Social Justice Matters
Jews have always known: Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter is a movement that is working to make sure that Black lives matter no less than any other lives. For the Jews, Black lives have always mattered. It is one of our proudest credentials that we were in the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Two Jewish boys, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives for the cause; and the iconic picture of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching arm in arm with Martin Luther King Junior, makes us proud.
Not all victims of police brutality and the two-tiered justice system are Black, but all Blacks in the United States are victims of these realities. When we remember the Holocaust, we count eleven million people who were murdered by the Nazis, of which six million were Jews. Holocaust deniers and other groups use this number to “minimize” the Holocaust. Elie Wissel explained it best, “Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.” This is the same situation with the Black community in America.
Blacks and Jews have had a long and close working relationship in the struggle for Civil Rights. Each group should examine and honor this history and work together for the future. Read more on our Issues page.
Election 2020
We believe Joe Biden is the right choice for helping the United States confront our history of racial injustice and realize the promise of social justice.
“Most importantly, Biden has shown he has the capacity to listen, reflect, and be persuaded,” Bains told Vox. “Those are qualities we could really use in a president right now. And I think it speaks to the continuing influence that the movement could have.”
from “How Biden has — and hasn’t — harnessed the national reckoning on race” in Vox (August 2020).
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s record proves that he is only bound to exacerbate our divisions given a second term.
Having been involved in civil rights work that involved monitoring extremist groups (from the Klan to neo-Nazis to Lyndon La Rouche to the PLO) and defending the Jewish community since 1975, there is no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump is the most serious threat to Jewish (and other minority groups) security in this country in the past half century; it’s not even close.
from David Lehrer, “Donald Trump is the most serious threat to American Jewish security in the past half century” in Forward
Additional Resources
“James Chaney, 21, Michael Schwerner, 24, and Andrew Goodman, 20, were part of the Mississippi Summer Project, a project that brought hundreds of volunteers from colleges across the country to help local Black citizens register to vote…[Mississippi Justice] explains how a state intelligence agency, known as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, enabled local police and the Ku Klux Klan to plan the abduction and execution of the young activists.” Watch online for free.
Additional Readings
The impacts of the pandemic and the economic fallout have been widespread, but are particularly prevalent among Black, Latino, Indigenous, and immigrant households. These disproportionate impacts reflect harsh, longstanding inequities — often stemming from structural racism — in education, employment, housing, and health care that the current crisis is exacerbating.
from ”Tracking the COVID-19 Recession’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships” by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
