Lately, I’ve been paying attention to the growing discrepancy between the norm of masking in leftist circles and the lack of widespread masking everywhere else. Everyone remembers the culture wars at the height of Covid during which political leanings connoted acceptance or rejection of masking and vaccines. Studies have also shown our instinct to trust or distrust a face with or without a mask is based less on whether someone wears a mask and more on what our political influencers believe about masking. That said, as Naomi Klein points out in her recent book Doppelganger, those who locate themselves at the far left or far right can intersect at the margins in a phenomenon called diagonalism where anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers (and indeed antisemites too) sometimes meet.

Does Jewish tradition have anything to say about masking? A scene from Genesis is the inspiration for the custom of badekken at weddings. “Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac. She alighted from the camel and said to the servant, ‘Who is that man walking in the field toward us?’ And the servant said, ‘That is my master.’ So, she took her veil and covered herself” (Gen. 24:64). Biblical scholar Robert Alter writes, “…there is evidence that it was customary to keep the bride veiled in the presence of her bridegroom until the wedding.” The betrothed woman hides her face from her husband-to-be as a sign of modesty, anticipating a wedding night during which hiddenness is revealed and fuller intimacy realized.

Masking because of Covid is, of course, not about modesty. But as the pandemic recedes, two trends are becoming clear among justice-seeking communities – one of which is laudable, the other which gives me real cause for concern. The reason many progressives and leftists say they continue masking is to protect the vulnerable. Passionately committed to disability justice, those who mask up while healthy strive not only to protect themselves from exposure to Covid-19 and other airborne viruses but to address a concern that Covid remains a serious threat to some in our society.

But what about outdoor settings where the CDC suggests masking is generally unnecessary? Why is it common for protestors at, for example, anti-Zionist rallies to cover their faces? Ostensibly, the reason is still disability justice – it’s unlikely but still possible to catch Covid outdoors. But many protestors also speak about their fear of surveillance and reprisals, and the commingling of Covid masks and kaffiyehs of late indicates there’s more going on here.

Ironically, this fear of being targeted and persecuted at rallies was, in previous generations, a reason given by the Ku Klux Klan for its own masking practices. The Supreme Court (in a case unrelated to the Klan) pointed out in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (514 U.S. 334, 357, 1995): “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation — and their ideas from suppression — at the hand of an intolerant society.”

In fact, anti-masking ordinances proliferated around the country in the mid-twentieth century as a response to hooded Klansmen who sought to conceal their identities while propagating anti-Black terror. In 2004 the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a New York state anti-mask law did not violate the free speech rights of supremacist groups such as the KKK. And the Georgia Supreme Court in 1990 upheld misdemeanor charges against a Ku Klux Klansman who was arrested for wearing a mask. “A nameless, faceless figure strikes terror in the human heart,” the court stated. Other voices (such as the ACLU) suggest First Amendment protections extend to group members’ right to hide their faces, so long as their collective actions are lawful.

So, what of leftist protests today, their tendency to mask, and their fear of reprisals? I do have some sympathy for concerns about video surveillance and potential retribution from law enforcement. For example, a decade before Covid, New York authorities utilized a 150-year-old anti-masking law to arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters. As a matter of policy, I think it’s wrong-headed for the government to mandate specific clothing choices (as is done in France), and I believe the state should strive to protect people’s right to anonymity.

But I also worry about what anonymity protects. As we approach November and Russian troll farms gear up to try to steer another American election, I’m reminded of how the relative anonymity of the internet allows all manner of misdeed. Masked protests go even further because, as we saw on January 6 during which many rioters were masked, and as we’ve seen in Berkeley and Manhattan (no one can claim wearing a kaffiyeh alone is about disability justice), the line between lawful protest and mob violence can be precarious. Blending into a crowd protects individuals, but it can also embolden them to say or do things they might not say or do if their face was revealed. And at what point does a mask become an implement of intimidation and not just a tool of protection?

Anonymity may be a right, but I’m not sure it’s a virtue.

A version of this post will appear in Jmore.

