Weaver's Web

Nota bene: I wrote this early yesterday morning during a particular moment of angst, and after re-reading, decided to season it another 24 hours before posting. I thought at first it was too dark to share comfortably. In that time, the Chabad of Poway was added to the growing list of houses of worship assaulted; an antisemite & white supremacist shot 4 including the rabbi, killing one. Please hold this congregation in your thoughts and meditations. I offer this now, unedited.


Not withstanding my post of the other day, but really dovetailing with it, I’m directing this to anyone who’s Jewish, is descended of Jews or anyone who cares for someone who is.

Remember the white nationalists/suprematists that marched on Charlottesville last year, the ones the President referred to, when he asserted there were good people on both sides? Yeah, those folks. Those were the people who were chanting “Jews will not replace us”, as they marched. Those were the people who rallied while openly armed, right in front of a Charlottesville synagogue during Saturday morning services. The rabbi sent folks out the back door that morning for their safety. As hard as it is to say it, we should be grateful only one person died that weekend. It could easily been much worse.

News flash folks; according to these very fine people, Jews only think they’re white. We are in their reality, as minority as any other non-white ethnic group.

Trump has not and will not denounce these racists; they’re a huge chunk of his base. Second news flash: neither will the bulk of the Republican hierarchy, such that are still left in power/office.

In the last couple of weeks Trump spoke before a group of Jewish Republicans. The pairing of those two words is jarring to me. How can you affiliate and identify with a group that’s unwilling to stand for your rights? I find this as difficult to understand as any other minority (Latino, African-American, LGBT, Native American) who ID as Republican.

A reminder about American Jewish history; if you look at communities across this country where historically there are large Jewish enclaves (St. Louis Park in Minneapolis, Beachwood in Cleveland, Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh), this wasn’t by accident. These were areas that didn’t have housing covenants that blocked Jews from buying homes or land there. The word for this isn’t neighborhood. It’s ghetto.

Ghetto. Have we forgotten this very word is from our history? The first identified ghetto was the Jewish quarter in Venice. Ghetto comes from the Italian word for foundry. Venice restricted its Jews to that island, where the foundry was. After dark, the gates to all the bridges to that island we’re locked.

Locked, FROM THE OUTSIDE.

When Jews forget we have been ‘othered’ throughout history and that for many on the right, we remain so, we risk at our own peril.

I was in Beachwood in January. My nephew is the president of the city council there. I was there for his son’s bris. I stayed at an Air BnB owned by a lovely woman of color, a Harvard PhD who’s a school principal. The Lyft driver who took me from her home to the synagogue for the ceremony was another local man of color who asked why I was in town. I told him a baby naming. Moments later as we pulled up to the address and he saw it was one of Beachwood’s many synagogues, he said “oh, it’s a bris! Mazel Tov!”

He waited to see that the receptionist at the synagogue buzzed me in, before he drove off. How considerate and yet, how painful. He kindly wanted to be sure I wasn’t stranded outside on a cold, snowy day. However, security like this is the new normal in the wake of the murders at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. The front of their synagogue and the separate day care they operate is all tempered bulletproof glass. The receptionist is behind a similarly glassed desk inside, easily seen, but doubly protected.

My Lyft driver knew about the security. Apparently this it true for most, if not all of Beachwood’s Jewish congregations. He said as much. Pittsburgh was Beachwood’s wake up call. The Tree of Life Synagogue is only one house of worship in a long line of churches to be attacked by white supremacists. Think the Oak Creek Sikh Temple. Think the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church.

Where do our interests lie? With the Republican Party? Or is it with others who have been marginalized in this country?

I saw BlacKKKlansman last week. It’s a fictionalized account of a true story about a black cop who infiltrated the KKK in Colorado in the late 70’s. There’s a character created, a cop who’s an assimilated, non-practicing Jew. The black cop at one point tells him what he’s doing is passing, just like light skinned blacks have done for generations in this country. He reminded him he has some skin in the game.

I do have skin in this game. I only look white. Sure, I’m often a beneficiary of white privilege today. It’s why passing, whether done accidentally or with purpose serves to benefit. Same is true for light skinned black & brown people, conventionally attired LGBT folk, and members of faith communities in the minority in the US who’ve chosen to forego the garb that ID’s them. But those of us who are passing need to own it; we have to recognize that white privilege exists, that it isn’t extended to everyone. We have to call out bigotry and prejudice where it is, and for what it is. We cannot afford to ignore it until the gun is once again pointed at us.

