trust of our institutions—including our courts, the Congress and the media, are all in decline, and constantly being attacked by the man in the White House. Mr. Trump seems not to care about anything but his own political and economic future and his reactions have been political first, fake compassion second. 

It comes at a time when the Republican Party buys into the “America First” movement, a shallow, xenophobic political policy of tariffs and immigration restrictions which almost infected this country with the disease of Fascism in the 1920's and 1930’s the same way Nazism infested Europe. 

But I see no evil plot here. No conspiracy. Conspiracy theories may be more dangerous than actual conspiracies.  What I do see is total ignorance and incompetence in many of our leaders. It’s almost as if they have never read a history book or the Constitution, or have no knowledge of the real world outside of their small circle of friends. 

Listening to the media coverage of the Pittsburgh murders on TV, I caught one line that needs to be repeated. Tree of Life Congregation is in the same neighborhood where soft-spoken children's TV icon Fred Rogers lived. It was not a beautiful day in his neighborhood this week, nor anywhere else in the United States. 

But all is not lost. I can hear those B’Nai Mitzvah students reciting their prayers—prayers that link them to Jewish life that dates back almost six thousand years. 

If you have a chance this week, find someone who comes from a  different background than you. Sit down with them over lunch and learn. Ask them what is important to them. My guess is you will be more alike than different. You will find plenty of common ground. America is still America—for now. 

I will write more about the election next week. But if you are not planning to vote next month—reconsider that decision.  If you are planning to vote, make sure you do it with responsibility.  America can still be what Ronald Reagan once called a “shining city on a hill,” if we can all just get along.  


                                                                  News Notes 

(Screen grap of Wolkowitz GoFundMe page) 

Also this week a sad story from New Jersey. Asbury Park Press part time photographer and EMT, Jerry Wolkowitz died. He was 56. He never recovered from an attack in May where the assailant ran him over with a car. The suspect, who is black, says he chose Wolkowitz to rob because he was white. (He was also Jewish.) Racism manifests itself in many ways.  

Also this week, a much happier story. The longest World Series game in history, 7 hours and 20 minutes, was played Friday night in Los Angeles. The hero there was not Max Muncy, who hit the walk-off home run in the 18^th inning to give the Dodgers a 3-2 victory. The hero was Red Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi, who pitched six scoreless innings in relief on only a 

day’s rest from his last outing, before he gave up the winning homer. His teammates gave him a round of applause in the locker room for the outstanding performance which saved the pitching staff to fight another day. The Red Sox, a team I have followed religiously since childhood, won the next two games and are now the 2018 World Champions. They had an outstanding season. Why? The team was diverse, unselfish with no arrogant stars. Eovaldi and David Price in particular showed remarkable team effort. And their leadership on the field, Alex Cora and his coaches, were straight forward with their players about their roles. They had to produce sure. But it worked. And it's a lesson in leadership that can be applied outside of sports.  

                         (Your comments and suggestions are welcome)