FROM THE PULPIT: A matter of life and death

My fellow citizens and neighbors in Fall River, I write these words on Wednesday, Oct. 31. It is Halloween – not a Jewish holiday, but one we always allowed our children to participate in, since this now-secularized holiday is so colorful and fun, especially here in Fall River, where we have that unsurpassed must-see sight, the “Halloween House” on Highland Avenue. It is not always easy being a Jewish family in the midst of an overwhelmingly Christian (Protestant and Catholic) culture – having your kids miss school for holidays that some of their teachers have never heard of, sending your kids to school with matzah in their lunchboxes during the Passover period, and generally feeling somewhat “out of synch” with the predominantly Christian world around you. No doubt this feeling is one shared by our Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist neighbors.

Now devout Christians reading this will probably be thinking “the world around you is not overwhelmingly Christian – quite the opposite – so few people really live according to the teachings of Jesus!” And, without wanting to take a stance of judgement about my neighbors’ religiosity or commitment to the teachings of their own religious traditions, I will only say that I can understand why a devout Christian might so protest. The point here is not so much “what are the teachings of Jesus?” – but what does it mean that we live in a “Christian” culture – and more specifically, a predominantly white Christian culture?

Some people think that this is what America “should” be: a white Christian nation. Think of that Norman Rockwell painting of a “typical” family around the Thanksgiving table (the painting is entitled “Freedom from Want”) – and you get the idea of what many people think of as an iconic American family. It’s true that there is nothing inherently “Christian” about the family in this painting – unlike quite a few of Rockwell’s other paintings, the folks in this picture are not praying – some are looking quite mischievous, in fact. The painting is intended to depict American culture – but it inadvertently excludes a lot of groups that don’t fit the cultural stereotype. It is an image that may have seemed unremarkable in 1943 when it first graced the cover of the “Saturday Evening Post,” but that was only because at that time minorities in this nation were so used to being invisible.

Things have changed, and are changing. Many people who are used to regarding America as a “white Christian” nation are feeling uneasy … and this unease is spilling over like a toxic chemical into the political rhetoric of our time. And like a toxic chemical, the infiltration of this rhetoric into politics today is something that, while it may not at first be obvious to those exposed to it, can lead to dire consequences – even to death.

I am dismayed over the death of the 11 innocent worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue last Shabbat (Sabbath) in Pittsburgh, as well as over the wounding of two other worshipers, and four police officers. And of course you do not have to be a member of the clergy, nor Jewish, to share this feeling. I am equally dismayed over yet another attempted mass shooting last week in a black church in Kentucky (the shooter could not get in, and so went and shot two African-Americans in a Kroger supermarket instead). It does not seem so long ago that some of us from Temple Beth El joined members of Fall River’s Bethel AME Church on Hanover Street to mourn the deaths of nine congregants of the AME “Mother Church” in Charleston, S.C. That was 2015. Back then, the “white Christian” rhetoric had not heated up so much, and the action of Dylann Roof seemed like an isolated event. It no longer feels this way – not with any number of politicians and media personalities trying to work Americans up into a lather of fear over our country’s imminent “invasion” by asylum-seekers from Central America – these poorest of people, walking thousands of miles because they do not own cars – as if they were approaching in tanks and carrying dangerous weapons to try to take over the United States.

That is what Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh assailant, believed, his fear of “invasion” stoked by not only right-wing news outlets but even by our nation’s president, who has Tweeted of the need to send 15,000 active-duty troops to stop the coming “invasion” of our country. And this is why Bowers, who already hated Jews, singled out the Tree of Life Synagogue, since he had presumably read online about the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) – promoted “National Refugee Shabbat” – scheduled for the previous week, when in our lectionary cycle we read the Torah portion of “Lekh-Lekha,” which tells the story of Abraham leaving his natal home in Mesopotamia, and setting out for the “place that God would show him.” Am I blaming the president for this horrendous act? As everyone points out, his own daughter, son-in-law, and several grandchildren are Jewish, and he is a strong supporter of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And yet, and yet … he does not think about the consequences of his words, of his Tweeting, of the sparks of feelings he blows into bonfires at his rallies, nor did he heed the pleas of those grief-stricken Jewish families who asked him to delay his visit to Pittsburgh – he apparently does not see the connection, or does not want see the connection.

I hope everyone has innocent fun on this Halloween weekend. It is fun to pretend to be scared. But the times we are living in are truly scary for many residents of this nation. Let us all reach out a hand to our neighbors, whoever they are, to let them know that we stand with them, we consider them a part of our community, a part of our nation. And don’t forget to VOTE!

Shoshana Brown serves as cantor and spiritual leader at Temple Beth El of Fall River.