I only look white.

Ruddy complexion, curly auburn hair, now starting to grey. "What part of Ireland is your family from," isn't a rare question. Apparently I'm a LIBI - looks Irish, but isn't.

My minority identity is pretty strong. My family is Jewish, both sides. All 4 of my grandparents were emigrants & while they learned it as children, English was a second language for both my parents. Even I heard more than just English as a child. My family came here to escape European antisemitism. The States weren't devoid of antisemític sentiments. They just weren't what they were in Europe. Your prospects were much brighter here than there. The bulk of my father's family succeeded in coming over. Sadly, not the story for my mother's family. Particularly hard hit was my maternal grandmother's family. The town she was from was taken off the map by the Nazis. It no longer exists. The only two to survive were my grandmother and her eldest brother, the only two that were here in the states prior to the war.

Both my father and his brother wanted to become physicians. My uncle succeeded, although he was most of the way through a PhD program before he was able to get a seat in a medical school at the same midwestern public university. Despite graduating summa cum from Syracuse University with a dual major in political science and bio chemistry, my father wasn't able to gain entry to either medical or law school in this country in the early 1950s. Why did he go to Syracuse? Simple. They were one of the private universities willing to accept Jews in 1948. (Incidentally, Jerry Stiller was one of my father's fraternity brothers.)

Growing up in the safety of New York City's "melting pot" I never feared for my safety because of my ethnicity, the basic safety in numbers. However, after my grandfather's death, post a long battle with lung cancer in the summer of 1968, my parents took us on a road trip from New York to Florida. I was 13. We pulled off the interstate somewhere in the rural Georgia, to stop for gas and something to eat. Walking into a country diner, we sat and patiently waited for service. Though my mother is a blue-eyed blonde, Pop had the map of eastern Europe for a face & my youngest sister had a gold star of David hanging on her neck. After 20 minutes, a waitress sauntered over, leaned over to speak quietly to my mother, who was seated next to me. With a saccharine drawl over pursed lips she said, "we don't serve your kind here. I suggest you take your children and leave, before something untowards happens." With the nod of her head, she gestured over her shoulder towards two rather large men in overalls seated at the counter, both of whom glared menacingly in our direction. We left, leaving behind a piece of my innocence. Years later, I would read about lynchings of Jews, including one in outside of Atlanta in 1915 & feel much more comfortable with my parents move to retreat. .מאָדנע פרוכט (strange fruit.)

Most associate the KKK with the American south, but historically they've flexed their muscle in areas far flung. How about in Queens, New York in 1927? There was a march & with a riot that followed. Post riot, a number of people were arrested, including Fred Trump. That name familiar? It should be. He's the Donald's father. Perhaps this explains the president's tepid response condemning the recent events in Charlottesville, claiming both sides were to blame for the violence, where a young woman peacefully protesting was killed by a supremacist who plowed his van into the crowd, ala an ISIS inspired attack.

One of the Charlottesville synagogues had three white supremacists, armed with semi automatic rifles standing across the street while their congregation met for services Saturday morning. I guess simply being a person of color, or Jewish appears to be provocation. They got to listen to those man screaming for people to burn down the synagogue as the congregation stood there in worship. (A letter from the rabbi of my sister's congregation in New Jersey of her communication with the congregation in Charlottesville will be posted to follow this post. Please do read it.)

I am clearer now than ever that I am a minority person, who is not safe within the borders of my own country. That we have a president who cannot unequivocally and immediately condemn in no uncertain terms, racial and ethnic hatred as antithetical to everything this country stands for, gives me great pause. Reality is he is both a cause and a symptom of the pervasive underlying bigotry that still exists in a large portion of this country. There is no racial, ethnic, religious, or social minority within this country he is unwilling to throw under the bus, if it suits his needs & sadly enough, he has a like minded community to preach to.

We must work in coalition and unity to stand up for what is right. Jew must support Muslim, who must support Hispanic, who must support African-American, who must support LGBT, who must support women, who must support environmentalist, who must support Native American, and so on, and so on. We must speak with clarity when we speak truth to power. Anything less insures our failure, if not out right subjugation.