Lines of Hate

Rosh Hashanah Morning 5778

The president of the synagogue stood before the small congregation gathered for
Shabbat services and issued this warning: Leave from the back door. And be sure to
leave in groups. Outside neo-Nazis and KKK members gathered for the hate filled rally.
Shouts of Theres the synagogue. could be heard. And salutes of Seig Heil. could be
seen. For thirty minutes three men dressed in fatigues and carrying semi-automatic
weapons stood across the street from the synagogue. Nazi flags were paraded past its
doors. The Charlottesville police refused the synagogues request to station at least one
officer outside. The congregation hired a private security guard instead. Alan
Zimmerman, the president of Charlottesvilles Reform synagogue, worried about the
congregants safety. Imagine if that had been our presidents worry or her task.

There are many challenges facing our world. I could speak about the hurricanes that
continue to batter our cities. We pray that those whose communities were devastated
by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and now Maria may recover and rebuild quickly. We pray
that this years hurricane season ends tomorrow and that those recovering from the
earthquake in neighboring Mexico may find strength and solace. I could also speak
about the scourge of Islamist terrorism that continues to attack our cities. There are
many topics about which I could dwell on this Rosh Hashanah. I could speak about the
growing loss of connection between American Jews and their inheritance. That might
be fitting on other years, and during different times.

This morning we need to speak about the rise of antisemitism in our midst, in our very
own country. Years ago I never would have imagined the need to speak about this.
Today, as one commentator remarked, it is as if someone has taken the lid off the
sewer. All the hate bubbling beneath the surface has emerged and been given far too
much air to breathe. Last month Nazi graffiti was spray-painted on a Syosset school.
We can no longer pretend it only happens there, in Europe or the Middle East. In my
hometown of St. Louis, after a local synagogue led by a rabbi who is among my teachers,
opened its doors to shelter protesters, the hashtag GasTheSynagogue began trending
on social media. And prior to that there was of course the vandalizing of a St. Louis
Jewish cemetery. I cannot avoid talking about this any longer.

To be honest I have not yet figured out if this hate always existed and that all that has
changed is people feel freer to express their views, if social media has opened a window
to a cesspool that was always present. Here are some sobering statistics. A recent poll
determined that 7% of Americans agree with views expressed by white nationalists. 4%
agree with those of neo-Nazis. To put that in perspective, less than 2% of Americans are
Jewish. What we witnessed in Charlottesville should be a wake up call. For starters can
we get one point straight? We should stop using the term neo-Nazi. It is Nazi plain and
simple. If people are sympathetic to this evil ideology they are Nazis. There is nothing
new about it. This is an old and dangerous hatred.

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This is an ideology that believes in racial superiority, that runs counter to the Jewish
ethic that all human beings are created in Gods image, that was responsible for the
murder of six million of our people, and against whom our country fought a bloody and
costly war. I quote from an email from a long-time family friend: This one hit me very
hard. As a veteran of World War II, and a combat soldier, we fought to destroy the Nazis
and what they stood for. Hundreds of thousands of American men and women died
fighting this ideology. Seeing these young men and women wearing signs of the Nazis
and their salute, uttering such hateful statements, made me see red. There is no place in
this country for those who parade using the symbols of the very enemy that we fought,
died battling against and finally overthrew.

Social media has provided a forum that Joseph Goebbels (yimach shmomay his name
be blotted out) could only have dreamed of. This wonderful network that allows me to
reconnect with long lost high school friends or those who now live in far away countries,
allows sinister people with hate-filled ideologies to connect with one another. It gives
them a sense that their views are more widely held. It provides them with a forum
where not only is their speech unchecked but also affirmed. I have come to feel that
conversations on the Internet, if we can even call them conversations, are like those
moments in eighth grade when we had a substitute teacher. It is as if we are at the
moment after the teacher leaves the classroom in exasperation after struggling for an
hour to control the rowdy group. We are now in that middle school classroom without
a teacher. And our leaders rather than jumping to the front of the room to take charge
and offer direction instead sit in the back throwing things at each other.

The efforts to shut down websites and pages are doomed to failure. But we must do a
better job of policing ourselves. We must model what our tradition calls right speech. If
it cannot be said in person, if it cannot be said face to face, then it should not be said on
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter. Dont text something that really should be
said when looking into a friends eyes. Anything that might be difficult to say, or painful,
or upsetting, should always be said face to face. Sometimes the old fashioned way is
the right way.

