Dear Friends,
What do
The Color Purple and
Night have in common? How about
The Beautiful Struggle and
The Banality of Evil?
These are the names of some of the books on a list given to several Virginia teenagers to read this year.
These aren't just any teenagers; they are five youngsters in a particular Virginia county who were found guilty of an act of vandalism. Unlike their peers, who might choose to read -- or choose
not to read -- books like these, these kids will be
required to read these and a few other books -- a total of
one each month for the next year (that's a lot!) -- and to write a report on each one of them.
If they don't, they'll go to jail.
Here's why: This group of kids was arrested last October, and each one of them pleaded guilty to taking part in breaking into and spraying graffiti on an old building in Ashburn, a town northwest of Washington, D.C. It wasn't just any building that they defaced. It was a historic, one-room schoolhouse that had once housed a school for black children during the days when blacks and whites went to separate -- and decidedly unequal -- schools. The name of the school the teens vandalized was once called, "The Ashburn Colored School." Among the images the youths spray-painted on the walls were swastikas and dinosaurs, and among the phrases were, "brown power" and "white power."
Why did they do it? Unclear. Two of the youths are white; three are minorities. And at least one of the teenagers said he didn't understand the symbolism of a swastika.
That's believable, isn't it?
This may simply have been a random act of vandalism by a group of kids with time on their hands one weekend. Hence, they may not fully have comprehended the offensiveness of their conduct. They may
still not comprehend it.
And that's why they weren't simply sentenced to perform community service.
The prosecutor in town, Ms. Alejandra Rueda, decided that unless they came to
understand the impact of their behavior, not much good would come from punishing them.
"It occurred to me," she said, "that the way these kids are going to learn about this stuff is if they read about it, more than anything." She was inspired, she said, by her own experience growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, when her mother handed her two books by Leon Uris,
Mila 18 and
Exodus, so she could learn about Israel and the Holocaust while she was participating in a model UN project. (Those books are on the list, too. The kids have to read 12 out of the 35 books listed.)
The teenagers also have to write a paper about the impact swastikas and "white power" messages have on African-Americans and others. And they must also listen to a recorded interview of Yvonne Neal, a woman who describes her experiences as a student in the late 1930s at the Ashburn Colored School.
I found this a very inspiring story to read. (You can find it on the
New York Times website,
here.)
It tells us a lot about the impact of
education. Without it, people are capable of doing terrible things. With it, it's possible that people will behave better.
That's at least what educators try to achieve: to nurture understanding and empathy among their students. To help their students appreciate the impact of their behavior on others, and to learn to behave toward others the way that they would like others to behave toward them.
This is a key piece of what we try to accomplish at our own
Gan Aliyah and
Mercaz Aliyah. With kids of all ages, we try to nurture the qualities (in Hebrew, the
"middot") that are associated with goodness: qualities like patience, understanding, fairness, and compassion. In conversations that I've had with
Debbi Fendell, our Director of Early Childhood Education, and
Alisa Levine, our Director of Education, we talk about how to get those messages across. Of course, this is an ongoing task. One should never imagine that empathy is communicated in one fell swoop. Rather, it takes repeated exposures to
stories, experiences and, as kids get older,
texts that communicate the message. Eventually, we can hope, the messages will get through.
I'm sure that most of us believe that we are good, empathic human beings. But isn't there more that we can learn? Isn't there more we can do to become as understanding and as compassionate as we can and should be?
I have a suggestion: My guess is that few of us have read all 35 of the books on the list that Ms. Rueda compiled. I know that I haven't. Let's give ourselves a goal: like those kids, let's read (or, in some cases, re-read) at least one of the books on that list every month for the next year. Maybe the exercise will inspire us to be more engaged and involved in combatting prejudice and discrimination -- which have been increasing so disturbingly recently -- and to join with others in reaching across the ethnic, religious, racial, and other boundaries that can inspire such negative behaviors.
Let's try always to see
ourselves, even when we are looking at those who may look so very different from ourselves. Let's try to see and to love
as ourselves, not only our
neighbors, but also the
strangers we encounter.
Very truly yours,
Rabbi Carl M. Perkins
P.S.
Here is the list of the 35 books provided to the Virginia youths. Let's get started!
