Redemption from Anti-Semitism

Yom Kippur
September 25, 2023

A well-known Anti-Semite, walks into a bar and is about to order a drink when he sees a
guy close by wearing a kippa, tzitzis, and payos.

He doesn’t have to be an Einstein to know that this guy is Jewish.

So he shouts over to the bartender so loudly, that everyone can hear,

“Drinks for everyone, bartender, but not for that Jew over there.”

Soon after the drinks have been handed out, he notices that the Jewish guy is smiling and
waving to him and says “THANK YOU” in an equally loud voice, so that everyone can
hear.

This infuriates the Anti-Semite and in a loud voice, he once again orders drinks for
everyone except the Jew.

But as before, this does not seem to worry the Jewish guy who continues to smile, and
again says, “Thank you.”

So the guy asks the bartender, “What’s the matter with that Jew? I’ve ordered two rounds
of drinks for everyone in the bar except for him, and all that the fool does is smile and
thank me in such a loud voice. Is he nuts?”

“Nope,” replies the bartender.

“He owns the place.”

***

You could call that a really fundamental case of mistaken identity.

When preconceptions meet reality.

How often do we have mistaken preconceptions about others…..and mistaken

preconceptions about OURSELVES?

Here’s how my father viewed the world: Although he himself wasn’t in a camp, he barely
escaped from Vienna in 1939. But his father—my grandfather—was arrested, and killed
by the Nazis in Buchenwald. My father never recovered from that trauma. And he always
spoke about “the stupid goyim.” His words, not mine. Yet at the same time, many of his
closest friends weren’t Jewish. One in particular was the supervisor who hired him for his
job, and after the supervisor retired my father remained friends with him. Over the years

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people my family knew died, but when this man died it was the only time I saw my father
cry at the loss of a friend. He said, “he was such a nice man, a real mensch, who never
hurt anyone and always tried to help.”

And yet my dad also knew plenty of Jews, and he would complain about many of his
Jewish friends. “Oh, he’s a…” and you can fill in the blank.

He had a—particular word—he used for a landsman from Vienna who my parents
always referred to as my father’s best friend. But the word he used to describe him
wouldn’t be a word I’d use to describe a best friend. Or a word I would use on the bimah,
ever.

This is just an example, and from my own father.

About 30 years ago I remember reading a story in Time Magazine about a Cantor in
Lincoln, Nebraska, who was receiving a barrage of harassing anti-Semitic phone calls
from a local member of the KKK. Most of these calls were messages on the Cantor’s
answering machine. One day, in the middle of listening to one of these calls, the cantor
picked up the phone and said something to the effect of, “one day you’re going to be
standing in front of your maker, and when you are asked how you treated other human
beings, how are you going to answer?”

That caused the man to look inward, question his own identity and challenge the very
beliefs he had been espousing. Eventually that led this man to do Teshuvah. He turned
away from the Klan, eventually reporting on their activities to the authorities and became
good friends with the cantor.

There is a book you can also find on this story called Not by the Sword which documents
this former racist’s journey away from hatred and towards his friendship with the cantor
and his family.

The man was challenged by others to be honest with himself and ended up challenging
himself to be a better human being.

But what happens when your identity is changed for you, and by surprise? Former
Secretary of State Madelyn Albright had such a transformation when she found out that
she had been born Jewish and her identity had been hidden from her in order to protect
her from the Nazis.

White nationalist Craig Cobb has been a racist his entire life. He has been trying to create
a whites only community in North Dakota. He was interviewed by The Trisha Show
during their series on race in America, and was asked if he would submit to a DNA test.
Well, he did. Why? I guess he thought he was going to be able to proclaim the superiority
and pureness of his White DNA.

But guess what? His DNA was even more evolved than he was!

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The DNA test showed that 14% of his DNA is African. Cobb’s response? First, he said
he didn’t believe it and planned on retaking the DNA test from a more “reputable”
source. Second, he said if he had known that this would be the result he never would have
submitted to the test.

Well, these two statements alone are contradictory. First he wants to deny that the test
was accurate, and then even if it is accurate he wants to remain oblivious to that fact. I’m
not sure what he’s going to do with this information, whether the fact that he has African
DNA will affect how he views himself and others, or whether he’ll bury it deep down
within him and ignore it and try to be perhaps an 86% pure white supremacist. Despite
this information he’s still building his racist town. Maybe he’ll have to build 14% of his
house over the town limits so that he doesn’t violate his own policy.

In the Torah Jacob confronted Esau after 20 years on the lam. Esau had believed that
Jacob usurped the benefits he should have received as a first born, and Jacob believed
that Esau would seek to kill him for his trickery.

The night before his fateful meeting with Esau, Jacob had a restless night. The Torah tells
that he wrestled with an angel all night long, and in the morning the angel declared, “you
have wrestled with beings divine and human and prevailed” and was therefore given the
name Israel.

