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SHELACH 5784
LA, The Jewish Charlottesville
If you were making a movie and wanted to depict an unmistakably Jewish male, how would you dress him? No, not with a tallis, that would be too obvious. Besides Jews don’t usually wear a tallis when not praying. How about with a kipa? That wouldn’t do because it can easily be confused with a taqiyah or kufi—the Muslim skull cap. The obvious choice would come from today’s Torah portion in the mitzvah of tzitzit. You would dress him with his tzitzit hanging out and everyone would know he’s a Jew.
Tzitzit is a meaningful symbol for Jews because its purpose is, says our Torah portion (Num. 15:39): “that you may see it and remember all the commandments of Gd and do them.” We’ve all seen very religious Jews walking with their tzitzit hanging out. It’s not my custom and so I wear my tzitzit tucked in—as most of our male congregants who wear tzitzit do.
A few weeks ago, I spoke about when I had sometimes put on a baseball cap instead of my kipa when out in certain public settings, and how I’ve now decided to keep it on wherever I go in spite of the possibilities of lurking antisemites. While I’m still committed to wearing my kipa, the incidence of antisemitism continues unabated. The most glaring example this week was in Los Angeles.
Before I get to that, let me mention that last week, a man approached the entrance of a West LA synagogue, spread a Muslim prayer rug on the concrete, and began to pray. What do you think happened? No one was hurt. No one was heckled. It was not the 1st time he laid a Muslim prayer rug at the synagogue entrance to pray.
Tabby Refael in the Jewish Journal asks: Let’s imagine that a black-hatted Orthodox Jew had stood at the entrance of a mosque in Paris in today’s climate of open rage and violence against Jews and began wrapping Tefillin. I admit the question is a nonstarter … Before anyone could have laid a hand on him, his own mother would have killed him! The title of Refael’s article is: “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Jew?” She answers, “No one outside of Israel, no one fears Jews.”
A European filmmaker was once asked why he made films that portrayed Jews quite negatively and not Christians or Muslims. Off-the-record he said it’s because no one is really afraid of Jews—but he was certainly afraid of others.
After the Holocaust, the dominant image of Jews were the uniformed skeletal, helpless concentration camp survivors. With the birth of the State of Israel another Jewish image began to emerge—that of the strong, spirited, and most importantly, armed Jew of the Israel Defense Forces. He, too, was in uniform, but those concentration camps’ uniform stripes had now been replaced by the uniform of some of the best soldiers in the world!
Tabby Rephael is right. Outside of Israel, no one is afraid of Jews. That suspicion was confirmed last Sunday when all hell broke loose in the Pico-Robertson Jewish neighborhood in L.A. Cheryl and I had dinner on that street a couple of times while visiting our son Jonathan in April. An out-of-control, antisemitic mob was allowed by police to take over the streets outside of the Adas Torah synagogue—threatening with baseball bats and assaulting Jews.
What does Adas Torah have to do with the war in Gaza? What does Adas Torah have to do with the Palestinians? Their whole reason for being is to just observe, learn and teach Torah. They are as peaceful a congregation as it gets. Think about that: To express their Jew-hatred, these antisemitic demonstrators chose a place that represents the ultimate expression of Judaism.
I’ve compiled some media accounts of the incident. Here it is: The protesters were blocking the synagogue’s main entrance, forcing Jews to enter through a secret alley door. The police officers stationed outside the synagogue did little to interfere with the terrorist supporters, but blocked Jews from entering their own synagogue. [Yes, they are terrorists, because they terrorize a peaceful neighborhood]. After an hour the protests turned violent—and the police seemed to do little to intervene. “Billions of us will come and kill you,” a heavily accented Middle Eastern man shouted.
Brawling in the street outside the synagogue left one Jew bloodied, a Jewish woman assaulted and tackled to the ground, and other Jews pepper-sprayed. After officers pushed the crowd away from the synagogue, some moved to target 2 smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from Islamic Terror in Iran. Some walked into a more residential Jewish neighborhood where more fighting broke out. Others marched outside neighboring Jewish businesses with some trying to enter the Beverly Hills Bagel Company—a kosher restaurant where Cheryl and I had lunch!
Can you imagine this on your street in your neighborhood? What would you do? From my perspective, the answer is not be found in the response of London’s Jewish community to the 300,000 pro-Hamas protesters that filled that city’s streets this year: London’s Jews largely stayed home, locked their doors hoping the storm would pass. We must not allow such terror to succeed so that we cower behind our locked doors. We must not allow this to happen—not to Jews, not to African Americans, Hispanics, Asian, Indian—not to anyone!
In Thursday night’s debate, Charlottesville was part of the conversation. Well, pretty much every week now there is a Charlottesville of sorts across the country with pro-Hamas supporters in our universities, outside synagogues and Jewish businesses, trying to hold up traffic, and sometimes getting involved in physical assault. Already one Jew was killed in Los Angeles—smashed over the head with a bullhorn—for the great crime of being pro-Israel.
It’s absurd to call these Jew-haters “pro-Palestinian.” The Jews on Pico Boulevard; the comedian Jerry Seinfeld who gets interrupted and heckled by these pro-Hamas demonstrators; the visitors to the Nova exhibit in NY memorializing victims of the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 had demonstrators outside lighting fires and calling for more Israeli deaths; the Jewish college students who are intimidated on their own campuses, and countless other Jews, have nothing to do with either Israeli policies or with Palestinians. They’re targeted because of who they are—Jews!
Rephael suggests that this was much more than a protest. Just as they did at Columbia University and UCLA—cities home to America’s 2 largest Jewish communities—they were testing the waters. Could they enter one of L.A.’s most visible and populated Jewish neighborhoods and terrorize Jews? The answer was a horrifying “Yes!”
How many of these Hamas demonstrators around the country have been charged and tried for the real crimes they have committed? Virtually NONE! If it were blacks attacked outside a Church, if it were Moslems attacked outside a Mosque, do you think the police would just tell them to move on?
For the sake of imagination, would hundreds of angry Jews be able to gather outside of a large mosque in Dearborn Michigan, block the entrance, scream genocidal chants against Muslims, and return home in perfect peace and safety? Could they do it to an African American church? It would trigger massive outrage and calls to bring the haters to justice. The same must happen to the invaders of LA’s Pico-Robertson Jewish neighborhood, and to all who cross the line of justice.
Last Sunday’s attack was on another, more dangerous level. I’m not sure we’ll be able to shake the feeling of heightened vulnerability in our Jewish neighborhoods. That’s why we now have armed security at almost all shuls. Now, large scale protests by virulent antisemites are no longer just “over there” in Israel and Europe. They haven’t yet come here to Atlanta, let’s hope never do.
As I indicated a few weeks ago, I’ll continue to leave my kipa on, but I’ll also continue to tuck my tzitzit in. After all, America is not the Middle East and Pico-Robertson is not Jerusalem. Or is it? Amen!
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