C. It’s for “cookie.” It’s good enough for me.
Ok. It’s not just “good enough.” It’s good. I love me some cookies. Not sure who these people are who think there’s a point beyond which we’re too old for milk and cookies before bed. But whoever they are, they’re wrong. And when I channel my inner Cookie Monster, my favorites, without a doubt, are Oreos and black-and-white cookies. When I eat an Oreo, I’m not one to twist it open or anything like that; the perfection of the Oreo lies in it being so much greater than the sum of its parts, so why mess with that? And yet, when it comes to black-and-white cookies, I choose, like the Offspring, to “keep ‘em separated.” Since I prefer the white side to the black, I eat the black first, and enjoy the white side last.
So does that make me a racist? Maybe. Maybe how I eat an Oreo represents a forward-thinking, melting-pot-esque, integrationist perspective, while the way I eat a black-and-white cookie renders me more Strom Thurmond than Rabbi Strom. I don’t know. But I do know that I spent a lot less time this week wondering if I’m a white-icing supremacist, and a lot more time struggling with the ugliness of real racism.
And where was I first confronted with it? In the Times? The Nightly News with Brian Williams? Did I catch The Help on Netflix or Driving Miss Daisy on cable? No. Try the Torah. Try Miriam. Try Aaron.
You see, tucked away at the end of B’ha’alot’cha, this week’s parashah, is an episode many of us choose to look past. Overcome with jealousy for their brother Moses, none other than Miriam and Aaron themselves start talking some serious smack, writing checks with their mouths that their prophetic skills can’t cash. They “spoke against Moses,” we read, “because of the Cushite woman he had married, [exclaiming], ‘He married a Cushite woman!’” For speaking out, Miriam is stricken with snow-white scales on her flesh, until Moses intercedes, praying, El na r’fa na la, “O God, pray heal her.”
As the Cushites were dark-skinned Africans, likely from the area now known as Sudan, what we have here, it seems to me and many others, is unabashed bigotry. The scales on Miriam’s skin, then, are symbolic of a much deeper affliction: that of racism.
You might think I’m taking the Torah verses out of context, or stretching them to fit my message here. I’m not. And the proof, unfortunately, lies in Israeli culture today. The same word used derogatively right here in our parasha is exactly the same word used in modern Hebrew as a racial epithet towards immigrants and refugees to Israel from Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. So Miriam and Aaron may as well have called her the n-word, because for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what they did.
And you think we would have learned by now. You’d have hoped things have changed over, say, a few thousand years. But if you’ve been watching what’s been going on in Israel the last couple of weeks, you know that it hasn’t. Not much at least. As the tensions have been rising for years between long-time residents of the poorer neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and the clustering of refugees in those same neighborhoods, racism continues to rear its ugly head once again. A demonstration from a few weeks ago turned violent, the huddled masses incited by politicians and speakers, including but not limited to Knesset member Miri Regev calling the refugees “a cancer in our body.” The result of the demonstration? A mob that smashed windows and attacked bystanders. And it’s still going on right now. Earlier this week three African refugees were hospitalized after their apartment was torched, leaving the words “Get out of the neighborhood” graffiti’d on the door.
This isn’t Germany or England. This isn’t the former Soviet Union. This isn’t Iran or Pakistan. This is Israel. The democracy of the Middle East, the beacon of hope for a troubled region. This is Tel Aviv, the modern, progressive, vibrant symbol of Israeli life. Instead, "appalling," "horrendous," and "terrifying" are the words that come to mind.
But perhaps we are throwing stones across the world from our American glass houses. After all, we are still reeling from the shooting of Trayvon Martin just a few short months ago. Though the story of what actually happened remains unclear to date, what is clear is the fragile nerve it touched upon, for so many people on all parts of every sociopolitical spectrum. What is clear is that if our country’s reactions to Martin’s killing were some kind of barometer or litmus test on where we stand in regard to race relations, I'm afraid we failed.
Right here in New York City, we have the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, where 84 percent of those stopped were black or Latino, though they comprise 23 and 29 percent of the city population respectively. The NYPD claims the policy keeps weapons off the streets, but as weapons were recovered in only 1 percent of the stops, we have the obligation to ask if something else is at play here.
So what do we do? The honest answer is: I don’t know. But perhaps the beginning of an answer lies in the same section of this week’s Torah portion. Defending Moses to his brother and sister, God says to them, “When prophets of the Eternal arise among you, I make Myself known to them in a vision, I speak with them in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout my household. With him I speak directly, mouth-to-mouth, face-to-face, and he beholds the likeness of the Eternal.”
When we see the person in front of us as a living, breathing person, with hopes and thoughts and dreams all their own, with whom we can speak directly, face-to-face, and not as an image, a vision, something other than a human being, it is then that we can find holiness, a spark of the divine within, in everyone, completely irrespective of the color of their skin. Then, and only then, will we be healed of the affliction of racism, just as Miriam was healed of the scales on her skin.
So I pray:
El na r’fa na lanu. O God, pray, heal us.
AMEN.
