Tisha B’Av is not a pilgrimage festival; observed this year on July 18, it’s the inverse, a reminder of pilgrimages that were once possible until the Temple was destroyed on this Hebrew date in 587 BCE. When Jewish communities mark the 9^th of Av and mourn the absence of the Temple, we are also lamenting an interruption of Jewish history, the end of a certain way of Jewish being.

Pilgrimage in Jewish tradition was largely focused on the Temple, Solomon’s First Jerusalem Temple or its successor which stood until 70 CE when it was destroyed by the Romans. But since then, we have other experiences of pilgrimage. Hassidic Jews regularly travel to graves of Hassidic masters or early mystical thinkers, like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai at whose grave 45 people tragically lost their lives in a crowd crush on Lag B’Omer this year. Jewish travelers of all kinds make pilgrimage to important Jewish sites around the world from the first ghetto in Venice or Death Camps in Germany and Poland, to Maimonides’ synagogue in Cordoba, Spain, to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv where, on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, eight hours before the British Mandate of Palestine was due to end.

Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey captures, in her poem “Pilgrimage” (2006), the multivalence of journeys to sites of memory:

Here, the Mississippi carved
            its mud-dark path, a graveyard

for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
            Here, the river changed its course,

turning away from the city
            as one turns, forgetting, from the past—

the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
            above the river's bend—where now

the Yazoo fills the Mississippi's empty bed.
            Here, the dead stand up in stone, white

marble, on Confederate Avenue. 

The poem describes a trip to her hometown of Vicksburg where a battle was fought that marked a turning point in the Civil War. And yet, Trethewey laments the ease with which subsequent generations ignore the painful history of the antebellum south: “We sleep in their beds, the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped in flowers – funereal – a blur of petals against the river’s gray.”

The obliviousness of many current Americans to American history compounds our obliviousness to the ways systemic racism is manifest in our day. Pilgrimage is about bearing witness to the past, in the present, while gazing into the future.

Working toward justice in Baltimore is becoming better acquainted with its history. Recently I had some extra time after meeting some friends for a drink, so I walked up S. Durham Street where Billie Holiday was raised. After Chadwick Boseman died last year, and my kids were devastated for his next Black Panther movie that would not come, we watched Boseman’s Thurgood and then made an aliyat haregel, a walking pilgrimage that Shabbat afternoon to 1632 Division St., Justice Marshall’s childhood home, which is less than a mile from our house.

There are numerous African American historical sites in Baltimore and throughout Maryland. Some are well known and painstakingly maintained. Others are less distinguished in appearance but no less important. A simple rowhome in West Baltimore can remind us of where (to paraphrase the poet) the torrent of Jim Crow, in the capable hands of a young civil rights attorney, began to “change its course.” A visit to Port Discovery Children’s museum can also be an opportunity to pause and pay homage to abducted Africans who were once sold at auction on that site.

Some of these historic places are easy to find at Explore Baltimore or Visit Maryland. Others require a bit more digging. Some of these sites instill pride, like the location of The Royal Theater Marquee at 1329 Pennsylvania Avenue where Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Etta James – all the greats – performed. Other sites impart horror, like the 44 places throughout Maryland where white terrorists lynched Black men, women and children between 1854 and 1933 – including 15-year-old Howard Cooper in Towson.

Against a tidal wave of states and Republican lawmakers banning classroom instruction on the impact of systemic racism, we must continue to make pilgrimages – to all the places they insist have no relevance to ongoing 21^st century injustices.

A version of this post will appear in Jmore.

As I write this, Minnesota awaits the results of the Derrick Chauvin trial after his lynching of George Floyd even as that state and the country are once again reeling from the murder of another unarmed Black man. And in Virginia, a uniformed Black and Latino man was shown the business end of a deadly weapon and pepper sprayed after officers failed to notice his lawfully displayed temporary tags. Vaccine access remains challenging for communities of color who, frequently experiencing victim blaming, are labeled “hesitant” when hesitancy among white evangelicals outpaces any other demographic. Justice in America is elusive as always.

I’ve written for this column on relational justice which I define as the linchpin of social justice.

