Bryan Schwartzman: So, if you've listened before you know that normally, I would start our show with, "From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism." I kind of put on that announcer voice for a second, but I can't even say that today. Right from the beginning, this show is different. I am in my attic which is also a home office, which also sometimes is a fourth bedroom when my parents visit although they live a bunch of states away and we all know they won't be visiting any time soon because most of the people on the planet just aren't going anywhere. Usually my editor, Sam Wachs, sits at the controls a couple of feet away from me in our studio at Reconstructing Judaism; today he's operating the controls from his bedroom about 10 miles away. So this is from our makeshift studio. I'll say, "Welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations."

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Mordechai Liebling: Antisemitism is used by governments in power to divert people when they're angry at the ruling institutions. That has been for hundreds and hundreds of years. It would have been predictable that when we are looking at the largest wealth gap in American history that antisemitism would arise at that time.

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BS: So I'm your host, that hasn't changed, Bryan Schwartzman, and our guest today is Rabbi Mordechai Liebling. We're going to talk about two of his essays. They're pretty heavy. "A Brief History And Update On Antisemitism" and the other one is "Thoughts on Racism and Antisemitism." So the interview portion of this show was recorded in our Reconstructing Judaism studio in the time before much of the world shut down due to the spread of the coronavirus, and on one level, it feels like whatever we talked about before, just doesn't matter now. All our reality is different and there's certainly something to that, but we also know that all of the important issues and challenges that were there are still there and will be there waiting for us when we get back to whatever passes for normal and sadly this is especially true of antisemitism and racism. These things just don't seem to go away.

BS: History's shown time and again that times of uncertainty give rise to antisemitism. I've read that after the Black Plague wiped out as much as half of some European kingdoms in the 14th century --  this is an upbeat show by the way -- some blamed the Jews as a scapegoat and there were violent pogroms after, and we've already seen some disturbing, really troubling incidents of intolerance in the time of coronavirus as the world has been shutting down and since. We've seen white nationalist conspiracy theories alleging that the Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros somehow collaborated with China's ruling party to spread the virus and we've also seen really troubling anti-Chinese racism in the United States and around the globe.

03:34 BS: So, we hope you're having a meaningful Passover. We know it's a Passover like no other and for this show, I think, let's keep in mind that issues of antisemitism, oppression and racism, it's part of a Passover story. So let's hold that as we dive into the topic. So this was quite an interview and we cover a lot of ground, just you can tell by the two titles of the essays -- from the 2007 "Unite the Right Rally" where Rabbi Liebling was on the front lines confronting the white supremacists, to the breakup of the fabled Black-Jewish civil rights alliance. You can let me know what you think. I'm always ready to get emails and hear from you at bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org.

BS: So as a reminder, this I say every episode, all of the essays discussed on the show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, and that's evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. And as always, the essays are not required reading for the show, but we really recommend checking them out to get that extra added depth dimension. All right, let's get to the reason you're all tuning in, to our guest, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling who created and directed the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's innovative Social Justice Organizing Program. He's a 1985 RRC graduate and he's slated to receive the Keter Shem Tov Award, the Reconstructionist movement's highest honor. He spent decades in social justice organizing, and in recent years, he was the only rabbi to have answered all three clergy calls to go to civil disobedience demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Standing Rock, North Dakota. And we'll talk about some of that during the show. There's so many other things I can include in the intro, Rabbi Liebling has a really full CV but I think it's time to go ahead and hear from our guest. So Rabbi Liebling welcome to the show.

ML: Well, I'm delighted to be here, thanks for inviting me.

BS: So I actually want to start back a little bit, we're talking about two of your essays, and I think a little bit about about your biography is important. Can you start with your parents? You've spoken in the past about how much being a child of Holocaust survivors has shaped you in your life journey as an activist, as a rabbi. Since we're talking about antisemitism, they're clearly related. Can you talk about how that... How your parents' story and that legacy for you just influences your approach to understanding antisemitism? 

ML: Of course. Both of my parents were the sole surviving members of their family to survive. My dad lost his parents and a sister. My mom lost her mom -- her dad had died previously, but her mom, her two sisters, a brother and a niece. So they come from the part of Poland that's now Ukraine and that had the lowest rate of Jewish survival where they came from. They came from a town called Chortkov that had 10,000 Jews before the war and 100 survived the war. So, I grew up certainly with stories of antisemitism. When my mother was in high school, there was something called numerus clausus, which limited the number of Jews to a tiny number who could go to the public high school and she was one of the few who went to the gymnasium, the public high school, and then when she began college, still in Poland, it was also severely restricted. So antisemitism is something that even from before the war, it is something my parents grew up with and certainly educated me in to what certainly the most horrific forms of antisemitism could look like.

BS: In your Evolve essay, "A Brief History and Update on Antisemitism", you talked about being at Charlottesville, hearing the chants in person that most of us have only seen on video clips of "Jews will not replace us." The Unite the Right Rally seems kind of like a seminal moment in our modern history and not for a good reason. Can you tell us what brought you there, what you saw, what you took away from it? 

ML: Sure. So at that time... Excuse me, I was on the board of T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.I'm one of the founders of T'ruah and T'ruah received a request from some clergy folk down in Charlottesville if they could support it and I went down there. And because, as I've said, I know what the threat of antisemitism can become, I believe strongly that it's important to stand up to white supremacists whenever they try to spread their message. One of the very first rallies I've ever organized in my life was in 1978 when the Nazis marched in Skokie, Illinois. So at the same time that the Nazis were marching in Skokie, I organized a rally in Boston, in Copley Square, to protest their marching and had my mother as the key speaker. So when we received their request to go to Charlottesville, I immediately knew that I was going to go. And then another Reconstructionist rabbi ended up being able to come down too, Malka Bina Klein. A week before we went down there, we were warned that there could be violence and violence even that could be lethal. So it was clear before we went that the possibility existed and sadly and tragically, somebody was killed in Charlottesville.

ML: So I knew that I had to go, and when we went down there, the first evening, there was a service in the church, a multi-faith service and in the middle of the service, the police came in and said, "Nobody can leave." Because if you remember the night before the Unite the Right rally, they had a rally on the campus of UVA, University of Virginia. And they were just literally two blocks away from the church and the police said, "It's not safe for you to leave the building right now." I flashed on a scene from Birmingham, Alabama, where Dr. King was having a rally and was told they couldn't leave the church because there was a mob outside. So after, I don't know, a half hour or an hour, we waited and the police said that it was okay to leave by a back door, and when we went outside, we could see torches in the distance and we could hear them chanting, "Jews will not replace us." And that was eerie 'cause it was at night. We saw the torches. We were frightened trying to get to our cars. So that was the night before and then the next day, there were actually two separate sort of counter-demonstrations. One that was not going to confront the Right, that was about a mile away, and one that was going to actually confront the Right, right at the park where the Confederate statue was.

ML: I decided to go to that one and there were about 50 or 60 clergy people from across the country there. I was actually the only rabbi there on that line and there was Salem Pearce from T'ruah, who's a rabbinical student, was there as well. And we ended up literally, arm's length away, from the white supremacists who were chanting literally just in our faces. And on the other side of us, also an arm's length away, were the anti-fascists who were chanting. We were this thin line of 50 clergy caught between these two angry groups that were about to fight. It completely felt like violence was going to break out. And I turned to Salem, and said, "Salem, it's about to get violent, I think it's probably time for us to leave." 'Cause we were clearly not capable of stopping that violence, and the police were nowhere to be seen. And just then a person who was the head of the clergy team said, "Yes, let's leave." And as we left, the two sides start scuffling with each other. And the white supremacists were... The looks on their face were quite, quite vicious. And they were chanting, "Blood and soil," which is an old Nazi chant.

BS: You mentioned Birmingham, this was...

ML: Over my 50 years as an activist, I have been in physically threatening situations before. So this wasn't life-altering, but it certainly was frightening [chuckle] and conveyed the seriousness of the situation, and that white nationalism is alive and well and growing in the United States.

BS: What does showing up there do? Who's the audience in that sense? Is it to show the white supremacists that not everybody feels the way they do? Is it to show the rest of the country? I guess, that's what I wondered in that sense.

ML: You mean who is the audience for the counter-protest? 

BS: Right. Sure, yes.