My concern is that Claudine Gay has become not a person, but a prop. Dr. Gay is, of course, the former president of Harvard University who resigned under pressure in early January after, among other things, she and her colleagues at UPenn and MIT failed to conclusively state that calls for the genocide of Jewish people would violate their respective schools’ codes of conduct. While I don’t feel qualified to speak to the question of plagiarism and whether her actions in that regard should be disqualifying, I’m deeply unsettled by the circumstances that led to Gay’s resignation. The most insidious claim surrounding these tragic events is that “the Jews” wielded money and power to destroy Claudine Gay. For the haters this is an explicit claim. For Jews expressing a similar sentiment, it’s more like anticipatory anxiety: “you know what they’re going to say….”

I don’t have a position on the resignation itself – I was appalled both by the cowardice and knee-jerk contextualization displayed by these venerable leaders as well as by right-wing politicians’ invidious use of congressional hearings to entrap the academic leaders. The result, of course, is that Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, now holds the dubious distinction of also being the shortest serving one. That, to my mind, is tragic. Can we be concerned about and disappointed in someone at once? In this very challenging post-Oct. 7 era, how do we carry multiple truths and resist platitudinous and reductive assumptions – including self-destructive ones?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book The Insecurity of Freedom contains an essay, “Confusion of Good and Evil” that I find helpful here. Heschel begins the essay with a parable from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: Once upon a time a King received a shocking report about the new harvest: Whoever eats of the crop becomes mad. So, he called together his counselors. Since no other food was available, the alternative was clear. Not to eat of the new harvest would be to die of starvation, to eat would be to become mad. The decision reached by the king was this: We will all have to eat, but let at least a few of us continue to keep in mind that we are mad.

The essay isn’t about antisemitism per se, but Heschel certainly understood the connection between that particular evil and more general human immorality. “It may have been possible prior to 1914,” he wrote in 1956, “to believe with Herbert Spencer…that ‘evil perpetually tends to disappear’…. But the horrors through which we have lived in the past forty years have totally discredited such simple, easy-going optimism.” “Antisemitism is a light sleeper,” Irish scholar and statesman Conor Cruise O’Brien once said, and it has recently awakened with a vengeance, antisemitic incidents rising over 300% in the US since October 7; ancient tropes making for excellent cannon fodder as Hamas weaponized hate and gained sympathizers across the globe.

How is it so many can justify such atrocities? Heschel says, “More frustrating than the fact that evil is real, mighty, and tempting is the fact that it thrives so well in the disguise of the good…. In this world, it seems, the holy and the unholy do not exist apart but are mixed, interrelated, and confounded….” This tendency animates those who tend to blame so-called bad Jewish actors for Jewish suffering. How often have we heard someone say (or maybe said ourselves), that person is increasing antisemitism? – Bibi Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bernie Madoff, Sally Kornbluth, Stephen Miller, George Soros, Bernie Sanders, Miriam Adelson, AIPAC, Jewish Voice for Peace – pick your bad Jew, your bad Jewish family, your bad Jewish organization. The through-line is the claim that they are a shanda fur di goyim, an embarrassment to us in front of our non-Jewish neighbors.

This tendency for us to blame ourselves for hatred of us and violence against us is nothing new, but it’s self-defeating. Of course, there are Jews out there doing and saying things that are ill-informed, sometimes even hateful; we don’t have to pretend otherwise. But when we Jews fall into the trap of self-blame, we only exacerbate the problem. “We all have to eat,” taught Rebbe Nachman in his parable, but the crop is poisoned, and we are always at risk of forgetting antisemitism is a madness that infects civilizations like a virus. Sometimes it rises to pandemic levels. Nevertheless, we must talk less about who among us is bad for the Jews and more about who is behaving badly, interpreting Torah poorly or dangerously.

If some Jews are wielding power or money or influence in dangerous ways, if others are making unsubstantiated claims on social media or using inflammatory rhetoric in Op-eds, we should say so. But let’s be careful not to flatten any people, including our own people, into one facet of their identity. Who someone is is so much more expansive than what someone is. The best way to temper the haters’ tendency to point to “good Jews” or “bad Jews” as cover for their own bigotry is to remind them there is no such thing, just Jews behaving well or behaving badly.

