Ive been brooding and struggling with something all this MLK day, and I think I finally know what it is - and I write this knowing how much power and privilege I have in even articulating this problem, but here goes: I think I am nervous - fearful even - as I think about the critical moments in the civil rights movement in which there was a role for allies and bystanders, that I am genuinely not sure whether I would have joined in. I generally hate protests and detest rallies. They are loud, and by definition lack nuance, and inevitably you find yourself with strange bedfellows who distract the shared cause with all sorts of other issues. I get the symbolic value of showing up and making noise, but I am temperamentally uncomfortable; and I worry that if I was a generation or two older than I am now, I would squirm awkwardly on a day like this - grateful for those who had come before me, but aware of what I had not done. I think that this is what I find discomfiting about the constant fixation by many Jews I know about the role of Jews in the civil rights movement (that is, besides those who actually played a role or are the descendants of people who did.) I get why contemporary Jews are drawn to the image of Heschel walking alongside King; I hear people implicitly saying, Look! The archetype of the Judaism that I choose to live today was aligned with the moral heroes whom we revere from the broader world. It creates a justification for ones own identity, a sense of identification with the cause. But standing up to injustice does not mean merely narrating a desirable version of our own history; it means risk-taking, standing outside the status quo and insisting that it must change. Ironically, given Kings now canonical standing, repeating the Heschel-King meme is actually very safe, and a tool for reconciling what might otherwise be cognitively dissonant identities. The real battle for justice - fighting the worlds continued brokenness - is obviously so much more uncomfortable, and requires discomfort to succeed. So yes, I am a little scared today of who I am not and what responsibilities I fail to undertake. I fear that my skepticism about the performance of justice in the public square - my suspicion that it often veers too much from righteousness to self-righteousness, or picks the wrong causes, or blends together progressive agendas that should be separated - makes me a bystander on a set of issues of justice that do not allow such a middle ground. Is it possible to stand on the side of justice while sitting on the sidelines?
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 23:15:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015