A HOLY RESPONSE TO PICKETERS
July 18, 2009

by Rabbi Randy Fleisher

In synagogue, when we finish reading a book of Torah as we have finished reading the book of Numbers today, the tradition teaches us to say:

CHAZAK, CHAZAK, VE-NITCHAZEK

Be Strong, be strong and may we continue to be strengthened

Thanks, we needed that. On this particular Shabbat, we need every ounce of extra strength offered to us. We have been reminded today that raw, twisted hatred exists in the world, and somehow we must not let that fact deter us from our task of helping bring more peace and love into the world. Like many of you, the group that is picketing us today has unfortunately been on my radar screen. I have watched with horror as this one family insists not only on spreading their ugly message but doing so at funerals. Just as sad is the sight of those outrageous signs in the hands of their children, the thought of those vile values being passed through the generations among the most depressing I can conjure. Yet, I watched all of that from a distance; now they have been here, in our place, in our face. Be strong, be strong, and may we continue to be strengthened. 

In 1976, I was 13 years old and living in the Chicago area when the ‘American Nazi Party' marched in Skokie, a suburb with many Jews and Blacks, and a large number of Holocaust survivors. Instead of turning away, I needed to try and know why these people had so much hate. I made an inquiry to their PO Box for information. A few weeks later, I received an envelope stuffed with their outrageous literature. I can still see one of the flyers, filled with nasty anti-Semitic and racist jokes and crude cartoons. I remember crying into my mom's arms as I tried to fall asleep that night. How did I go on from seeing the worst of humanity to loving humanity with a full heart? Because I witnessed over the years countless counter examples; acts of goodness, acceptance and goodwill by people from all walks of life--chazak, chazak, and I continue to be strengthened. 

I couldn't turn away this time either. After we learned this group would be bringing their signs to our CRC, I went to their websites. There, you are met with a special sign that reads God hates you! (Talk about a ‘home page.’) They boast of having organized 41,000 of these types of demonstrations since 1991. In the next month alone they claim that they will travel to 10 states. Besides synagogues, JCC's, Catholic churches and gay-themed cultural events, they are still showing up at military funerals. I also noticed many planned demonstrations at mainstream Baptist and other Protestant churches who apparently preach too much love for too many people. Give me strength! 

They claim that they themselves don't hate anyone, that they are simply spreading God's message (of hate). For proof, perhaps ironically, they point largely to our Bible. They quote the Hebrew prophets who often do brutally condemn both foreign nations and Israel herself in God's name. They also cite from the Torah portion of this week. Among the last words of the book of Numbers it is written, "God spoke to Moses saying, let the Israelite people take vengeance on the Midianite people...so Moses spoke to the people saying, form a campaign to fall upon Midyan and to wreak God's vengeance on the Midianites." Moses in this episode is even ashamed before God because the Israelites spared the Midianite women from the annihilation. It is not surprising that the extreme Christian right gravitates to these words to justify being so hateful and intolerant; so after all does the extreme Jewish right. 

This is fundamentalism at its very worse, which is saying quite a lot. It is not a modern notion to understand that scripture contains beautiful eternal truths (such as Love Your Neighbor) alongside narrow-minded and ignorant prejudice that was imbedded in the culture and needs to stay stuck in its own place and time. The ancient rabbis, who loved and revered the Bible as the word of God, still understood the need to interpret such passages basically into irrelevance, as they claimed Judaism as a religion that pursues peace. We liberal Jews continue the process of embracing all that is holy in Jewish tradition while rejecting that which once may have been integral to being Jewish but is now in opposition to an ever unfolding sense of universal righteousness and morality.

This is not to say we should stick our heads in the sand. We must monitor these groups, and strive for the wisdom to know when they have crossed the line from crackpots to a force more dangerous. The Anti-Defamation League, which was so helpful as we responded to today’s picket, has been a godsend in this area (and a CRC member is the current chair of our local ADL chapter’s board). Still, we must never allow the hatred of others to allow us to spiral, God forbid, into becoming haters ourselves. 

In my sadness last week as I anticipated this morning, I reached out to my good friend, Reverend Rick of Cornerstone Baptist, a church which is easily the most culturally conservative of all of our Holy Ground neighborhood churches. Rick and I sat together for two hours in deep, holy and meaningful I-Thou dialogue. Reverend Rick has been very open with me about the black nationalist path of his youth and his present Baptist journey to love and unity, helped along by his increasing excitement over the interfaith work we are doing in Holy Ground.  He told me that if I wanted him to be here for support on this Shabbat he would be here in a moment. He said that anyone who claims to worship Jesus (or God, Allah, Great Spirit, Buddha, etc.) and worships with hatred is actually in extreme opposition to Jesus. I needed that conversation. Chazak, chazak--we strengthen one another. The picketers' use of ‘Baptist’ in their name is clearly a horrible misnomer and we need to know that this is the case. 

At this moment, I am thinking about the incident some years ago in Montana in which a rock was thrown through the window of a Jewish family who had dared to openly display a menorah during Chanukah. Two days later, thousands homes throughout the state containing families and individuals from a diversity of traditions put menorahs in their own windows, replacing hate with hope. I am thinking about the sacred words of Anne Frank, "despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." 

We are in the three week period before Tishah B'Av, a mourning time. So, in a way, the way we feel about our unwelcome visitors of today is appropriate to the spiritual season. Yet, after this dark time we are supposed to be on the upswing to the hope, the light, reflected in Rosh Hashanah. We surely need some of that light and hope right now. So I will tell you something about the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the painful funeral of that young man victimized by homophobes that was the first such service that this family decided to use to spread their filth. After that funeral, a group of local Christians came over here where we were building our Sukkat Shalom. They wrote prayers for Matthew, for love, for peace, and they placed those prayers into the foundation of what became our holy ark. Built into the fabric of this synagogue are those prayers.  This is why we will survive this morning with out good spirits intact.  This is why I still believe that the goodness in humanity is ultimately more powerful than anything else. This is our strength. You are my strength. Chazak, chazak, ve nitchazek! Be strong, be strong, and may we all continue to be strengthened!