My contention is that without relational work, addressing policy as a lasting solution to injustice is illusory. From slavery to reconstruction to Jim Crow to redlining to mass incarceration and police brutality, human beings have a way of ignoring, undermining and sabotaging progress as we nurture the inexhaustible human proclivity to scapegoat, marginalize and harm the other. Systemic solutions must be fought for and achieved. But hateful policies will always prevail when there are hateful people calling the shots.

Recently, Terry Gross (Fresh Air) interviewed Palestinian cookbook author Reem Kassis. Kassis told this story:  When she published her first book, she sent a copy to Michael Solomonov, noted chef of Zahav, James Beard winner and fellow Philadelphia resident. Along with the book, she shared her story of eating at his restaurant years before and having both positive feelings about the food which reminded her of her mother’s cooking and somewhat negative feelings about why the best Palestinian cuisine she had tasted in America was being served in an Israeli restaurant. 

Solomonov was touched by her story and invited her to meet for coffee. The two became friends. Kassis reflected on the friendship. She had assumed that as the “face of Israeli cuisine,” he must be anti-Palestinian or at least deny the origin of the food he serves. It turns out this wasn’t the case at all. “Once you get to know someone on an individual level,” she said, “you realize how many misconceptions you probably hold of that person.”

One important thing to keep in mind: Simply getting to know someone (or multiple someones) of a different race or nationality doesn’t bring about justice. There’s always the danger of tokenism, thinking a person is exceptional, viewing that person as, in the words of local activist Dayvon Love, a “special negro” instead of a “helpless negro.” Both, of course, are deeply problematic. Michael Solomonov or Barrack Obama are exceptional people to be sure. But if they are exceptional as a Jew or an African American we’ve missed the point. Just how many people from another identity group does one have to know to avoid tokenism? That’s not really the issue. Most men and boys in their lives know multiple women and girls quite well, and sexism is hardly vanquished. The difference between inclusion and diversity is “how” we know, not whom.

But here’s what I think is clear: There are far too many folks in Baltimore, Maryland, and the United States who have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to do the work of relational justice. What’s the outcome? In her book The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee points out that when white communities around the country were forced to integrate their public swimming pools, many of them drained their pools rather than comply. When the enfranchised and disenfranchised don’t know one another, when those with power don’t have relationships with those who have been stripped of power, they will often hurt themselves rather than help someone else. That, of course, erodes our essential and shared humanity, hurts everyone to some degree and helps no one.

The Talmud (Ta’anit 23a) underscores both the importance and high stakes of relationship building when it teaches “either relationship or death.” That humans are social beings is no surprise. That those relationships can be the instrument of our collective salvation is a fundamentally Jewish teaching. Why relational justice? Because relationships and the empathy they foster are an essential ingredient in the recipe for achieving sustainable pro-social change.

A version of this post appears in the May 2021 issue of Jmore

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote, “…we are in many respects at the mercy of external causes and are tossed about like the waves of the sea when driven by contrary winds, unsure of the outcome and of our fate” (The Ethics, Part III, Prop. 59). I suspect this is how many of us feel throughout much of our lives. I feel this way on a recurring basis, particularly as my life and career have meant navigating complex race and class dynamics in my own neighborhood. Just when I think I have my bearings, I’m reminded there is so very much to learn, and I am so very ignorant. This isn’t false humility, and it’s hard to admit, particularly for someone to whom others frequently look for guidance and direction.

I am motivated to share this having recently read author and activist D. Watkins’ reflections on his own insecurity and perceived failure with regard to 46-year-old Dante “Tater” Barksdale, the Safe Streets violence interrupter who fell victim to violence on the streets of his beloved city. “I know enough to know,” writes Watkins, “that the world around me doesn’t want to see the hurt I have for Dante and the dozens of other friends I’ve lost over the past few years. The world doesn’t want to see it about as much as I don’t want to share it, so we all continue to perform instead.” Watkins mourns performance as a coping strategy for trauma and grief. Barksdale, he says, was “…one of the few people who would tell the truth about the things you don’t want to hear.”

Watkins may be too hard on himself, as he is someone who makes a living pointing out uncomfortable truths, but that’s hardly for me to say. I suspect what he’s really getting at is a question of integrity. Is it phony, it is failure, to lead different private and public lives, to hide our pain from the world? The sage Rava suggests it might be when he says, “Any Torah scholar whose insides do not match his outsides is no scholar at all” (Bavli Yoma 72b). And another Talmudic tractate (Pesachim 113b) suggests God is said to despise three types of people, one of them being “a person who says one thing but means another.”

So, D. Watkins feels he’s failing his late friend when he puts on a happy face or glosses over his pain in his writing. I feel something similar when I write in this column with pride about our shul’s relational justice work but avoid sharing some of the more painful personal stories. Like my friend and neighbor for whom I would provide frequent support of various kinds until I tried to put him off while spending time with my kids and he sent a series of antisemitic and hurtful texts. Or a woman who lives on my block and who is still nasty to me when I see her because, nearly a decade ago at 2 a.m., exhausted and anxious about not sleeping on the eve of Yom Kippur, I called my next-door neighbor and left a passionate voicemail insisting he deal with his incessantly barking pit bulls. He and I eventually worked it out. I apologized for my tone. He did better dealing with the dogs. Then, he moved away. But the woman (a friend of his) still ignores me when I say hello or mutters hurtful things under her breath.

What keeps me going, though, is both a sense of duty to work toward a more just society and an inner voice, honed over many years, reminding me not retreat when things get uncomfortable and hard. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr prayed (and which was later adapted into AA’s Serenity Prayer): “[God], give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.” Seeking justice isn’t easy because the struggle is fundamentally born out of resistance to complacency and discomfort. Integrity requires vulnerability, to be sure, but true failure is only when one determines the arduous journey toward greater fairness and equity is no longer worth taking at all.

A version of this post appears in the March 2021 issue of Jmore.

Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg famously quipped about Jewish denominationalism: “I don’t care what denomination you belong to, as long as you’re embarrassed by it.” I’ve always taken his words to mean that, while Jewish denominations are useful in clarifying theological positions or practice, too much energy is put into what divides us. And when we focus so very much on what separates us, we run the risk of forgetting what unites us. Greenberg thinks we should be embarrassed about that.

But there is something that unites us that we should also be embarrassed about: race. Somewhere between 80-90% of American Jews are white. This wasn’t always the case. While it’s true that Jews were considered “free white persons” by the 1790 Naturalization Act (and therefore granted citizenship), we were regularly discriminated against as a class. There were neighborhoods in which we could not live, restaurants and clubs from which we were banned and quotas at major universities, including here in Baltimore. In the post WWII era, Jews were increasingly accepted into the majority in a process that has been called “becoming white.”

During the Trump era with its stunning rise in antisemitic rhetoric and violence, some Jews question whether we still belong to the white race. But Jews with white skin consistently reap the benefits of whiteness, despite the very real threat antisemitism poses. David Schraub of UC Berkeley uses the term “Conditional Whiteness. “…An American Jew whose grandparents immigrated from Austria might unambiguously benefit from White privilege when passing a highway patrol car, but not enjoy it in any way whatsoever when White supremacists are looking for a target to harass.”

Traub’s observation was driven home for me January 6 when the US Capitol building was ransacked by a mob of white supremacists. They fashioned nooses, carried and shouted racist slogans and wore clothing with abhorrent antisemitic messages. This was whiteness taken to it most brutal and sordid extreme – a brash and violent assertion of power by members of what they considered a superior race. This behavior on behalf of and in the name of whiteness was made worse by its having been incited by the president himself, leading to his historic second impeachment.

Given the legacy of white supremacy in this country, I’ve been thinking a lot about how Jews who look like me ought to feel about our whiteness. My answer? We should feel embarrassed. While there are many virtuous white people, whiteness as a social construct is no virtue. James Baldwin makes this point in his essay “The White Man’s Guilt.” “The record [of white supremacy] is there for all to read…. It might as well be written in the sky. One wishes that Americans, white Americans, would read, for their own sakes, this record, and stop defending themselves against it…. The fact that they have not yet been able to do this – to face their history, to change their lives – hideously menaces this country.”

The recent menacing attack on our democracy is only one, albeit stunning, reminder of how important it is for white Jews to paradoxically accept and reject our whiteness. Jewishness should be a source of pride. As should Gay pride. As should Blackness for African Americans. But whiteness exists only to marginalize, disenfranchise and do harm to non-white people. For this reason, describing our whiteness thoughtfully is key. How best to do so?

“White Jews” is accurate but unnuanced. “Ashkenazi Jews” doesn’t take into account Jews of Color whose familial and cultural traditions can derive from Eastern Europe. “Jews with white skin privilege” is better because it honors our Jewishness while acknowledging the unearned benefit which we are afforded. The only problem is that this term says nothing about our Jewish responsibility to help dismantle racism. So, lately, I’ve been leaning toward another phrase, one that is equally honest about who we are and the America to which we should aspire:

Jewish and also white – but trying not to be.

A version of this post appears in the February 2021 issue of Jmore.

My family and I were recently volunteering for the nonpartisan group Baltimore Votes at the Highlandtown Pratt Library early voting site. A Black man walked out of the polling place, and we offered him some refreshments and a sign to put in his window. He declined, clearly in a hurry.

My son called out, “Thank you for voting!” As he was walking away, the man briefly turned toward us and said, “Thank you for not suppressing!” I thought to myself, “Is the bar really that low?”

Unfortunately, I think it is.

Against the backdrop of the pandemic and many sins of the outgoing president and his administration, a silver lining has been the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the MeToo movement, the Women’s March, the youth-led March for Our Lives and, overall, more widespread grassroots advocacy than this country has ever seen in its 245-year history.

Each of these movements and more have (rightly) demanded we move beyond calls for basic civility toward the need for structural and systemic change. Many Americans have become more sensitized to the ways politeness, colorblindness and liberal do-goodership have been complicit in maintaining systems of oppression against women, LGBTQ people, Black and brown people, Jews, the disabled and more.

Civility isn’t enough. Civility can actually be part of the problem because it can mean avoiding confrontation and essential truth-telling. To dismantle racism and sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism, we need to go deeper; we need to work harder.

I think this is why I was so taken aback by CNN commentator Van Jones’ widely shared emotional speech after Joe Biden was declared to be the next president of the United States. Speaking through his tears, Jones said, “It’s easier to be a parent this morning. It’s easier to be a dad. It’s easier to tell your kids that character matters. It matters. Telling the truth matters. Being a good person matters.”

Jones was speaking an essential truth: civility is also important. In Yiddish, if you want to describe someone truly admirable, you call them a mentsch, a fundamentally good person. Being a mentsch isn’t about fighting for justice vs. speaking and acting with compassion. It’s about both.

Provocation without compassion can be cruel. And cruelty should be no one’s aspiration. As my late father used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

I didn’t hear Van Jones live, of course; I was in the middle of leading Shabbat morning services. But I did get word about the election outcome soon after CNN called it. I had just finished teaching a section from the Babylonian Talmud about minhag s’dom, the practices for which, in the rabbinic imagination, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah needed to be destroyed. Many crimes are listed but for me, the most upsetting was the way even kindness was weaponized.

“When a poor person would come to Sodom, each and every Sodomite would give him a dinar [a coin], and the name of the giver was written on each dinar. And [then] they would not give or sell him bread. When he died [of hunger], each and every person would come and take his dinar” (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a).

It’s one thing to systematically withhold assistance. That, in of itself, is unacceptable as an expression of basic cultural mores. But to provide assistance as a false flag and then deny human beings the dignity of acquiring vital sustenance is brutality on a different order of magnitude.

The emotional release Van Jones experienced when he learned a man known for pettiness and cruelty would no longer occupy the White House was a catharsis felt by many on Saturday morning, Nov. 7.

The work ahead of us, though, is daunting. In the coming months and years, we’ll need to rediscover our societal compassion while resisting the complacency that allows civility to mask the need for truth, reconciliation and justice. 

A version of this posted appears in the December 2020 issue of Jmore

In a 1947 student paper at Morehouse College, a young Martin Luther King, wrote: “The function of education…is… to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society….We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education” (The Maroon Tiger, 1947). What Dr. King, the master teacher, championed then, and throughout his life and career, was learning embedded in moral pursuits. He believed in intellectual and ethical curiosity, and he wanted to know and understand not just his own people but also the other, as exemplified by his alliance with the Jewish community. Did you know that the week after Dr. King was assassinated, he was supposed to attend the Passover seder of his friend and collaborator, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel?

It’s always been true that people don’t know what they don’t know. But these days, too many people don’t seem to want to know anything new. And we don’t want to know about one another. Long before we were quarantined in our homes, we were siloed on social media, segregated in cities, suburbs and exurbs, not just geographically but emotionally and spiritually and intellectually. We’ve nearly perfected societal incuriosity. Many have noticed the world is on fire. Some act to put it out. Few wonder why, so just as often we add fuel to the fire.

Abraham, according to the midrash, also noticed the world was on fire:

“Rabbi Yitzchak taught: [Abraham] was like a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a bira doleket, a burning palace. He said, ‘Is it possible this palace lacks someone to look after it?’ The owner of the building peeked out [of a window] and said, ‘I am the Master of this palace.’ Similarly,” teaches the midrash, “because Abraham our father [seeing the world on fire] said, “Is it possible there is no one in charge here?” the Holy One of Blessing peeked out and said to him, “I am the Master of the Universe.” … Hence, God said to Abraham (in Gen. 12) “Go forth!” (Bereishit Rabbah Lech L’cha 39,1).

Abraham noticed the fire consuming the world, but he was also curious enough to name it and question whether it must be so. We often think of him as a man of faith, but what is the nature of Abraham’s faith? First he notices and questions why. Second, he cares about the outcome; he’s morally curious, Third, he takes action; he speaks out. “One shouldn’t remain indifferent,” says Deuteronomy (22:3), We must get involved. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question,” Dr. King once told a crowd in Montgomery, AL, “is ‘What are you doing for others?’”

But, Abraham didn’t begin with faith in God. In fact, he questioned God’s very existence! The world is like a majestic palace on fire and no one is putting it out, so perhaps the owner’s away?! Perhaps there’s no one home?! How does Abraham become a man of faith? He listens. He learns. He takes responsibility not for setting the palace ablaze but for mobilizing an army, a legion of family members and followers, those of his faith, and those whose faiths would grow out of his but who say “enough!” Abraham is, among other things, a warrior for social justice.

You think it’s an accident he calls God out at Sodom and Gemorah, that he negotiates for every life he can? That this neophyte has the audacity to say to God, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?” (Gen. 18:25). This give and take, this divine-human shared responsibility for the state of the world is at the core of faith. When we find the world is burning, we don’t get to give up. We don’t get to go home. First we must investigate the cause and put out the fire. And then we must start building it again.

When we’re curious, we become holy firefighters.

A version of this post appears in the November 2020 issue of Jmore

“Alas! Lonely sits the city Once great with people! She that was great among nations is become like a widow”

Lamentations 1:1

I’ve dedicated my career to the celebration of urban living and, in particular, urban Judaism. In my adult life I’ve gravitated toward cities, attracted to their racial and cultural diversity, museums, restaurants and population density.

But lately cities feel like they’re under siege. COVID-19 has led to a rethinking of proximity as a way of life. Home purchases in remote settings are booming. Space, away from others, has become a more coveted residential choice than any time, perhaps, since post-War suburban migration and white flight.

And then there’s politics. Progressive policies take root more easily in urban settings. Even in the most conservative of states, cities are blue enclaves surrounded by a sea of red. As a rule, the further you are from urban centers, the more conservative you tend to be. With the election looming, some who prefer a different administration are wondering whether they ought to abandon cities for exurban settings where electoral math means their votes would bear significantly more weight.

Are cities strong or are they vulnerable? Is the nation better with strong cities? When Moses sends spies to reconnoiter the land of Canaan, he wants them to “…see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they are strong or weak, whether they are few or many…whether it is good or bad; and what cities they are that they dwell in, whether in camps, or in strongholds” (Num. 13:18-19). Multiple commentators surmise that “camps” vs. “strongholds” means open vs. fortified cities. 16th century Italian exegete Ovadiah Sforno says open cities suggest “a sign they felt secure, not expecting any war” whereas walled or fortified cities means “the inhabitants were afraid of being invaded.”

Sforno points out that great military leaders preclude the necessity of fortification. According to Judges (5:7), Deborah the warrior-prophet was the harbinger of both victory and open society: “Deliverance ceased, ceased in Israel, till you arose, O Deborah, arose, O mother, in Israel!” (The Hebrew word for “deliverance” in this context can also mean “dwellers of unwalled cities”). The ultimate goal of war not simply armistice but a society no longer under siege, so it no longer behaves like it is. Peace is about peace of mind as much as anything else.

But peace of mind is in short supply these days. City-dwellers feel under siege. The president punishes urban enclaves for welcoming refugees, threatens to withhold federal funding from cities he deems “anarchist jurisdictions” because of their citizens’ ongoing fight for racial justice, and dog whistles to militant rural white supremacists to defend the white house against a legal and legitimate outcome of the election.

It may be enough to make some lose hope in cities, but not me. My resolve, my faith in the importance and promise of urban life is only strengthened by these developments. The pandemic will end, but the isolation it’s foisted upon us is a reminder of just how much we need community. Abandoning the density and diversity of urban settings for electoral reasons is a Faustian bargain that may only serve to reinforce the very phenomena (e.g. institutional racism) those voting for progressive policies wish to dismantle. Greater diversity (of race, culture and ideology) in exurban settings may serve to soften some hearts and minds, but cities are designed for proximity as much as variety. Cosmopolitanism is tough to maintain beyond the metropolis.

So, instead of losing hope, I pray for the restoration of urban life. In the words of Jeremiah (33:10-11): “…Again there shall be heard in this place, which you say is ruined…—in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate…, the voice of bridegroom and bride…. For I will restore the fortunes of the land as of old” (Jer. 33:10-11).

A version of this post appears in the October 2020 issue of Jmore

In his new book “Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City” (One World), Wes Moore describes his experience on Apr. 27, 2015, the day Freddie Gray was laid to rest.

Moore had attended the funeral but left early to catch a plane to Boston for a speech he was giving on urban poverty. After the funeral, parts of West Baltimore boiled over, but Moore was already hundreds of miles away.

“As I sat in that Boston hotel room and watched my city descend into a state of emergency, I experienced a strange feeling,” he writes. “I felt guilty being away, but it wasn’t just that. An audience in Boston would listen to me talk about poverty, but at a historic moment in my own city’s history, I was MIA.”

Moore’s recollection triggered some of my own memories of the Baltimore Uprising five years ago.

I am proud of the way Beth Am’ers and others in the Jewish community showed up during those five days – Apr. 25-29 — which are the focus of the book Moore penned with journalist Erica L. Green.

There was a protest convened Apr. 25 by Jews United for Justice during which I took the longest Shabbos walk of my life. It was one of many demonstrations that day converging on City Hall to demand justice for Freddie Gray and other victims of police brutality. I am proud that Miriam and I kept our children home Apr. 28, the day after the worst of the rioting, to join thousands in West Baltimore and help clean up the damage.

I’m proud of the way so many of my congregants, including those who are not regular shul-goers, showed up on Saturday, May 2, to worship on Beth Am’s historic front steps.

But as I read Moore’s words about Apr. 27, the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, I was reminded that I, too, was MIA that night.

The funeral occurred in the late morning. Police were concerned about internet chatter and potential violence. Paranoid and over-prepared, the Baltimore Police Department showed up in full riot gear shutting down public transportation and blocking streets.

Students leaving school for the day were stranded at Mondawmin Mall. Some were looking for a fight. The vast majority, frightened and frustrated, wanted to go home but were prevented from doing so. By 3:30 police reported bottles and bricks had been thrown.

Things deteriorated from there. My house and our shul are about a mile from Mondawmin. Four years later, during our building renovations, our congregation would rent space in a church across the street from the mall because it’s within walking distance.

But that night, the whole world would come to know about Greater Mondawmin, about Penn North and the CVS on Pennsylvania Ave., about Sandtown-Winchester where Freddie Gray was born, raised, lead poisoned and deprived of most every possible opportunity to grow up healthy.

They would learn about how he was arrested and placed shackled (and cavalierly or maliciously unseat-belted) in a van, and how he came out injured beyond saving.

After the rioting and looting began, a call went out to local clergy. A number of my Christian and some Muslim colleagues showed up that night, to stand between angry police and fed-up youth.

I wanted to be there. Like Wes Moore, I, too, felt guilty not being there, but I knew I could not. That’s because I was on my way to Lutherville to lead a shiva minyan for the mother of a congregant.

I knew others could stand in the breach. I was proud to see how my colleagues gathered and, holding hands in the street that evening, helped to calm nerves. My task was to calm others’ nerves, to bear witness to a different grief.

In the weeks, months and years to come, Baltimore has been undertaking a reckoning. Perhaps you, too, reader, have grappled with your feelings, actions or inactions five years ago. Now, with the meteoric rise of the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, there is a growing sense that more of the country is willing to ask tough questions about systemic racism and police violence.

One way to confront these questions is by reading “Five Days.” Another is to dedicate some of your High Holy Day experience to exploring the question of racial justice in Baltimore.

In 2014, Wes Moore came to speak at Beth Am. This Yom Kippur afternoon, Sept. 28, at 5 p.m., he and his co-author Erica L. Green will do so again, this time online. They’ll be joined by one or more of the subjects in their book.

All are welcome. See our website (BethAmBaltimore.org) for details.

A version of this post appears at Jmore

Back in February, before COVID-19 struck and the world shut down, I was in Washington, D.C., with a few hours to spare before a class. I found myself in the National Gallery of Art, staring at an 1845 portrait of President Andrew Jackson that looked eerily familiar.

Then, it occurred to me. I’d seen that portrait countless times on the $20 bill.

A quick Google search reveals that the artist, Thomas Sully, has a Native American line of descendants who were quite pleased when then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced five years ago this month that a woman would be featured on the $10 bill. Those plans changed due to the confluence of two factors: the surging popularity of Alexander Hamilton on the heels of the wildly successful musical about his life, and a previous grassroots campaign to place a prominent historical woman on the $20 bill by 2020 to honor the one hundredth anniversary of woman suffrage.

And who was chosen overwhelmingly by that grassroots Women on the 20s campaign? Harriet Tubman, the heroic Underground Railroad conductor, the “Moses of her People.”

So there I stood in the Smithsonian, blocks from the White house, staring at that painting of Andrew Jackson and thinking about that old legal maxim: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Delayed because current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at the direction of his boss, refused to implement planned changes and pushed off the redesign after President Donald Trump insisted the move amounted to “pure political correctness.”

Denied because this particular indignity — refusing to replace the image of a president who, as much as any other before or since embodied the value of white masculine supremacy, with that of Harriet Tubman — is a reminder of just how much the Trump presidency resembles that of Jackson’s.

Trump is, of course, a fan of Jackson’s and made a point of adding a portrait of the seventh president to the Oval Office soon after his inauguration.

In many ways, it reflects his own twisted self-image: that of liberator of white Americans from the multiculturalism of the Civil Rights Era through the Obama presidency and returning us to an imagined greatness of the 1950s when television cowboys shot Indians, a woman’s place was in the home (and certainly not on a $20 bill) and white people enjoyed the benefits of Jim Crow.

I’ve written in this column frequently on the subject of place, how a “new Jewish neighborhood” ought to embody different sensibilities of place and uplift our values of seeing each person as created in the image of God. I’ve written about how our Jewish community, whether in Reservoir Hill or beyond, should celebrate Civil Rights Era desegregation but also work assiduously to prevent the erosion of progress by racial justice movements.

We Jews know what it is to be displaced from our home and replaced by another civilization. There’s a story in the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 3a) in which Rabbi Yosi enters the ruins of the Temple mount in Jerusalem to pray. There, he hears a voice “cooing like a dove.” In the story, the prophet Elijah explains that the voice cries out three times every day and even “when Jews enter synagogues and study halls.”