ML: Well, I think it's important to -- first, let me back up for a second. There is debate, a valid serious debate in [the] liberal and progressive world, when do you and when don't you show up when white supremacists, white nationalists, are out in force. There are moments when it seems that going out there lends publicity, makes it into spectacle, and there's more media coverage. And there are times when it seems like the best strategy is to ignore them and not show up. That "what if you gave a war and nobody came?" kind of thing. That's a legitimate conversation and I think it's... There is no definitive answer, and different situations call for different responses. For example, when some other group of Islamophobes at one point several years ago, mounted public campaigns in several cities around Islamophobia. Some cities responded by doing absolutely nothing and there was no media air and the campaign died.

ML: In other cities, there was a significant counter ads, and that was also successful in some way. So it's hard to tell. So on a case-by-case basis, you have to decide what the best tactic is at that moment. Given the size of this and that Unite the Right was really trying to call their national forces, and that local groups in Charlottesville, in Virginia, felt threatened, and that the local groups asked for help, because of the situation in the town itself, I felt it was important and appropriate to support the local groups who had made the strategic decision. And at Charlottesville, it was important to physically confront and show that the Right wasn't welcome there.

BS: Wow. I think that leads us into your essay A Brief History and Update on Antisemitism, which really does that. It offers kind of a condensed historical narrative with some recent developments, particularly since 2016. Why did you set out to write this piece and what did you hope people would take away from it? 

ML: Well, I think there are competing narratives out there about the causes of antisemitism and when it emerges. And as I said, led a demonstration in 1978 around it. And I also started leading my first workshops on antisemitism then. So I've thought about it and studied it for literally decades. And it's important, I believe, to have a historical perspective and an analysis of how and when antisemitism erupts. So it's very clear that antisemitism is used by governments in power to divert people when they're angry at the ruling institutions. That has been consistent for hundreds and hundreds of years. And it would have been predictable that when we are looking at the largest wealth gap in American history, that antisemitism would arise at that time, 'cause that's what has happened for hundreds of years and why should this be different? 

ML: So when there is a rise in social unrest, when people are looking for somebody to blame, when there are people in power who can use antisemitism to bolster their power, they're going to use it, or they're going to give it air. They might not initiate it, but it would be like Trump saying, "Oh, there's good on both sides." So he will give dog-whistles, silent whistles to say, "Oh, it's okay to do this." So it's not about there being this grand plot from the top, it's about allowing the... antisemitism frequently exists sub rosa [secretly, in hiding] among fringe groups. And there are times when it is useful for the people in power to say, "Oh, well, we're not going to be so critical of antisemitism now," and sort of allow it to arise."

BS: It seems like you knowingly and intentionally waded into an area of great contention within the Jewish community and thought, sought to provide some clarity or perspective. There's this whole question over who, what's the greatest antisemitism to fear? There are plenty that say it's the Right and white supremacists; we hear a lot of noise lately about antisemitism from the Left, and you can't be a progressive and be a Zionist. And we also hear, I've heard that the argument itself is the greatest threat to the Jewish community today. So my sense, if I read your article correctly, was you were really trying to walk a fine, nuanced, middle road, and just wondering if you could sort of clarify your thoughts on that? 

ML: Sure. Okay.

BS: Or not clarify, but expand upon for the reader, or for the listener.

ML: Sure. So I certainly see antisemitism on the Right as the greater physical danger to American Jews. That if you look at who has killed Jews in America, it's basically the Right. The most recent cases in New Jersey are very fringe groups that are neither Right or Left as far as we can tell. But on the right, there's a wonderful and important article by a man named Eric Ward.

BS: And you're referring to Eric K. Ward of the Western States Center? 

ML: Who spent his lifetime studying antisemitism and racism and white nationalist groups. He happens to be an African-American man and his analysis is that antisemitism is a core principle of the white nationalist groups in America now. White nationalist groups are seeking to take power. White supremacy has existed in America for 400 years and the particular manifestation, in the part it's taking now, in white nationalist groups, who avowedly say they want to create a white nationalist ethno-state in the United States. So their deep racism and deep homophobia combined with their antisemitism leads them to a platform of "the Jews are behind everything and we can never... " -- and to them, Jews are not white people -- "and we can never have the proper white, Christian ethno-state that we want, unless we get rid of the Jews." And that's central to their platform. There's no way out of that. It's core to what white nationalism is in the United States today. And if you take the plunge into their websites, that's what you'll see.