Let the rise of hate filled speech be a lesson for how we can correct our own speech. It
is the High Holidays of course and these are days when we are meant to look inward
and better ourselves.

This brings me to the response of our leaders and in particular our president. President
Trump continues to equivocate about the violence in Charlottesville. He continues to
equate the violent protestors on the left with the Nazis and KKK supporters on the right.
They are not the same. We reject the violence of the anti-fascists, and their methods.
They are thugs and perhaps should even be labeled gangs. The police should arrest and
jail any protestor who resorts to violence. There can be no war on our streets. But
theirs is not the ideology that murdered six million of our people. The line does not get

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any clearer than that. In a country in which we believe in freedom of speech and
freedom of assembly and in which people are therefore allowed to rally in support of
their hate filled ideology we have but one recourse and that is to say loudly and clearly
to white nationalists and their ilk, This is not us. This is not what America is about.
That is what I expect from our leaders. And this is what we should demand of them.
That is what we heard from virtually every other politician, both Democratic and
Republican.

It begins with knowing history. There is a direct line, and if this sermon is about one
thing it is about making such lines crystal clear, between the Nazi venom we saw on full
display in Charlottesville and the adulation heaped on the heroes of the Confederacy.
Let us remember that the spark for this gathering was the planned removal of a statute
of General Robert E. Lee. Again there is a clear difference between those who owned
slaves in the 18th century and those who led the fight to defend slavery in the 19th.
Slavery is an ideology whose premise is that other human beings are property, a belief
again that runs counter to Judaisms foundational teaching. In May of this past year,
New Orleans took down such a statue. Its mayor gave the most remarkable of speeches
on this occasion. He said, These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just
innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a
fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the
terror that it actually stood for. The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and
humanity.

This moment is about standing on the right side of history and humanity. It is about
standing for diversity and standing against hate. One side is right and the other wrong.
It is that clear. It is about saying May Heather Heyers memory always serve as a
blessing.

But antisemitism is not only on the rise on the far right. It is also found in increasing
numbers of the left. There the forum is often the college campus. It is often disguised
as hatred of Zionism and the State of Israel. At a growing number of colleges the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement metastasizes into antisemitism. These
movements seek to divest from companies that do business with Israel or sometimes
more narrowly those who are located in the West Bank. On the surface they seek to
raise awareness about the plight of Palestinians and the injustices of Israels continued
rule over the territories. But if you look below the surface you often find views that
demonize Israel and see it as illegitimate.

Let me be clear. That does not make all critics of Israel antisemitic. I have many
disagreements with Israel. It is not always right. And that should not make others call
me an Israel hater or a disloyal Jew. Loyalty, and devotion, is not synonymous with
agreement. It is not treason to raise my voice against what I see as the growing anti-
democratic tendencies of the State of Israel and the Netanyahu government. I continue
to believe that for Israel to more fully realize its founding dream it must adhere to both

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its Jewish and democratic principles. The less democratic it becomes the more it will
lose the devotion of young American Jews. So one can be sympathetic to the
Palestinian cause and be supportive of the Palestinian peoples aspirations for
statehood and remain a lover of Zion. Love is not the same as agreement. (Just ask
Susie.)

However too often those who support these BDS movements take on antisemitic
tropes. Roger Waters, who will be playing at Nassau Coliseum and who I will not be
buying a ticket to see despite the fact that I believe Pink Floyd to be one of the greatest
rock bands ever, is an ardent supporter of this BDS movement. He recently compared
Israel to Nazi Germany and said, Im not sure there are any more harsher regimes
around the world. Such exaggerated demonization of Israel qualifies as antisemitism
but its also just plain old ignorance, given that in neighboring Syria Assad continues to
use chemical weapons against his own people and where 400,000 people have been
killed. We have to learn how to draw clear and unmistakable lines.

When someone says that Israel is illegitimate or that there is no Jewish connection to
the land of Israel this is clearly antisemitic. The attempt to portray the modern state of
Israel as a European colonial implant in the Arab Middle East whose existence is only
justified as recompense for the Holocaust is antisemitism because it flouts history. To
say Israelis are interlopers and are not in fact Jews who have returned to the place from
which they were exiled millennia ago, that we are not bound to Jerusalem because our
King David first established a capital there, is to deny the historical legitimacy of
Zionism. That does not mean, however, we cannot share Jerusalem with our Palestinian
brethren. I will leave that arrangement to what I continue to hope will one day soon be
the job of peace negotiators who will figure out how to share a place we both call home
and how we each can have safe and secure borders.