The restoration of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland is worth celebrating. The restoration of Native Americans to sovereignty in theirs is unlikely to occur anytime soon. But coexistence need not be synonymous with erasure.

Among Andrew Jackson’s many sins was his slaughter and displacement of Native American peoples. Liberating the $20 bill from his image is a worthy goal. But we can also be more attentive to the very ground on which we stand.

In some places in the world (and in the U.S.), it has become common to acknowledge native lands that were forcibly taken by European and American settlers. Doing so does not right past wrongs, but it honors the history of place and those Native Americans who dwell among us.

All Baltimore Jewish communities are established on the land of the Piscataway-Conoy Tribe. Their house was destroyed by people who thought the color of their skin and the money in their coffers made them better.

Who among us is listening to the voice crying out from the ruins of Baltimore?

A version of this post appears in the June 2020 issue of Jmore

The Midrash (Tanchuma) teaches the Torah is written with “black fire on white fire.” This means there is a dynamism at play in the interaction of word and parchment. It also means we ought to be paying as much attention to the spaces between the letters as to the letters themselves. The rabbinic sages were teaching about the oral tradition, the layers of hidden wisdom beyond the Torah’s plain meaning. But this midrash is also a reminder of how often we see only from one perspective. Like the famous optical illusion of two faces with a cup between, some of us see the faces, others the chalice. But, say social scientists, we can train ourselves to see both, if not in the same instance.

The way we perceive gathering spaces is not all that different from how we see Torah or optical illusions. The Jewish community, of course, values our Jewish spaces. We construct houses of worship reflecting our aesthetic, with Torah verses or Jewish art adorning the walls. Jewishly oriented space helps us to feel comfortable and secure in a world where Jews too often don’t. The first (and only) time my wife and I ate (vegetarian) at Zahav in Philadelphia, I also felt that way. To see food in such a highly regarded restaurant served with Hebrew clippings from Israeli newspapers made me swell with pride.

Those of us who have white skin don’t always consider the ways our majority status means we are naturally comfortable in most spaces where people of color may not be. When the Dovecote Café opened around the corner from my house (and Beth Am), I was amazed at how quickly it became a central gathering spot for West Baltimore. Art by Black artists adorns the walls and music piped through the speakers affirms African American culture past and present. Neighbors, of all races and backgrounds, breeze in and out of this unapologetically Black space, picking up a coffee or slice of peach upside down cake, or sitting for hours working, or chatting with friends.

But this is not the image many people have of urban Baltimore. Instead, we hear of unbridled violent crime, failing schools and rampant drug use. These stories have become predominant narratives of Black neighborhoods, eclipsing the cultural vibrancy and social connectivity of Black spaces. These stories become self-fulfilling prophesies of doom, furthering divestment if not all out condemnation.

How many of us ask ourselves how we measure “good” neighborhoods over “bad” ones? Ibram X. Kendi notes in his recent book How to Be an Antiracist, “The idea of the dangerous Black neighborhood is the most powerful racist idea….for instance people steer away from and stigmatize Black neighborhoods as crime ridden streets where you might have your wallet stolen….” But Kendi points out “…estimated losses from white color crime are believed to be between $300 and $600 Billion per year, according to the FBI. By comparison, near the height of violent crime in 1995, the FBI reported the combined cost of burglary and robbery to be $4 Billion.”

When I support a Black owned and culturally Black space, with my dollars and my willingness to be present on the owners and patrons’ terms, I am contributing to a more just and equitable society. For those who want to see urban Baltimore at its best, there are numerous opportunities

to do so in many wonderful Baltimore neighborhoods. But you can also remain in Pikesville to support Black owned business. The Baltimore Sun recently featured the wonderful NextAct Cinemas, housed in the historic Pikes Theater on Reisterstown Road. I recently visited (all the way from the city) to see Just Mercy, the remarkable story of Bryan Stevenson who created the Equal Justice Initiative. The film was great. But seeing it in one of only a handful of Black owned theaters, in the heart of Jewish Baltimore, that felt a bit like the midrashic conception of black fire meeting white fire – something dynamic, just and even sacred

A version of this post appears in the April 2020 issue of Jmore