{"id":76798,"date":"2020-03-12T17:05:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T15:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=76798"},"modified":"2020-03-12T09:06:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T07:06:45","slug":"18-05-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=76798","title":{"rendered":"We cannot but wonder whether Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders knows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Skin color is neither a prerequisite nor disqualifier in the quest for justice<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER <\/strong>and
\nHAROLD BRACKMAN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Vermont Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally in Durham, N.C., in Feb. 14, 2020. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

JONATHAN S. TOBIN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Two kinds of anti-Semitism become part of the presidential campaign<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders is proving that it\u2019s possible to be both a victim of Jew-hatred and someone who has also enabled anti-Jewish hate.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n

We cannot but wonder whether Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders knows that the Prophet Amos enjoined everyone, including \u201cwhite Jewish men,\u201d to \u201chate evil and love good and establish justice at the gate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders, if nominated and elected, would be America\u2019s first Jewish president. A preview of how white nationalists and (neo) Nazis feel about such a possibility was on full display at his Michigan rally when a swastika banner was unfurled in the audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though reticent to share his own family\u2019s history, Sanders has recently begun talking about it: \u201cMy brother and I, and our wives, went to Poland to the town he [our father] was born in. He fled terrible poverty and anti-Semitism. The people in town, very nice people, took us to a place where the Nazis had the Jewish people dig a grave and shot them all. Three hundred people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One paradox about Sanders is that, even when condemning Nazi atrocities, he seems never to mention the biblical imperatives about justice that eloquent African-Americans, both preachers and politicians, still use to electrify audiences, both black and white, discussing slavery and segregation. We quote here a self-described \u201cdrum major for justice\u201d who said: \u201cNo, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.\u201d Who said this? Not Bernie Sanders, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech at the 1963\u2019s March on Washington, invoking the words of the Prophet Amos from the Hebrew scriptures.<\/span><\/p>\n

What troubles us most is the explanation the Sanders campaign gave for his last-minute cancellation of a speech on racial justice that the Vermont senator was scheduled to give in the troubled community of Flint, Mich. His spokesman explained: \u201c[Senator Sanders] does not have those experiences. He is a white Jewish man.\u201d Sanders instead gave his traditional stump speech while a following panel, made up of all \u201cpeople of color,\u201d discussed racial justice in America.<\/span><\/p>\n

We cannot but wonder whether Sanders knows that the Prophet Amos enjoined everyone, including \u201cwhite Jewish men,\u201d to \u201chate evil and love good and establish justice at the gate.\u201d Why \u201cat the gate\u201d? Because biblical Israelite communities located at their gate a law court, open to everyone, including widows and orphans and the poor and infirm, to plead for justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders knows intimately about how the Holocaust destroyed families. He also takes pride in the role of young white college students, including Jewish martyrs Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who risked their lives in the mid-1960s so that black people could vote in the Jim Crow South. Yet why does the senator through his spokesman \u201cinclude out\u201d of the dialogue on justice for the discriminated and poor\u2014someone like the senator himself with a lifetime of experience speaking up for the disadvantaged of all colors?<\/span><\/p>\n

We fear he may have become a captive and the de facto cheerleader-in-chief of exclusionary \u201cidentity politics\u201d that \u201cincludes out\u201d forever white people, especially Jews, from speaking up for racial justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

American history has shown time and again that you do not have to belong to a church or synagogue to invoke biblical imperatives that all people be treated equally and given equal opportunity the way that Abraham Lincoln did. You do not have to be an African-American president like Barack Obama to condemn anti-black racism the way that President John F. Kennedy did in introducing historic civil-rights legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you must transcend divisive \u201cidentity politics\u201d to lead people of every race and creed to follow Amos\u2019s justice imperative the way that Dr. King did.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2016 and 2020, Sanders has been \u201ca drum major for justice\u201d by alerting Americans to the continuing injustices suffered by the poor, racial minorities and white working families left behind by the new global capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, he will never solve those problems nor bring the day of a color-blind America any closer by basing the struggle for justice and equality on the color of one\u2019s skin.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bible (Deuteronomy 16, 20) declares: Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof\u2014\u201cJustice, Justice You Should Pursue.\u201d Why the double language? Rabbi Elya Meir Block explains that the pursuit of righteousness must be pursued with righteousness. There cannot be a righteous society without justice as a foundation stone.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are plenty of reasons for judges and officials to recuse themselves from involvement in certain situations. Clearly, in our democracy being \u201cwhite\u201d and\/or Jewish shouldn\u2019t disqualify any American from taking a leadership role on the lifelong road to a just society.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean and director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Dr. Harold Brackman is a historian and consultant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Skin color is neither a prerequisite nor disqualifier in the quest for justice RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER and HAROLD BRACKMAN Vermont Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally in Durham, N.C., in Feb. 14, 2020. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. JONATHAN S. TOBIN Two kinds of anti-Semitism become part of the presidential campaign Bernie Sanders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76804,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76798\/revisions\/76804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}