Having reminded ourselves of our own humanity, it should follow that we ought to hold others to the same standard. No more. No less.

This essay is based on the author’s sermon of January 6, 2024. A version of this post will appear in the next issue of Jmore.

Shemini Atzeret morning October 7, we at Beth Am had to make a quick determination how best to acknowledge the unfolding news out of the Gaza Envelope. At the time, all we knew was that a significant attack on Israeli civilians had been carried out. The decision: we would honor but mitigate the joy of the festival by singing a “half-Hallel.” We did the same the following day on Simchat Torah. It was a small adjustment to the liturgy but one expressly dissonant with the spirit of most Jewish holidays. Unlike Passover where Jews traditionally abbreviate the psalms of liberation to recall the suffering of the Egyptians, the fall pilgrimage festivals are z’man simchateinu, the time of our unadulterated joy.

In the coming days and weeks, the world (at least those interested in the truth) would come know the horrifying extent of the terrorist attack against peaceful cities and kibbutzim: over 1200 mostly civilians killed in a most depraved fashion, well over 200 taken hostage (including many elderly, children, and infants), thousands injured. We would also watch a profoundly difficult war unfold, one which Israel did not start but that would exact a dreadful price on many thousands of Palestinian civilians as the IDF worked to neutralize Hamas who callously positioned those civilians between themselves and Israeli forces. Different narratives emerged – about military tactics and the doctrine of proportionality, about who was to blame for the conflict itself and for the plight of Gazans.

For a liberal Zionist like me, someone dedicated both to Jewish national expression and to building and sustaining relationships across difference, it has been a deeply unsettling, even lonely, time. The stunning global rise in antisemitism, the knee-jerk dismissal or justification of Jewish suffering, and the weaponization of that suffering by racist, religious nationalists in the Israeli government – enabling Jewish terrorist violence against West Bank Palestinian civilians – leaves those of us who love peace and pursue justice on unsteady ground.

Fred Rogers used to tell his audience, “Look for the helpers.” This is great advice for young children in times of crisis. For adults taking the long view we must look for the partners. I was heartened by friends and allies who reached out, who sought to understand my perspective – progressive leaders, neighbors, politicians, clergy colleagues, and friends. I was moved by those who shared differing outlooks with patience, understanding and humility. When not entirely fixated on the Israeli hostages, I gravitated to news articles highlighting co-existence, like young Palestinian and Israeli swimmers from East and West Jerusalem who found solace in their shared experience at the YMCA. Or to Oz Ben David and Jalil Dabit, Israeli and Palestinian friends who established a Hummus restaurant together in Berlin back in 2015 and, despite the immense pain both experienced in October and their different perspectives on the war, managed to double-down on their shared enterprise.

These stories, friendships and strong personal relationships helped buoy me through moments of disillusion with leaders of organizations like CASA and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, organizations I believe are doing essential work in Maryland on behalf of overlooked and under-resourced communities in my neighborhood and beyond. Conversations with Christian and Muslim colleagues, too, helped me not lose faith in inter-religious work to which I’ve dedicated my rabbinate.

A great disappointment was with the leader of Maryland’s Council on American-Islamic Relations with whom I had stood in solidarity on numerous occasions over years. My young son and I joined her to speak up against draconian immigration policies. My teenage daughter worked with her and CAIR to campaign against bullying. Nevertheless, unprovoked, she attempted to bully me and others into accepting her twisted view of Israel. The Attorney General took notice and condemned her hateful conduct.

At Beth Am, even as I supported Israel’s responsibility to defend its citizens, I spotlighted the shared society work of Vivian Silver, peace activist and social justice warrior who fought every day of her life for a pragmatic and lasting solution to the conflict. Vivian had been thought to be among those abducted on October 7, but it was later revealed she had been murdered in her safe room on Kibbutz Be’eri – the same kibbutz to which I made a pilgrimage with rabbinic colleagues on October 30. And even while clearly expressing my own views on the war, I’ve worked to preserve Beth Am as a big tent congregation, listening and learning from different points of view within our community. “Enlarge the site of your tent…, lengthen the ropes, and drive the pegs firm!” (Isaiah 54:2).

This month of Kislev/December, we celebrate Hanukkah and the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks. But we also celebrate the survival of Jewish peoplehood after contentious and even bloody internal conflicts. This November, I was inspired to join the massive crowd of marchers on the National Mall. This Hanukkah, I pray for continued partnership across difference and fellowship within our ranks. May we continue to find common ground even when that ground is shaky and our perspectives divergent. This year has already been an exceedingly difficult one for our people and for the world, but I refuse to give up on the possibilities of partnership. As philosopher Michael Walzer writes in his Exodus and Revolution, “The [only] way to the [promised] land is through the wilderness. There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.”

A Version of this post will appear in the December 2023 issue of Jmore.

“If there ain’t no justice then there ain’t no peace” sang Prince on his final album. Final, because he would die tragically in 2016, the following year. The line comes from the first track of that album, “Baltimore.”

Nobody got in nobody’s way

So, I guess you could say it was a good day

At least a little better than the day in Baltimore

Does anybody hear us pray

For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?

Peace is more than the absence of war….

Turns out, the Jewish concept of shalom (peace) is also about much more than the absence of war. In fact, the slogan “no justice, no peace,” which resounded through the streets of Baltimore in 2015 and around the world in 2020, has strong support in Jewish tradition.

What is the relationship between justice and peace? Peace, like justice, is about persistence. Peace isn’t a state of being, it’s a way of being. Hillel says, “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving fellow creatures and bringing them closer to Torah” (Pirkei Avot (1:12). Peace is to be pursued, not just loved. This is probably why the Psalmist writes, “Shun evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:15).

The most famous prayer Jews say about peace is probably Oseh Shalom. We say it at the end of every Amidah and at the end of every Mourner’s Kaddish. “Oseh shalom bimromav… May the One who makes peace in the heavens…” (Job 25:2), “hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu, also bring peace upon us.” The language of the prayer is strange. Surely, we need peace here on earth, but why in heaven? Isn’t heaven the place where peace reigns? Actually, no. In a Jewish idiom, the cosmos is not a perfect place filled with fluffy clouds where everyone is happy. The divine realm is a place of dynamic tension.

Consider the creation narrative. “The earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water” (Gen. 1:2). When God speaks the world into existence, it is a response to chaos, not order. God imposes peace (oseh shalom bimromav). The prayer asks that God play a similar role in our world, helping us to achieve peace here as well.

The relationship between justice and peace becomes clear as early as Chapter 9 of Genesis when the world has become supersaturated with hamas (violent lawlessness), and God determines the only solution is to send a flood and start creation anew. When, finally, a truce is declared, a rainbow appears in the sky. But don’t mistake the rainbow for just some pretty cosmic event. The ancients saw in the rainbow a weapon of the gods, and the Torah picks up the metaphor. Maimonides explains, God relinquishes the cosmic bow, putting it down with the business end facing upward. “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth” (Gen. 9:16).

The Talmud elaborates: “As Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Why is written: “Dominion and fear are with God; God makes peace in the high places” (Job 25:2)? [It means that] the sun has never seen the concave side of the new moon, nor has it ever seen the concave side of a rainbow…[Why?] So that the worshippers of the sun should not say [as though the sun is a god] that the sun is [shooting arrows at those who deny its divinity], using the rainbow as its bow.” The concave side of the rainbow faces away from the heaven so that humanity knows they will never again be in the crosshairs of divine justice. “Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deu. 16:20). Which means it’s up to us to pursue both justice and peace.

Peace, Prince sang, “is more than the absence of war.” Shalom is, by definition, a thing to be pursued. That’s the fundamental relationship between peace and justice. Each needs to be sought and vigilance in pursuit of one is inseparable from the other. This is the fundamental problem with “broken windows” style policing that led to the death of Freddie Gray. Pursuing order at the expense of justice ignores systemic problems at best and exacerbates them at worst. As Maryland Senator Ben Cardin said in 2020 when he introduced his bill to prevent racial profiling, “the preamble to the constitution mentions justice before tranquility.”