What does that mean, he wrestled with beings divine and human? Some of our rabbinic
commentators say that this means that he wrestled with himself. It was not that he was
having a physical wrestling match with an angel. Rather, it was a spiritual identity battle
within himself, and when he prevailed he had transformed himself from being the
trickster, Jacob, to the regal patriarch, Israel. In the Bible, Jacob, as a name, is not
complimentary, but something of an insult.

The name Israel, on the other hand, implies strength and nobility. And when Jacob/Israel
met Esau the next day, they reconciled and each went on their way. Jacob/Israel had had
a transformation of his identity, from a clever sneak who had to hide for his actions to a
regal ancestor of the people who would receive the Torah.

Identity was the subject of an interesting movie I saw a couple of years ago, an Israeli
movie called “The Other Son.”

We’ve all heard of stories about babies being switched at birth. It creates turmoil and
trauma within the individuals who were switched as well as in their families. Imagine,
however, a story in which two children were switched at birth. But instead of the babies
being two white Americans, or two black Americans, etc. Now imagine one of the babies
is an Israeli Jew and the other is a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank without Israeli
citizenship.

What happens to them, and what happens to their identity? Is the child raised as an
Israeli Jew suddenly stripped of citizenship and sent to the West Bank? Is the child raised

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as a Palestinian suddenly given Israeli citizenship? The movie was fiction but certainly
raised lots of identity questions. The Israeli who thought he was a Palestinian was still
part of the Palestinian family but suddenly all of those around him began to view him
with suspicion. But they also did not know how to react to the Palestinian who had been
living as an Israeli. And the response in the Israeli family was similar.

Suddenly you find two individuals who have become completely confused by who they
are; and since they are from two populations whose identities are inherently hostile to
each other these two teens find themselves as outcasts, everywhere. Yet the supposition
of the movie itself is a declaration that in some senses our identities are mythical.
Remove the religious, cultural and national baggage and suddenly you simply have two
teenage human beings who both have families, lives that have become confused and
individual souls who just want to know where they belong and, perhaps more
importantly, who loves them.

I’d like to share with you another story about a transformation, one that had a much better
outcome than the story of the white supremacist Craig Cobb. This time the subject is
[Tchanad Segedi] Csanád Szegedi, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament.
Until 2012 he was a member of the far right, anti-Semitic, extreme Jabbok party. He had
made inflammatory remarks against Jews and formed the Hungarian Guard, a group that
modeled itself after a pro-Nazi organization during World War II.

And what happened in 2012? It was revealed that his mother had been Jewish having
hidden it during the Nazi period as did the family of Madeline Albright. And therefore,
according to Jewish tradition, he was Jewish. At first his response was,

“this will have no impact on my involvement in the Jabbok party.”

That, of course, did not go over too well within the Jabbok party. Szegedi withdrew from
public life for a period of soul searching. While he remained a member of the European
parliament, his personal life became a secret. Suddenly he resurfaced last October. He
revealed that he embraced his Jewish heritage, observes Shabbat, attends synagogue, has
begun to learn Hebrew and the study of Talmud with a rabbi. When asked about how he
reconciles his current faith in Judaism with his past behavior, he replied,

“I hurt other people. When I spoke disparagingly of Jews or Gypsies, I was also
harming children who had never done anything wrong and may have talents that
they could develop, but I blocked their path. You start hating until the hate
becomes the aim unto itself.”

Then he continued,

“All of sudden, people who I thought were my friends stopped being friends.”

Then he said when he disclosed to his racist compatriots that he found his Jewish roots,
they suggested that before it become public, the best idea would be

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 “we should shoot you so you can be buried as a pure Hungarian.”

They suggested that he apologize. And then, he thought,

“wait a minute, I am supposed to apologize for the fact that my family was killed
at Auschwitz?”

“I am supposed to apologize for the fact that my family was killed at

Auschwitz?”

This, from a former anti-Semitic right wing fascist, who found out that he was a Jew.

It’s all about identity.

We make suppositions about identity, and others people’s identities, and even our own
identities. Those identities define us. Yet, ultimately the real identity, THE TRUTH about
me, you, ALL OF US, is NOT the things that make us different from others.

Rather, our purest identity is the one we share with every other human being on earth.
Because tikkun olam can only happen for us when we recognize NOT THAT WE ARE
DIFFERENT

But

THAT WE ARE THE SAME! All children of one God.

And that is a very good thing indeed.

So that a Hungarian fascist can turn into a Jew who regrets ever having hated. So that a
Cantor in Nebraska can reach out to an anti-Semite and turn him into a friend on a very
human, personal level.

And it is a good thing to challenge our suppositions about identity, to see all human
beings as having been created equally in the image of God, so that we can let go of our
prejudices, let go of our hostilities, and instead build bridges to other human beings,

BUILD BRIDGES!... instead of walls and tunnels.

Copyright © 2023 Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner