Shabbat Replay: Race, the Holocaust, and Teshuvah

"I don’t think it’s accidental that Whoopi Goldberg, both Black and female, was punished with silence when many people, generally White and male, have said much worse with no consequence. And I am grateful for those who, despite all of this, sought dialogue with her: remembering that conversation, not censure, is what helps us find and act upon our ability to grow."

Rabbi Steven meditates on Whoopi Goldberg's controversial statements in light of Black History Month and Adar.

This episode is a drash given at Mishkan's Friday night  service on February 11th. For full recordings of Friday services, click here. For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Learn more about Mishkan Chicago. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

[00:16] Producer:
Welcome to Shabbat Replay, your dose of Mishkan services throughout the week. February 11th was our first Friday Night Shabbat in person after the case surge here in Chicago, as well as our first time back at our beloved Second Unitarian venue.  Rabbi Steven delivered a sermon about Whoopi Goldberg’s controversial statements about the Holocaust, subsequent apology, and backlash. While racism has evolved greatly over the last centuries, our commitment to teshuvah and solidarity with the oppressed remains rooted in an ancient tradition.

[1:04] Rabbi Steven:
Every now and then, the Hebrew calendar and the secular calendar line up - and so two weeks ago, we marked the beginning of Adar and the first of February on the same day. And I thought how amazing it was that a month in the Jewish tradition that is about boundless joy overlapped with a month that we celebrate the resilience and creativity of Black folks, and I was looking forward to finding a way to weave the two together in my drash tonight - and then Whoopi Goldberg got on “The View” to say that the Holocaust was “not about race” but “man’s inhumanity to man,” and the Jewish community went up in arms, and pundits left and right weighed in, and over the past week we have waded through complicated and painful conversations about Jewishness, race, and the wounds of history. And so I want to talk about this tonight, because it’s important to talk about these things, and also because I believe that, in the end, this conversation leads us right back to the lessons of these overlapping months.

What I am about to say might sound controversial, so bear with me.

Whoopi Goldberg was not entirely wrong. She was not entirely wrong because Goldberg was, in part, quoting the words of Primo Levi, who – when writing on his time as a prisoner at Auschwitz – stated that he was “constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.” She was not entirely wrong because her comments reflect the worrying and very real decline of Holocaust education among younger generations; one in four American adults under the age of 39 believe that the historic fact of six million dead is either a myth or an exaggeration. And she was not entirely wrong because Goldberg was speaking about the idea of “race” as it has appeared in the story of this country, where the distinctions between European immigrants (including Ashkenazi Jews) that were once considered important on the other side of the Atlantic have largely disappeared on these shores, and the monolith of whiteness is held in contradistinction to those who are black or brown. It was through this same lens that Goldberg defended her remarks, explaining on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that “the Nazis were white people, and most of the people they were attacking were white people.” From the vantagepoint of how race is thought of in America today, this is true.

This is race as it has been historically defined: the idea that human beings can be divided into discrete categories based on observable biological traits, and that those categories in turn determine our character and ability. But this is also its problem, for who falls into what category changes and shifts depending on how we define those traits. And how those traits are defined is more often than not determined by the privileged and powerful, to justify discriminatory systems that benefit them while marginalizing others. It is this definition of race that was used to preserve slavery when our country was founded on the idea of equality, on the basis that Black people - as determined by the shade of their skin and the makeup of their ancestry - were biologically predisposed to servitude. And it is also this definition of race that was used by the Nazis to determine who was and who was not a Jew, and to justify our murder.

This is why Whoopi Goldberg, while not entirely wrong, was still wrong. The Holocaust was about race, even if it does not fit the definition we use today in this country. Nazi policies of discrimination and genocide were predicated on the idea that Jews were an inferior race, whose biological makeup made us unreliable and untrustworthy, and whose presence threated the very fabric of German society. And while that conception does not match well with how we have learned to think about Jewishness, and who is White, and who is Black in the United States, it does share the same origins - and the same deadly consequences - as slavery and segregation, and therefore should be taken just as seriously.And so social media erupted, and news outlets weighed in, and everyone from Jonathan Greenblatt at the Anti-Defamation League to Phil Roberston of Duck Dynasty fame offered their opinion on whether Goldberg should resign, or resist, or ignore the storm around her. Shortly after she appeared on The Late Show, where she doubled-down on her statements. That same evening, she issued an apology. Regardless, ABC decided to temporarily suspend her from The View. Numerous op-eds have been written, ranging from the indignant to the conciliatory. And here I am, talking to you about it now. So we find ourselves, whether Jewish, or Black, or neither, or both struggling to find a path towards healing when the wounds of the past have been reopened and everyone seems to be talking past each other, rather than to one another.

Having a productive dialogue is hard because the Holocaust is a tragedy that evades description. How could we ever find a way to talk about it that conveys the individual and collective pain that it inflicted on our people, and on other communities? How frightening, as the last survivors pass into memory, that this stain on our history - which occurred less than a century ago - is being forgotten by younger generations? How enraging that in our miseducation we may be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? From this broken place comes a cry for justice that easily transforms into the call for vengeance, to not only hold people like Whoopi Goldberg accountable for their ignorance but to punish them for the harm their words may have caused, both to ourselves and the memories of those who were murdered – regardless of whether they spoke from miseducation or from malice

Some of you may be familiar with a photo called “Woman With a Handbag,” taken in Växjö, Sweden in the spring of 1985. In it, a 38-yeard old woman, Danuta Danielsson, swings her handbag at a marching neo-Nazi. The photo captures the moment right before her bag meets his head. I don’t want to make a false equivalence: Whoopi Goldberg is not a neo-Nazi, her miseducation does not come from a place of hatred, and her comments do not make her deserving of harm. But both of these moments demonstrate the impulse – when grappling with our anger, or sadness, or fear – to punish and shame the other. It is one half of the instinct to fight or to flee, and one that is particularly tempting when we finally have the means to push back. Yet as satisfying as this may feel at the moment, lashing out does not dispel ignorance nor heal our pain. Instead, shame (and the silence that follows) refuses the opportunity for change: both for ourselves or for the other person. It traps us in our brokenness. It preserves them in their ignorance. The consequences of this response bear some resemblance to that old canard of race: one that says that because of who we are and where we come from, how we act and what we believe cannot be changed.

Judaism rejects this model. The idea of teshuvah, that repentance and repair are possible, is based on the assertion that we find within each person the capacity for growth and change. Yes, human beings make mistakes. And yes, human beings can sometimes act with incredible inhumanity toward one another (as Primo Levi observed). Yet we do not believe that these behaviors reflect an inherent defect in our makeup, or come from a fluke of biology that encodes some people for good and others for evil. Those are the lies of race as defined by racists. Our tradition, instead, finds inherent in each person a resilience, strength, and courage that are best expressed through our ability, in a place of brokenness, to ask for and offer forgiveness and, through this process that we call teshuvah, change for the better. Whoopi Goldberg’s initial apology was a perfect example of this kind of exchange. “I’m sorry for the hurt that I’ve caused,” she tweeted. “As Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL shared, the Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people - who they deemed to be an inferior race. I stand corrected.” I don’t think it’s accidental that Whoopi Goldberg, both Black and female, was punished with silence when many people, generally White and male, have said much worse with no consequence. And I am grateful for those who, despite all of this, sought dialogue with her: remembering that conversation, not censure, is what helps us find and act upon our ability to grow.

Growth, even in brokenness, is one of the many lessons of this season. Black History Month is as much about reckoning, especially for White folks, with the scars of racism and holding the pain of the past as it is about celebrating the generative and creative spirit of Black people who have found faith even when the world offered them none. Reflecting on the meaning of this month in the midst of the trauma caused by police brutality, Brooklyn White shares that it is this faith that “has kept us, enabled us to make history and stand tall in it. We have risen from every low, rotted place and thrived because, well, that’s what we do. It is what we have always done. We know hell only in passing, not because it is not continuously brought to us, but because we fashion it into sacred, stunning experiences.”

To take hell and fashion it into sacred, stunning experiences is a balm to the feelings that push us toward punishment and shame, and leads us instead toward teshuvah – towards repair, even in broken places. It is a Black story. It is a Jewish story. The rabbis teach that when Adar comes, this month we are in now, joy increases as we prepare for the holiday of Purim. Yet, Purim is not a happy story. While we escape the worst of what was planned for us, the story ends with Jews fighting for their lives in the streets of Persia. Yet even within this turmoil, we are told to create space for generosity and joy – offering gifts, providing for those in need, dressing up and celebrating with each other. In a time that would have us act out of anger and fear, we remind ourselves instead of our ability to change – ourselves, each other, and the world.

This is my blessing: that when the world feels broken, to remember our resilience, strength, and courage; when we feel broken, to remember our capacity for change. Where we encounter ignorance, let us encourage conversation rather than silence. Where we find misunderstanding, let us educate rather than shame. Let us write a new story, one that believes in the possibility of repair. It is a new story that is also a very old story – told by the generations that came before us, Black and Jewish.