2ML: aAntisemitism on the left or in the progressive world, is of a different nature. So, just as if we think that every person who is white has learned racism, then we also can think that every person who is not Jewish has learned antisemitism in some way, shape or form. And that antisemitism always has the potential of arising. So that is certainly true among non-Jewish folks, be they Christian or Muslim, in the progressive world as well. And most of them don't have a sense of the nuanced history of Israel, Palestine, the Middle East that many other folks have. So when people oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestinians, it's not surprising that some people would fall into some antisemitic tropes, who really don't know Jewish history, and that has to be opposed, in that we have to educate people and work with people.

ML: And their support of Palestinians is not based on antisemitism. So, they can let go, they can drop or let go of whatever antisemitism is there, and essentially, their demand for justice for Palestinians is still going to remain a demand of justice for Palestinians. I personally don't believe that being anti-Zionist means ipso facto you are anti-Semitic. It is a mistake to conflate those pieces. Judaism is not the support of Israel as a Jewish state. That conflation didn't happen till after 1948, it certainly wasn't true for the first 2000 years. So, I believe that you can, and many people are, proud, wonderful Jewish people, and have positions that say that, "I can't be a Zionist, because Zionism is in some way antithetical, or not compatible, rather, with democracy if you're saying up front that it has to be a Jewish state, and you have millions of Palestinians within that state, how can it be democratic?"

ML: So you can have that position, and say, "So I can't be a Zionist," but that doesn't make you anti-Semitic. That is a consistently a political, ethical, moral position to take. Do some of those folks lapse into antisemitism at times? Absolutely. Have there been cases on college campuses where the idealism of youth has led to antisemitic acts towards Jewish college students? Absolutely. That doesn't mean that Left antisemitism can be ignored, it certainly has to be challenged, but it is not the kind of threat to Jews the way white nationalism is that is actively seeking to build a white ethno-state and have Jews removed as in the chants we heard in Charlottesville, "Jews will not replace us."

BS: I think there's no question about physical force and threat. Personally speaking, speaking for me and not the movement, in a time when democracy seems threatened and in peril, this idea of not being able to participate, not having a political home because of identification with the state of Israel is problematic. You mentioned college campuses, but I think it's happened elsewhere. We've heard that kind of rhetoric from other leaders.

ML: So, one of the things I do in the world is I'm part of a training team that's interracial and Jewish and Christian, and we do trainings on racism, antisemitism and Christian hegemony for community organizers around the country, coming from a variety of faith traditions and certainly multi-racial. So in those contexts, I'm certainly able to have conversations with people about progressives and Israel, etcetera, and talk about how one's position on Israel can't be a litmus test for joining a progressive group. So, I would agree that if your position on Israel becomes a litmus test for whether or not you can be part of a progressive group, that that's a manifestation of antisemitism, and that's the conversation to have. There are certainly, let's say Chinese folks, who are part of progressive groups and nobody asks them what their position on Tibet is. China is certainly committing cultural genocide in Tibet and the truth is that a lot of Chinese progressives support the Tibetan government. I've had those conversations, but nobody on a college campus, when a Chinese student wants to, or student of Chinese origin, wants to join a progressive group, but they ask their position on Tibet. So to make Israel a litmus test in that case is an antisemitic act, and that's the conversation, that's the struggle to have to explain why that's antisemitism.

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BS: All right, short time out here, I hope you're finding this a powerful interview. Would you like others to experience the same kind of conversation? Please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or leave any kind of review. Positive ratings and reviews really help other people find out about this show. While we have you for just another couple of seconds, if you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve on the podcast, on the website, in our web conversations or even the curriculum we're producing, you can support us. You can make a contribution to reconstructingjudaism.org/evolve-donate. We know this is a tough time for many listeners but any gift you can give will make a big difference in making sure we can still bring this to you. So thanks for listening and alright, now back to Rabbi Mordechai Liebling.

BS: Your piece on thoughts on racism and antisemitism, it was based on a series of trainings you did for Faith in Action and other organizations, a national group focused on social justice. Can you also tell us about the setting of that training and what were the goals, so we can better...