We crave tranquility, we yearn for quiet. But quiet for some must not mean suffering for others. We earn peace by seeking it. And until justice is achieved, peace will remain elusive.

No justice, no peace.

A version of this post will appear in the September issue of Jmore.

Recently, I was listening to a well-known scholar and Jewish educator interview a famous sportswriter. The scholar was asking the sportswriter to elaborate about baseball and basketball, American Jews’ special relationship with sports in general and baseball in particular. The interviewer asked, again and again, questions about what it meant for Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg to sit out games because of Jewish observances, or what specifically could be at the root of the enduring romance between Jewish Americans and the sport of baseball.

Each time the scholar would pose a question, the sportswriter would tell a story or recount facts and figures but would not really answer the scholar’s questions. One party would try to examine hidden truths; the other party would relate little-known historical details and anecdotes. As a listener, I found myself amused and frustrated by the way these two men kept talking past one another. But then, of course, the Jewish educator should’ve known better. Journalists, including sportswriters, aren’t responsible for conveying lessons; that’s the job of educators and rabbis. Journalists tell stories, recount facts, chronicle history. Understanding what these facts or stories mean is the responsibility of the reader, the listener, or of teachers.

As a rabbi who serves a congregation in an historic Jewish building within a majority Black neighborhood, I spend a fair amount of time (in this column or other writings, in sermons and in classes I teach) teasing out meaning from daily encounters with friends and neighbors. But Beth Am, itself, is also a resource for meaning making. Now that the pandemic is largely in our rearview mirror, we are redoubling our efforts as an anchor and convener.

Monday, May 22 at 7:00 pm, Beth Am will host Awakening from the Dream, a conversation with bestselling author Jonathan Eig. I’m privileged to welcome Bishop Donte Hickman and members of Southern Baptist Church, along with the greater Jewish, Reservoir Hill, and Baltimore communities to our historic sanctuary. In his monumental new book, Eig explores the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The book (I have an advance copy!) benefits from new interviews with those who knew and loved King, as well as recently declassified FBI files revealing a stunning level of surveillance. King comes across as a flawed yet visionary leader whose humanity and sacrifice makes his life’s story even more compelling than the mythological figure who has too often replaced the actual man in casual conversation.

Eig, an active member of his Chicago synagogue who hosts a weekly podcast with his rabbi, was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and other outlets long before he became a celebrated biographer. The “whats” (well-researched facts and historic details) are presented with accuracy and texture. But, equally importantly, the book invites questions about the purpose and impact of King’s life, spurring the reader to consider why he was so driven, how he endured so much vitriol including constant threats to his life and safety, and what drove him (until the very end) to keep pushing for a more just and equitable America.

Those questions and more will be at issue as Bishop Hickman, a highly respected leader in the Baltimore Black Baptist Church who spoke recently at Governor Wes Moore’s inauguration, engages in conversation with a highly respected chronicler of transformational American leaders. This summer marks 60 years since the March on Washington, but as time marches on some of us may forget that King’s March sought to achieve specific goals: “jobs and freedom.” All these years later, unemployment rates for African Americans remain lower than their white or Asian American counterparts. The US incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any nation on the planet – disproportionately Black and Latino men. Recently, two duly elected Black lawmakers in Tennessee were removed from their posts (only to be reinstated soon after by their constituents) for a breach of decorum. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been rendered toothless by the Supreme Court.

The fight for racial and social justice remains pressing. New possibilities for Black-Jewish partnerships are many. Dr. King’s life and work has never been more relevant. Come and learn how the ever-emerging facts of that storied life can and should inform the work of our own.

A version of this post will appear in Jmore.

