No More Mythologies
“No more masks! No more mythologies!”
Our synagogue, the Jewish Community of Amherst, has been engaging in an ongoing conversation about structural racism (aka "racism"), whiteness and white privilege, and our role as a Jewish community in the fight for racial justice.
Saturday morning during Shabbat services, Devorah Jacobson, a rabbi and member of our congregation who has been serving on the Reparations Committee, gave a deeply insightful d'var Torah (a talk based on the week's Torah reading).
And yesterday afternoon, about 80 members of our congregation showed up for an open forum on reparations. One of the pieces shared in advance of today's gathering was this essay by Jeff Gold, a community member and retired clinical psychologist. Needless to say, my copy is heavily underlined.
I did a lot of listening this weekend. The one comment I offered had to do with mythologies, and how maintaining and defending these -- from the myth of meritocracy to the myth of progress -- is something many of us don't even realize we've been doing all our lives.
The first step of teshuvah (accountability) is recognition. Before remorse, before taking responsibility, before restitution, before resolving not to repeat the offending behaviors, one must recognize that they have caused harm in the first place. Only then can true repair take root.
The other part of my comment had to do with introspection -- how it is a skill we're not acculturated to value or develop, but without it, none of the above is really possible.
Talk of healing cannot occur with any authenticity without a deep and unending commitment to learning the ugly truths of our nation's very existence and a willingness to confront the ways we -- personally and collectively -- have benefited, and continue to benefit, directly from racist policies and practices.
Along with recognizing and dismantling our own mythologies, we have to keep holding each other to doing so collectively, lest we continue to pass them off as truths and pass them down to the generations coming up behind us.
In any case, I'm sitting with all of this as we begin a new week. Whether you are engaging in this work from a Jewish perspective or not, I highly recommend reading these two pieces of writing.
D'var Torah 1-23-21: Bo by Devorah Jacobson
Some Thoughts on Racial Justice, Jewish Identity, and Reparations by Jeff Gold
After reading one or both of these pieces, what if you put your own pen to paper?
Tell us about your masks and mythologies.
Write down your responses, without editing or censoring yourself. Notice your reactions without judgment. What happens when you simply allow the pen to move across paper or your fingers to fly over the keyboard without pausing to "get it right" or know what the next sentence will be?
This is how we do this work -- the work of writing, the work of introspection, the work of accountability and repair, the work of healing ourselves and the world.
The best part? No one gets left out. Your voice matters.