A Weak Response to Bigotry

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld delivering the opening prayer as guest chaplain at the United States House of Representatives

U.S. House of Representatives Recording Studio / Wikipedia

On Tuesday, May 1, I entered a breakfast of the D.C. City Council while wearing my tallit (sacred prayer shawl), raised my voice, and said, “Shame on you” to the members of the Council.

The reason I did this was because the Council has taken a weak response to the hurtful and anti-Semitic comments made by one of its members, Trayon White.

In a Facebook video, White argued that the “Rothschilds” control the weather. Later, after apologizing for those remarks, he cut short his tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in a manner that many (myself included) considered to be disrespectful to the memory of our relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust. On top of that, a political appointee of Mayor Muriel Bowser then held a “unity rally” in support of White. At this rally, anti-Semitic comments were made by an uninvited speaker who called Jews “termites.”

When many Jews hear these words we get flashbacks to our worst nightmares. Too often in our history, we Jews have been murdered because of crazy conspiracy theories that sound ridiculous, such as the wild theory that Jews control the weather. When we hear this being spouted by a councilmember, an elected official in our own city, we fear the worst. At the breakfast, I said to White that he endangered my children with his extraordinarily irresponsible language.

And yet, through all this, the response of the Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser was extremely disappointing. The Council did not censure White in response to his remarks. And Bowser was similarly muted in her reaction and never called upon her appointee to resign for organizing such an irresponsible rally. Instead, the mayor and the Council responded with banalities that did not address the issue head-on.

Why did they react in such a tepid fashion?

I know many members of the Council, and I also know the mayor. Of the ones I know personally, I think that they are very good and decent people. I also think that they did not speak out strongly in this instance out of political calculations, in that they did not want to anger supporters of White.

This tells me that they either did not understand (or else did not care about) the level of outrage that many Jewish members felt in response to this series of events. It is very dangerous for all of us as citizens when political leaders are afraid to speak out strongly out of concern that they may anger bigoted voters who don’t want to see them condemn hatred and bigotry. We must demand more of our elected officials.

This is not just a Jewish issue but a citywide issue. I was disappointed that in the days after White’s comments I did not hear from any of my fellow ministers in this city asking about these hurtful comments. I would like to think that if a council member had spoken out in a hurtful way about a different religious or ethnic group, I would have criticized those comments publicly and also reached out to fellow ministers from the group that was insulted.

Bigotry is not something that remains isolated. It can spread like a wildfire and leave behind many innocent victims. It is our job to call it out by name, directly, forcefully and immediately.

May there never be a next time! But if there is, my message to the D.C. Council and to Mayor Bowser is this: We expect more from you.


Issues |Civil Rights|Religion

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