Dear Friends:

Hana and I sat down to dinner the other night for the first time since the kids returned. Sari had been in Israel and Zoe and Ilan had been at camp. It was nice to get the band back together. With two in high school and one in middle school family dinners have the potential for conversations about real issues...emphasis on "potential." It was hard to ignore the elephant in the room, or I should say on social media.
 
There were people in Charlottesville, Virginia with torches shouting "you will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us" and there were people marching with swastika flags while gesturing Nazi salutes. There were people saying dehumanizing things about African Americans. There were people who had very large guns, dressed like they were going into some kind of battle. And there was anger, lots of anger.
 
As I sat with my kids I thought about my first encounter with this reality.
 
I went to day school in Skokie, Illinois. I was young but remember hearing about how people with beliefs similar to those in Charlottesville wanted to march through my school's town which had a higher than average population of Holocaust survivors. We watched the movie "Skokie" and I will never forget the twin messages of the pain caused by the hate and the majesty of living in a country that would allow even a group like that to have the same freedom of speech as everyone else.  We were simultaneously proud of the Jewish community's counter protest and the Jewish lawyers who defended the Nazi's right to march. It was a powerful statement of Jewish defense, defense of the body and defense of higher principles.
 
The Supreme Court ruled that the march could go on with Nazi symbols in the place where it was most likely to cause the greatest pain, Skokie. On June 25 th , 1978 the march happened, but not really. In the end 20 members of the Nationalist Socialist Party of America gathered, and when met with hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish counter protesters, they decided to leave within 10 minutes.
 
I remember being bothered that such people existed but ultimately so proud of how my community handled it. Not for one moment did I think that their hatred was anything but unequivocally rejected by every communal and political leader from the local to the national level. They were seeking to march in a time and place that gave them no support and no sympathy. Our country was big enough to let them speak which only underscored that they were out of time and out of place.
 
My role at the dinner table was harder than my parents'. The gathering in Charlottesville was much bigger, more passionate and most disturbingly it was not rejected with moral clarity by the President of the United States. Statements from some of the Anti-Semitic and racist leaders afterwards actually thanked the president for being fair.
 
I told my kids clearly, that the ideas represented by neo-nazis, white supremicists and the KKK are to be rejected. Full stop.
 
They have the same right of speech and assembly as we all do. That's what makes our country great. What they are not is a legitimate response to any other "side." They deserve all the hate they generate and, aside from the protection of law enforcement and equal treatment under the law, they deserve no sympathy.  "Very fine people" do not find themselves among those groups. You are the company you keep.
 
Rabbi Elazar teaches in midrash Tanchuma "One who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate."
 
We must be clear about that.
 
And more than anything we must continue to be compassionate ourselves. We must lead with love. Last night hundreds held a peaceful candlelight vigil in Charlottesville singing songs of love. It was a beautiful reminder that those who shout the loudest do not represent the vast, kind majority of people in this great country.
 
I hope you will join us this Shabbat morning in shul where I will have more thoughts to share, but for now I want to say this to you, my Bet Torah family: engage the world from the inside out. Lead with speech and action from that good place inside and not in response to the ugliness we experience sometimes on the outside. In that way we will create the world we seek.
 
Breathe. The world is filled with good and kind people like you.
 
Shabbat Shalom,

Aaron 




Rabbi Aaron Brusso
Bet Torah
60 Smith Avenue
Mount Kisco, NY 10549
914.666.7595