Not So Passive Resistance

Dear friends,

James Meredith walked into the campus of University of Mississippi in 1962 escorted by three jeeps full of soldiers, the first African American student there. As a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement one might expect Meredith to support MLK’s vision of nonviolent resistance. In her book, Learning from the Germans, Susan Neiman describes an afternoon in Meredith’s Jackson, MS home, in which she discovers a very different attitude toward resistance. She writes:

His goal in 1962 was not to integrate the University of Mississippi, which he viewed as a minor and timid objective, but to “physically and psychologically shatter the system of white supremacy in Mississippi and eventually all of America, with the awesome force of the United States military machine.”

This week, as I prepare for our event with Neiman on Sunday, and with much of the country seeming to punch back against the racist uprising, I find Meredith’s voice compelling. In our Torah portion, Va’era, the oppressor faces chance after chance to relent. When he doesn’t there is no workers strike, no march, no vigil, but a violent strike at the heart of Egypt. Seven plagues in total this week, beginning with turning water – the source of life, and the residing place of God in ancient Egypt, into blood – the expression of death.

Of all the myriad of attitudes toward violence that our tradition voices, “turn the other cheek” is hard to find.

This week a hero of mine died. His name was Ezra Nawi and he was a Jerusalemite plumber, Iraqi Jew, openly gay, lively and colorful man who spent the last twenty years of his life protecting the impoverished Palestinian inhabitants of the South Hebron Hills region from their heartless oppressors. If you’ve ever visited that part of Palestine you would know that the reality of life here is one reminiscent of both Apartheid South Africa and the segregated American south. When no one else in the Israeli left knew what to do about situations like this one, Ezra followed his feet out into the villages, where people live in natural desert caves, tents or shacks. He got to know people, speaking to them in his mother’s Arabic. He would spend his days visiting one village and another, helping them with what they needed. Often this involved accompanying them to their fields, wells or schools. Sometimes it meant arranging legal or medical assistance, getting supplies through checkpoints, and other tasks that a person of privilege can do in these types of environments. Over the years he taught a generation of activists how to do the work, which often involves dangerous situations, arrest and vilification.

Shortly after I first met Ezra, and joining him occasionally on his daily trips from Jerusalem, Nissim Mossek,a documentary filmmaker started coming along as well. This week I found myself watching pieces of Citizen Nawi, the film Nissim made about Ezra (which you can view HERE). Ezra’s non-violent philosophy is on glorious display. It’s not meek. It’s not silent. It can be aggressive, taunting, questioning. This often got him in trouble. Scene after scene shows Ezra employing tactics of passive resistance in the least passive way imaginable: speaking, disobeying, laying out the truth of people’s suffering and cruelty.

Ezra Z"l was not a religious Jew, except that he embodied the tradition so much more deeply than the so-called religious settlers he was so often in conflict with. Verses like הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת עֲמִיתֶךָ , “Reprove your neighbor, Rebuke him!” were self-evident to him. The last time I visited him, a year ago, he showed me the T shirt he had made and worn that day in a protest. It read: Why are there no Ashkenazis in the Border Police? למה אין אשכנזים במגב? Speaking directly to his fellow Mizrachi Jews, who are sent to the front lines to perform some of the ugliest tasks, he pointed to a reality of racism still present in Israeli society, that is pitting Jewish Arab speakers against non-Jewish Arabs. It’s not a question that will win new friends, it isn’t soft, but it’s true, and takes courageous people like Nawi and Meredith to express.

Perhaps Ezra’s attitude is valuable to us in this moment. The combination of creating meaningful relationships with those in need as the basis for change, with speaking directly and truthfully to those we view as acting out the vision of the oppressors; perhaps this combination might help us understand our task today, this Martin Luther King weekend. In any case we have to remember that MLK's vision requires action and courage, and is designed to remind us not of our weakness, but of our power.

I know Susan Neiman will help us define both our role and our power Sunday at 11:00am.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha