Flashback 2010: They came for Muslims; I was not a Muslim

 

Fajr — morning prayer, Morton Grove, 2013 

     Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year — 5787, for those keeping track at home — began Friday night. My wife and I decided to rouse ourselves and go to synagogue, this being a time when it behooves Jews to manifest being Jewish a little more than they might otherwise, to both remind ourselves and show others. Use it or lose it. Rooting around in the old archive for Rosh Hashana stories to share here, I found this chestnut from a time when Jews weren't getting beaten up as much as they are now over the pretext of Gaza, even though the average Jew no more dictates Israeli policy than we tell Donald Trump what to tweet at 2 a.m. 

    It's worth posting, I think, even though the line about Jews not being condemned by politicians stings a bit, since it's no longer true. But the column does serve as a reminder. Jews tend to go to bat for others when they're down. Maybe those others will decide to return the favor. I'm not holding my breath. But anything's possible.

     'How much do we back down?" Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, a grandly named flyspeck of a church in Gainesville, Fla., asked, as he was preparing, or not, to burn a stack of Qurans on Saturday to mark the anniversary of 9/11. "How many times do we back down?"
     Funny you should ask, pastor — your big guy addresses that very question.
     "If someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn and offer the other one also," says Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount. "And if he sues you and takes your coat, give him your cloak too."
     It would be easy — and fun, too — to use Jones as a poster boy for Christianity. I could trot out a snide line of mine: "Christianity is a very loving and tolerant religion, a fact that would be better known if more people actually bothered to practice it."
     But then I'd be indulging in the same vice resorted to by those who tar all Muslims based on the actions of some mullah in a cave, a twist of logic whereby we are allowed to define any group we fear by its worst members. The truth is that, Jones notwithstanding, the vast majority of ministers are indeed preaching love and dignity, as are the vast majority of imams and rabbis. But a few idiots can cause a lot of harm, as Jones demonstrates. Hostility and ignorance are not monopolized, alas, by any one creed or religion.

"Ich schwieg; ich war Jude."

     So I went to this Iftar two weeks ago and had fun. We ate dried dates, to start, as tradition indicated. I had never been to an Iftar before, so I can't say if it was an outstanding or a ordinary Iftar, but ...
     What's that? You want to know what an Iftar is? Oh, sorry. Nothing to feel embarrassed about. I didn't know myself, up until I went. An Iftar is the evening meal that Muslims eat during Ramadan, a monthlong festival requiring they fast during daylight hours.
     Let me start a different story of a different religious meal I also attended.
     So I went to this Rosh Hashana dinner Thursday and had fun. We ate matzo ball soup, to start, as tradition indicated. I've been to many Rosh Hashana dinners, so ...
     My guess is that Thursday's dinner requires less explaining to the average reader, who is at least dimly aware that Rosh Hashana is a holiday — the Jewish New Year — and that a matzo ball is a dense dumpling that sits in chicken soup.
     The reason for this is that Jews, having spent decades and centuries bashing our heads against the brick wall of fear and bias surrounding American culture, finally reached a tentative level of acceptance. We aren't seen as scary outsiders with strange habits who just stumbled off the boat anymore. McDonald's sell bagels.
     Sure, Fox hosts still complain about a few hurdy-gurdy Hanukkah songs tucked into the renamed Holiday Pageant. Sure, there is the occasional spray-painted swastika or brick through a window.
     But we don't suffer through full-blown national meltdowns like the New York Islamic center crisis. Nor is our faith condemned by supposedly legitimate politicians like Newt Gingrich. Nor are any pastors burning Torahs this Saturday.
     That's the Muslims' lot, now, and it shocks me that Jews, gathering together for the High Holidays, a time when we normally recognize the peril du jure, can fail to see — blinded, I suppose, by the ire rained down on Israel — that Muslims here are experiencing the same ordeal that we suffered, for the same reasons. They're new, few, different, and the nativists and haters — the muzzling of whom is a recent and maybe passing phenomenon — are in full bay, having been let off the leash by their irresponsible leaders.
     Is there a real chance that America is going to yank its welcome mat away from Muslims? I hope not. Is it perhaps overdramatic to invoke Martin Niemoller? (The German headline means "I remained silent; I was a Jew," a play on his famous sermon on how Nazis first came for the Communists, unionists and Jews, but he did not speak out because he was not any of these groups, and when they came for him, there was no one left to speak out).
     Again yes. Our nation has a great ability to self-correct, to veer away from folly.
     But this current flareup is a fire bell in the night that has been ringing for a month. And for Jews to shrug, to maybe even think, "Hurts, doesn't it?" and to mill about in the crowd of onlookers, silent, is to forget both our faith and our history.
     Don't be deceived because people know what a matzo ball is and you can check into fancy hotels now. Ostracizing the outsider because he's different and someone who belongs to his faith once did a bad thing can still work against Jews, too.
     Perhaps I'm showing the bias of expecting more from your own club. But Jews know something about having their holy books burned. To respond to what Jones has been threatening with, "But they're not our holy books, not this time," is to miss one of the more glaring lessons of history.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 10, 2010