ML: Sure, the setting of that training is working with community organizers from around the country, looking at issues of racism, antisemitism, and Christian hegemony. So certainly, within interfaith and interracial groups, questions of racism and antisemitism arise that prevent white Jews, black Jews and black Christians from working together. It's important to tease out all the ways in which racism and antisemitism can interact with each other to make those conversations difficult. So what we know is that, it is important for white people, whether Jewish or Christian, to understand the role of white privilege in this society. But many Jews feel afraid and under threat and see themselves differently than white Christians. So what I like to say is that Jews who present white, and certainly about 10% or more of Jews in America now are Jews of color, but for the Jews who present as white we generally have the advantages of white privilege.

ML: We present white, we're treated as white people, and when antisemitism arises we could lose those privileges, as has happened in Europe, and in other places and it's certainly what the white nationalists are saying. To the extreme white nationalists like the folks that who were in Charlottesville, Jews aren't even, they don't consider Jews even white. So we have provisional white privilege in that should antisemitism arise to the level of state power, those privileges can be revoked. But we do have to recognize that in the normal course of events, Jews who present as white, will have privilege, and we have to understand the consequences of that privilege.

BS: You talk about it starting in, really starting in the late '60s, with the famous New York teachers' strike and especially in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of hand wringing, certainly in the Jewish community, on the breakup of the Black-Jewish alliance. I think it got more, it was a larger issue in the Jewish community than in the African-American community. It kind of briefly rose up again, around the 2008 Democratic primary with the focus on Barack Obama and his pastor. But it's, it's really only recently that it's sort of come back to the fore, which is one of the reasons you're writing about it. Can you postulate on why that is? 

ML: Well I could say a couple of things about that. One, a serious part of the Black-Jewish alliance story was a myth held in the Jewish community. If you look at the Civil Rights movement era, there were certainly many Jews who were prominent in the civil rights movement, but very, very few of them were there as Jews. Other than than of course Heschel and folks like Everett Gendler, Rabbi Everett Gendler and Rabbi Joachim Prinz who actually spoke at the March on Washington, had given a powerful speech right before King's I Have a Dream speech. There were a few identified Jews like that. But the overwhelming part of the Jewish community did not support the civil rights movement. They didn't say anything. Other than the Religious Action Center, of the Reform movement, very few institutions really came out for civil rights, or took a risk. So it was much larger in the, the support was much larger in the eyes of Jews than it was in the black community.

BS: I mean the young men killed in Mississippi are also part of that myth, right? 

3ML: Right. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were killed. Schwerner and Goodman were Jews, so the Jewish community sees them as heroes, but the black community sees them more as white people. They didn't go as Jews, they didn't go, certainly none of them wore a kippah and none of them went out there and said, "I'm doing this because of my Jewish identity." That wasn't the ethos. So there was an imbalance into what the perception is both in the Black and Jewish communities about, an imbalance about, of perception about what our involvement was. Yes, there were a number of Jews who were prominent in the movement, and there were a few prominent Jews who were involved, but by and large institutionally, the Jewish community was not involved. And then in the first great... Then there were, two significant things happened. One is the Ocean Hill Brownsville teachers' strike in 1965 or '66, I think.

BS: I think it was '68. But we'll check that.

ML: '68? That's okay. And it was the predominantly Jewish teachers union that was involved, the AFT in New York and the Black community. I know, I also grew up in Brownsville, so I lived in Brownsville.

BS: Oh is that right? I didn't know you were a fellow New Yorker too.

ML: Yeah. Till the age of 10 I lived in Brownsville, before I lived in East Flatbush. So I know Brownsville to some extent. And Brownsville was certainly by the mid-60s a pretty much an African-American neighborhood, I could say Latinx I guess, as well. And people wanted local control of the schools. And so basically it was a Black community, wanting local control of schools and with the power to appoint principals and somewhat teachers. And the teachers' union that was Jewish-led, that resisted local control, because they wanted the more traditional union control of hiring and firing. Antisemitism was injected into that fight, and that caused a serious public rupture in New York, sort of the quasi-capital of American Jewish life between Blacks and Jews and rippled out. At the same time we had the first, early, late '60s, early '70s, we had the first challenges to affirmative action, there was a famous case, the Bakke case, challenging affirmative action in colleges, and the American Jewish Congress, and I think maybe the American-Jewish Committee, many prominent -- JDL,  many prominent Jewish organizations signed on with Bakke to challenge affirmative action because they were concerned that if there were racial quotas that Jews somehow would lose out and also the legacy of Jewish quotas keeping Jews out of many schools.

