A small wooden box sits on the corner of my desk. Open the shiny rosewood cube, and there is a clear sphere containing a clock. In the top, a shiny round plaque reads "The CAIR-Chicago 2010 Award for Courage in Journalism: Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times. For Fair, Accurate And Inclusive Media Representation of Minorities."
That last word clunks, doesn't it? Nowadays "minorities" has a discordant 1970s ring and has fallen out of favor. Associated Press style discourages use of the word as a noun because the truth is, we are all in some minority.
Any suggestion otherwise — oh, for instance that this is a white, Christian, straight nation, and anyone else is somewhere between a tolerated guest and an unwelcome intruder, exists only in the minds of a minority of Americans, ironically — a large minority, alas — requiring them to go through increasingly vigorous distortions of fact.
I mention the award, not to brag, but because of something I said receiving it at the ceremony. Looking out over 1,500 attendees in at west suburban Oak Brook Terrace, women in headscarves, men with full beards and embroidered round caps — "CAIR" stands for the Council on American-Islamic Relations — I spoke from the heart.
"I've been a consistent supporter of Muslim rights for one simple reason," I said, or words to that effect. "Because I'm Jewish, and see you as another loathed minority trying to get through the day."
That seems fairly simple. Belonging to a group that has suffered, historically, from the most hideous persecutions, should make a person more attuned to suffering of others. Because to sympathize only with yourself and people exactly like you is neither profound nor courageous. Just the opposite: it's a failure of humanity, common as dirt and leads to many of the problems we see around us today.
You can look at the wrongs done to your people and try to ensure they never happen to others. Or be inspired by those wrongs to try to emulate them.
On the last Saturday in October, a 39-year old Jewish man, on his way to synagogue in West Ridge, was shot, police allege, by a 22-year-old, Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, who, according to Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling, “planned the shooting and specifically targeted people of Jewish faith.” Abdallahi was charged with attempted murder and, once authorities went through his phone, with hate crimes and attempted terrorism charges.
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Love this line: Hatred is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for this, Neil, so well written.
ReplyDeleteI'm a former Soviet Jew and have been around the Jewish/Muslim/Israel/Arab debates all my life and have many thoughts about it, but they are jumbled and fragmented and you've expressed most of them so eloquently. It's almost like you've been doing this professionally for a while (just kidding)
One aspect I'd like to add though. The assailant is an immigrant who slipped through the cracks of the border system, thanks in large part to Republicans choking the reforms and funding in order to use it as political fodder. It's working. This event sent many in my circle into a fit of anti-immigrant rage and urging people to vote for Trump to "fix the border". Mind you, most are immigrants themselves, just like me. Emulating the wrongs done to them indeed.
The sermon on the mount:
ReplyDelete“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12).
Simple, no matter the religion.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Mr. S, there were...and maybe still are...places in America where you did...and maybe still do...get gunned down in the street because of the kind of hat you’re wearing. Chicago, for one.
ReplyDeleteIn the 70s and 80s, one of the largest street gangs anywhere adopted the baseball caps of the Pittsburgh Pirates, because of the "P" and the black-and-yellow team colors. Wearing that hat in the wrong street or neighborhood could easily get you killed. Hell, even tilting the brim the wrong way was enough.
Not the same thing as a hate crime, I know. Whole different ballgame (sorry). You aren't born a Disciple or a Latin King. You can usually decide who you choose to ride with. But you don't get to choose your ethnicity, and who (and what) you are..
Maybe some Jews are more terrified than others because that's just the way they tick, just as there are some cats who are more nervous and skittish than others. It's part of their personality. They would be that way no matter what. Even after being told that this crime was a random, out-of-the-ordinary event. Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less so.
Cats are the Jews of the animal kingdom. Just as there are people who persecute cats only for being cats, there are people who persecute Jews for no other reason than the fact that they're Jews. Why that is sadly so, I will leave to the shrinks. As a Jew and a lifelong lover of felines, both of those things are difficult to discuss. So I won't.
I am grateful that I do not find myself as part of any particular group and that I Don't often reflect upon some ancient aspect of my heritage.
ReplyDeleteI certainly don't belong to a particular religion or ethnic group. I'm a real mutt all mixed up over the generations so that I don't feel put upon in any way by anybody.
Tribalism of All sorts leads to conflict.
I remember when my boys were young and they would ask. What are dad? I would tell them we are people.
Occasionally I resent being pigeonholed by some other other where they see me as sis. Hey, White ,male and wonder why it's so important to them to think I am different than they are.
Maybe in this way I am some kind of a minority. We are all people and we don't have to treat each other according to any verse from any book that came into being through religion.
I suppose what I'm describing is secular humanism and I highly recommend it.
I've stepped away from my identity and found my true self just a person and that's how I see others just people
Excellent
DeleteHillel says as well, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me; if I am for myself alone, what am I. Do not say you will wait to learn until you have leisure—you may never have leisure.“
ReplyDeleteTour de force this morning Neil. Bravo. I think it's perfect that you left out that the assailant is an immigrant, in keeping with the message.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, Friday night dinners were a big deal. We always had them at my grandparents' house. I always assumed it was the classic Shabbat dinner: home-cooked food, the blessings, talk of the day and week, and a heavy dose of "politics." I put politics in quotes because it was more of a conversation about the state of the world than it was about a specific politician. For me, this is politics; for others, it may have veered too far outside the norm.
ReplyDeleteThese conversations stretched between Tupac's death, the million-man march, the state of conflicts overseas, and many "in my day" stories. One Friday during the Clinton administration the conversation came up about how the Rabbi met with President Clinton. While the specifics of the meeting revolved around the blossoming Palestinian/Israeli peace talks between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin the conversation turned to the civil rights movement of the sixties.
At this point in my life, the 60's mean Rock and Roll, The Beatles, The Space Race, and hippies. There was not much between my ears about the struggles of the 60's. We were begging to learn about the civil rights movement in school but my naiveté was apparent. Skin color shouldn't matter... why would you treat people differently because they were black? This was the beginning of my education in one of the principal tenets of what my family considers to be Judaism. We bore the yoke of slavery, so we should never let anyone anywhere bare that burden. We were treated as second and third-class citizens; we should do everything in our power to prevent anyone from being treated as such. Rights are meant for all, fight to ensure even the most trampled on receive their rights; and for god's sake, pick them up and don't let them be trampled on. There were never questions about if; it was just a question of how.
While this has been how I've tried to live my life in the many years since, it does feel that many of my Jewish friends (and, in some cases, relatives) have strayed from that path. It became about making sure you could get yours first, and then (if you had enough) you could maybe help someone else.
I often worry altruism is dead, that decency is dormant.
Maybe I think I will never get what I "deserve" or that this is as good as it will get, and so I should be better and help others. Maybe what our society has become is more poison than it is potion. Or maybe I'm more afraid of tomorrow than I'm willing to admit.
A rising tide raises all boats. It's ok if that boat doesn't look like yours, or talk like yours, or smell like yours. I grantee there is something you do that could help their boat and something they do that could help yours.
I think it's time we stopped trying to sabotage the other.
Make sure you vote.
I think I had heard the Hillel quote before. Looked it up this time and now get it. This and your line about hatred are gems. Thanks
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