Those discussions begin with each of us acknowledging the legitimacy of the others
claim and for Palestinian leaders and their supporters to affirm the Jewish peoples
rightful inheritance. We have returned. sums it up. That phrase should constitute the
beginning of our discussions. A line can be drawn between those who saw this countrys
first African American president as illegitimate and those who call Israel illegitimate.
The delegitimization of the other, the portrayal of those with whom I disagree, or those
with whom I quarrel, as illegitimate is not how arguments are won or even more
importantly how compromises are hammered out.

On the left, and on college campuses, there is a growing tendency to shout down
speakers with whom students disagree. I cite an incident involving one of my teachers
from Jerusalems Shalom Hartman Institute. Moshe Halbertals lecture at the University
of Minnesota law school was repeatedly interrupted by the shouts of protestors who
called him a war crimes apologist. And what was the title of his lecture? Protecting
Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetrical Warfare. Disagreement does not give one
the right to interrupt such a speech. And yet what we are witnessing is the elevation of

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feelings over thoughtful reflection. My feelings are offended so I will shout and scream.
Colleges rush to protect its students feelings. They cancel controversial lectures.

Sure students can protest, and they should protest. But everyone gets heard, most
especially in the university. There the goal is actually not to affirm my feelings and my
convictions but to confront different ideas and have my beliefs challenged and even my
feelings unsettled. As American Jews we have placed great faith in the university. Now
it seems as if it is abandoning us. In too many instances those who wish Israel be wiped
off the face of the earth are given louder voice than those who have spent decades
studying history and a lifetime asking challenging questions of ethics and morality. It
behooves us to open the dialogue and debate, and listen to those whose views we find
unsettling, but whose expertise derives from scholarship.

I fear that that the eighth grade teacher-less classroom so prevalent on social media has
found its way into the university. Friendship is not synonymous with like-mindedness.
My feelings are offended so I will un-friend her; I will turn my back on her ideas. I will
scream at the top of my lungs so that no one else will be offended and only the ideas
that affirm my preconceived feelings can be heard.

There is a line between honest debate, between sitting across the table from those who
hold diametrically opposed views and those who think that only their truth is legitimate.
There is a line between those who support Palestinians aspirations for statehood and
those who seek Israels destruction, whose antipathy towards Israel is tinged with
antisemitism and filled with hate, and those who love Israel but are critical of it.

And so what are we to do? What should be our response? I can tell you what I plan to
do. I am going to double down on the American dream. I am going to further embrace
American pluralism and diversity. I am going to seek out not so much those who say,
Rabbi, I could not agree with you more, but those who held different ideas and
beliefs. I am going to seek out Jews who think my views are leftist, and Muslims who do
not share my love and devotion to Israel, and Christians who believe that I am missing
out on an even greater part of the Bible.

This place called America is not so much defined by borders and geography. It is not
about religion or ethnicity. It is about an idea. It is a sanctuary for all those who wish to
embrace this idea, and who come here like my grandparents did, with dreams of a
better life for their grandchildren. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I was reminded of this idea when I saw the pictures of the sailors killed on the Navy
warships John S. McCain and Fitzgerald. They were a tapestry of immigrants. There I
could see the diversity that makes this country great.

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And I am reminded of this idea when I recall the ten years I carried church keys in my
pocket. What was normal for a good part of my rabbinic career was extraordinary in the
history of religions but then again ordinary for the history of America.

I recall this as I remember my sons long time friendship with Huey OConnor. I used to
look out of my window and see them sitting on the curb after a playing a game of one
on one. I would often ask Ari what they were talking about. I assumed sports. He
would often say matter-of-factly, Religion. And then he would head up to his room as
if this was the most typical and ordinary of things, that two young boys would play
basketball together and also teach each other about their differences and most
importantly never stop calling each other friends. That is what I am going to hold on to.
And that is what I will forever defend.

This is what will strengthen this great nation of ours. And this is what will forever
safeguard us against hate.

Rabbi Steven Moskowitz

September 21, 2017