ML: So that caused another rupture institutionally and personally in the Black and Jewish community where the Black communities felt that affirmative action was necessary. We could talk about it now as an understanding of white privilege, whereas the Jewish community opposed affirmative action. So that was really putting the two communities institutionally at odds with each other starting then. I think people forget that now.

BS: Broken Alliance, a book from the late '80s, early '90s by Jonathan Kaufman really covers this well, but do you have any sense of why we're really talking about this alliance again or lack of in 2020? 

ML: Well, one prominent reason is because several years ago when the Black Lives Matter platform was released, they released a hundred-plus pages on, oh God, I don't know, every imaginable policy area, housing, taxes, health care, education, every significant policy area in American life was addressed in this hundred-plus page document. And there was one sentence in there that said something about, unfortunate use of words about Jews and Jews doing genocidal things to Palestinians or something of that nature. The only Jewish institutions to comment on the whole platform, only focused on that one sentence, ignored the other 99 pages of the document and ignored all the other issues. The Black community was taken somewhat aback by that, particularly because that was a coalition document and the person who actually wrote that little piece of it was somebody from a Jewish background.

ML: Lot of folks, they are not having a very sophisticated analysis of Palestine, Israel and not going into it deeply. So their response was, "We just spent a year developing a sophisticated document on a whole lot of domestic policy areas and that's our main focus. And the Jewish community, your only response is about what we said about Israel and a really tangential part of the document." That ignited a whole rupture, again within the progressive world because it's Black Lives Matter. And the first statement was issued by the Boston Jewish Community Relations Committee which is probably the most progressive JCRC in the country and had a good relationship with African American groups. So that ignited this whole piece again and also what happened, another place that I was, was in Ferguson when the riots were taking place and the local people invited clergy to come.

ML: So I was down there and spent a week or so in the streets in Ferguson, and there were signs there "From Gaza to Ferguson". And that was because the day when the riots broke out and tear gas was thrown at the demonstrators, they immediately got emails from people in Gaza about how you deal with tear gas. So they felt very supported by them. And it is true that the Israeli army or Israeli contractors have trained various Americans police forces around the country in anti-riot tactics. So Israel was certainly related. People saw the relationship between Israel and police departments and saw the people from Gaza reaching out to them. So that raised the issue again 'cause there were signs from "Gaza to Ferguson" which upset... I have to say, when I was marching in the streets in Ferguson and saw those signs, it was gut wrenching. I felt horrible.

ML: It's like, "Why is this here?" And I have to think about it and talk to people. It was emotionally, viscerally a painful thing for me to see the signs "From Gaza to Ferguson", and I had quite a few conversations with folks about it till I understood where it was coming from, as I just said. I think an additional piece, if you are a person of color in this country and you have grown up in a racist country and understand how racism operates, and you see a situation several thousand miles away and you don't know a lot about it, and you see predominantly white people oppressing people of color, you bring your lens of racism to it because that's what you know. On some level, if you have a hammer, everything is a nail. So if what your life is an analysis of racism, that's what you're going to see.

BS: This essay did come out before a spike of what appeared to be anti-Semitic incidents in the New York area, which as far as we know, has been reported, perpetrated by African Americans against Orthodox Jews or people who appear to be Orthodox Jews with two incidents, killings in Jersey City and Monsey, that really got... that were horrific and got a lot of attention. I guess I'm just, how does this uptick in violence fit into the context of what we've been talking about? 

ML: Yeah. And we have to look at that. And if we look at those particular incidents, the incident in Jersey City was perpetrated by a couple who apparently belong to a very fringe group called Black Hebrews that have a very strange ideology. And they don't like white Jews or mainstream or any Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardic Jews, I think that they are their own separate thing, which, and they don't seem to be either traditionally Jewish or Christian and it's like a cult group, one might say. So I don't think we can generalize from that. And the incident in Monsey, from everything I read this was a person with mental illness.

BS: Right.

ML: So it's hard to generalize. These are not folks who are part of really serious movements or representative of the Black community in any way, whereas the white nationalists who murdered people in Pittsburg and in California clearly espoused an ideology and are part of a much larger ideological framework. And there's also a piece of tension between... in the Hasidic community in New York, with people of color around gentrification issues that goes back 20, 30 years and has a pretty complicated history.

BS: You cited a 1967 James Baldwin essay. I've read a fair amount of Baldwin, I hadn't come across this essay before. I found it surprisingly applicable to today. I mean the part you quote "he," and you have in brackets, "[Jews], is singled out by Negroes, not because he acts differently from other white men, but because he doesn't. His major distinction has given him by that history of Christiandom, which has so successfully victimized both Negroes and Jews." Can you talk about this essay, what you take away from it in 2020 'cause it did seem really, really powerful and also seemed to be taking everybody to task for stereotypes and acrimony continuing.

ML: Right. It's a powerful piece, as you say and in some ways, we are... Again, it's part of human nature, in some ways, that we get angriest and are most disappointed in the people that we expect more from. So, he's explaining like, "Hey, you guys, you Jews, you've had a history of oppression, you know what this does, you should know better than this, how come you don't know better than to treat black folks this way?" So it's like, he's calling us to accountability for our history. Remember, he's writing about his growing up in Harlem in the '50s, early '60s, when many of the landlords and store-keeper and stores were owned by Jews. And the interface for a lot of black folks in New York in those days was the Jew as landlord and as shopkeeper. So that has a certain inherent tension in it to begin with.

BS: Right. And he also takes African-Americans to task for antisemitism as well, saying, "You should know better."

ML: Yeah, he does.

BS: So that's, I think what...

ML: He does, and Baldwin is amazing. I read something else of his recently and 50 years later, he reads totally fresh.

BS: We've talked about antisemitism, white supremacy, acrimony between the Black and Jewish community. I know you're carried forward by a certain amount of faith. Can you find optimism for us in all this? 

ML: Yeah, absolutely.

BS: What can we... [chuckle]

ML: Well, I think optimism, one piece of optimism is that we are now learning that, as I said earlier, most of the census studies shows that approximately 10% or more, some even people say as high as 20% of Jews in America are Jews of Color and the 10% number comes from a population study released a week ago, in Philadelphia, that said that 10% of Jews in Greater Philadelphia -- and Philadelphia, they said the third largest Jewish community in United States now -- are Jews of Color. So, I think Jews of Color are playing a very important role in creating a bridge. I think one thing that's happening is that the acknowledged presence of Jews of Color are forcing synagogues and other Jewish institutions to deal with their own racism.

ML: So internally, we have to become and hopefully are becoming, a more inclusive community. Certainly, at RRC and Reconstructing Judaism a lot of work is being done to look at racism and I'm proud of our institutions for doing that. And Jews of Color understand both antisemitism and racism. So just as we, we white Jews, are being educated around issues of racism more, those folks are also, and I experienced it, really working in the Black community and communities of color to educate folks about antisemitism. So I think, an optimistic piece is the Jewish community becoming a more inclusive multi-racial community and thereby allowing us to build greater bridges to communities of color in the United States now.

BS: And as far as antisemitism and white supremacy, do we just kind of hope that times return to normal, and...?

ML: We don't hope, we work really hard at it. We cannot just sit back and wait and hope for antisemitism to pass. Historically, we know that's a mistake. We have to create alliances. Our greatest safety for the Jewish people has always been in a democratic society, that's the one pl    ace that both the left, right and center of the Jewish community agrees that a democratic society is the safest place for Jews. And we believe that creating coalitions with other threatened or oppressed people is the best way to fight white nationalism and to ensure democracy in America. Democracy in America is the way we stay safe, and we have to work with other groups to ensure voting rights, to ensure the most democratic country that we can possibly have.

BS: All right, thank you, thank you so much for your time and sharing your thoughts and for all your work on these issues.

ML: Thank you Bryan, it's really my pleasure to be here.

BS: Thanks so much for listening to our interview with Rabbi Mordechai Liebling. If you enjoyed our conversation, please be sure to read his essays, Thoughts on Racism and antisemitism, and A Brief History and Update on antisemitism. There are a ton of other essays on the Evolve site connected to antisemitism. And we mentioned the James Baldwin piece, we will link to it in our show notes, really powerful piece I recommend you check out. 

So, what did you think of today's episode? We want to to hear from you, I want to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations and that includes you, send your questions, comments, feedback, you can reach me directly at bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org, and we'll be back next month. So please stay safe, stay healthy, be there for each other, show compassion, we'll all get through this.

Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song Ilu Finu, is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and we will see and hear you next time.

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