The Chofetz Chayim, a nineteenth century sage, was once asked to appear in court as a character witness for one of his students who had been accused of spying by the czarist police. The story goes that, before he summoned the rabbi to the witness stand, the lawyer approached the judge and said, “Your honor, the rabbi who is about to testify has an impeccable reputation among his fellow Jews. They say that one day he came home and saw a thief rummaging through his living room. The frightened thief climbed out a window and ran off with some of the rabbi’s possessions, and the rabbi ran after him, shouting, ‘I declare all my property ownerless,’ so that the thief would not be liable for the crime.” The judge looked at the lawyer with suspicion in his eyes: “Do you believe that story really happened?” “I don’t know, your honor,” the lawyer replied, “but they don’t tell stories like that about you and me.”

The story is ostensibly about reputation and how Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known by the title of his masterwork on the laws of ethical speech, earned his. But the true moral of the story, the underlying reason for Kagan’s renown, was his compassion. The Chofetz Chayim was someone who went out of his way to remove stumbling blocks from before the blind, to judge others for good. Bryan Stevenson titled his 2014 book Just Mercy to remind the reader that justice without mercy is fundamentally unjust.

There’s a story in the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 7a) about the tension between strict justice and compassion. After one rabbi suggests that God in heaven prays just as we humans do, the Talmud asks: “What then does God pray?” The response: “Rav Zutra bar Tovia said in the name of Rav, ‘May it be My will that My mercy will overcome My anger.’”

The Rabbis of antiquity envision two thrones in heaven: a throne of strict judgment (din) and another of mercy (rachamim), with God oscillating between the two. Our Sages speculate that perhaps humanity doesn’t fully deserve the compassion God bestows upon us. “Rav Yehuda says in the name of Rav: There are twelve hours in the day. During the first three, the Holy One sits and engages in Torah study. During the second three hours, God sits and judges the entire world. Once the Holy One sees that the world has rendered itself liable to destruction, God arises from the throne of judgment and sits on the throne of mercy [and the world is not destroyed]” (Avodah Zarah 3b).

I sometimes wonder why I felt called to serve a congregation like Beth Am whose nearly 50-year history in its 100-year-old building in Central-West Baltimore sets it apart from most American congregations. There isn’t a singular answer, of course. In part it’s because my parents chose to raise me in a socio-economically and racially diverse Chicago suburb where my commitment to pluralism was forged at a young age. No less important is my sincere belief that the essence of Jewish tradition is rooted in God’s desire for us to bring about a more just world.

But the mystic in me wonders if perhaps my very name, the Hebrew name bestowed upon me by my parents, foreshadowed my devotion to justice (and just mercy). I am named for my great-grandfather Yerachmiel, a name that means “May God have mercy.” My second Hebrew name is Daniel which means “God is my judge.” Which is to say, my parents (unknowingly but fittingly) chose to fashion my name according to the Talmudic teaching, placing the quality of mercy before that of strict justice.

Compassion seems out of fashion these days. In the torrent of revenge flicks or politicians and pundits calling for victory at any cost, unqualified justice reigns supreme. But remember the teaching above from Avodah Zarah; it is mercy that is life sustaining, and it is mercy in relationship with justice that ought to guide our actions as well. After The Holy One spends three hours studying Torah and another three judging the world, God moves to the throne of mercy. What, then, does God do with the final six hours in the twelve-hour day? The Talmud continues: “During the third set of three hours, the Holy One sits and sustains the entire world, from the horns of wild oxen to the eggs of lice. During the fourth three hours, God sits and makes sport with the leviathan, as it is stated: “There is leviathan, whom You made to play with” (Psalms 104:26).

Having chosen to save the world, God invests in its future, ensuring every creature, big and small, can play its part. The fruits of all this labor? After work, God gets to play. Leviathan is a mythical sea creature, God’s pet. The best analogy is to a human tossing a ball around with her dog in the fading light of an early evening after work.

What is sport? Why is leisure so important? Because the lives with which we’ve been entrusted must be lives worth living. There is justice. There is mercy that tempers our tendency to create more harm in response to injustice than the initial injustice itself. But then, after mercy, should we be open to it, there can be joy.

A version of this post will appear in Jmore.