Vayeishev 2014: Black Lives Matter – Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

(lift up hands over head)
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!”

Last Shabbat afternoon, eleven CBSRZ members, including 5 kids and one teenager, joined a march that made its way through the North End of Hartford, ending with a rally in Keney Park. We were part of a crowd that grew from 200 to 500 people, protesting the recent decisions of Grand Juries in Missouri and New York to not indict police offers who had killed unarmed Black men – Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

For our young people, this was the first time they had been a part of an action like this – walking side by side with people of all colors and all faiths, calling for justice, equality and human rights. Some of our kids had been studying the Jewish value of “Btzelem Elohim,” that all humans are created in God’s image and that all lives are therefore sacred and equal. This was an opportunity to put those values into action. When we asked our kids how it felt to be a part of this action, Ziv said, “I felt like I wasn’t a little boy anymore. Like my voice was a part of a big powerful voice.”

Sadly the issues of inequality in our justice system and of police brutality are nothing new. The first time I was part of such a protest, was 15 years ago in New York City in the winter of 1999. Four off-duty police had shot 23 year old Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant with no criminal record, on the stoop of his New York City building, striking him 19 times. They said they thought he had a gun. It was a wallet. The officers were acquitted of 2nd degree murder charges and went back to their jobs. The chant back then was “it’s a wallet, not a gun!” His last words, to his mother, before he left their apartment in the Bronx, were, “Mom, I’m going to college.”

As Jews, we know what it means to be targeted and profiled and feared. We know what it is like to not trust the authorities who are supposed to protect us. As a Jewish community in this country, we are also becoming more diverse racially and ethnically. And so, we are moved to march in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of color.

However, as members of a mostly white community in America, we are also aware of our privilege. Watching our Jewish students marching with their hands up, chanting, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” alongside African American kids of similar ages, I felt equal measures of pride and uneasiness. My kids will likely never have to face a situation in which their very lives are in the hands of the police, while for African American kids, boys especially, and for their parents, this is a daily fear. As I lifted my hands above my head and chanted, my chest exposed, I felt a tinge of vulnerability that is an ever present experience of terror for Black Americans.

This week’s Torah portion tells the story of brothers who do not feel that solidarity with each other. Privilege poses a serious challenge to their ability to see that they are connected to and responsible for each other. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of him, because he is the favored son of their father Jacob. Jacob had given Joseph a decorated tunic to further emphasize his status, and then things got worse when Joseph started having dreams about his brothers bowing down to him, and sharing those dreams with his brothers. One day Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers who are shepherding a distance away near another town. As he approaches, the brothers plot to kill him. After Reuben intervenes, trying to save Joseph from them, they agree to just throw him in a pit out in the wilderness. As we know, Joseph is eventually sold into slavery in Egypt.

In this story, Joseph seems to be incapable of recognizing what his privileged status is doing to his relationship with his brothers. He is so blind to this dynamic that he shares his dreams with them, which only damages the relationship further. At the same time, the brothers, as a group, have great power over Joseph. And they abuse it. What grabbed me this week was a verse that we often overlook. After the brothers strip Joseph of his tunic and cast him into the pit, we are told, “The pit was empty; there was no water in it. Then they sat down to a meal.” These men are somehow able to throw their own brother into a pit in the desert and then sit down and eat and drink.

As mostly white, privileged people in America, we Jews could sit down and eat and drink in comfort without paying much attention to those distant pits of despair. We are not the ones who need to fear, for ourselves or for our children. Garbed with a privileged status, we trust that law enforcement and the justice system are there to protect us and will treat us fairly. Knowing this, we can separate and shield ourselves from the suffering of others in not-so-privileged groups.

So, why is it important that we were there at that protest, when this particular injustice is not our personal experience or problem? Because, as the Dr. Martin Luther King taught, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Or as a sign at the march in Hartford read, quoting African American writer Angela Davis, ““If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.”

Or as our Midrash teaches, “One who sheds blood is regarded as though he had diminished the image of God.”

When the image of God is diminished or in pain, I am diminished and I am in pain and I am threatened. We are all human beings, we are all Americans. The suffering and the injustice done to one American is a shared suffering and a shared injustice.

Lifting my hands above my head to chant “Hands up, don’t shoot!” was not a simple thing – it was actually hard. This is a terrible posture – a powerless posture – a shameful posture- a painful posture.

When I feel that powerlessness and that pain, I remember that we are all connected. And when my brothers and my sisters are hurting, I am too. I will never be free as long as we all are not free. I hope that our kids felt this truth in their hearts and in their bones, as they lifted up their hands on that Shabbat afternoon in Hartford.
I want to invite you now to rise and sing this Civil Rights era song with Belinda and me. Tonight I see this as a prayer that someday people will no longer have to raise their hands in the air, over their heads in fear. It envisions freedom and justice and love up over our heads, in the air.

Over My Head:
1. Over my head, I see freedom in the air (3x)
There must be a God somewhere

2. Over my head, I see justice in the air (3x)
There must be a God somewhere

3. Over my head, I see love in the air (3x)

God’s love reaches everywhere