Because God Can’t Breathe, the future is Polluted

Each of us has a name

given by our enemies

and given by our love

Zelda

 

Eric Gardner, the unarmed Black young man strangled to death by a NYC cop couldn’t breathe and nobody did anything including the justice system, the Grand Jury. So the dispossessed and the clerics took to the streets to protest yet another racially based homicide. In NYC four Rabbis recited the Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer, and named all the names of the recently dead black men and women who have died in the past few months. These Jews for racial and economic justice said this was a religious act to highlight the dignity of every single human. They said the reading of the Kaddish is about the vision of a redeemed world, “It was a desire to express in Jewish terms our outrage, our concern and our vision for a brighter future.”

During Israel’s bombardment, genocidal attack on the people of Gaza, B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, tried to read the names of the growing list of dead Palestinians on the radio. The Israeli Broadcast Authority rejected their appeal to air the spot that named the Gazan children killed. They said it was “politically controversial” and should be part of a newscast. The list was never broadcast by newscasters thus silencing public debate about the killing of innocent children. B’tselem later posted the censored list on their facebook . They prayed the Kaddish online and unlike the rabbis in NYC who are heralded as exemplarly Jewish leaders, these Jews of Conscience were censored and threatened.

And so I read this article about the massive protests in NYC and around the US about the killing of another Black youth with some cynicisim, some sadness, some longing for a Jewish reckoning here or there, not just about the over 2,000 deaths in Gaza or the lighting on fire of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, or the youths shot at in Hebron on their way to school, or the young man Ahmad Hasunah who was shot taking out his garbage but the score of Palestinian youths killed every week  somewhere in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. I know that these youths will be barely acknowledged let alone prayed for. They too are having their life strangled by violence.

I wish these good rabbis in NYC would take to the streets on behalf of these youths who can’t breathe or walk the streets in their own neighborhoods for fear of being kidnapped or run over, these children who do not suffer post traumatic stress because it never is post but always present. I wish these rabbis will honor their own religious beliefs that we all have names and are all created in equal in God’s eyes.

My deep sadness is the recognition that this generosity of spirit does not extend to the Palestinian youth here whose deaths are listed as numbers without names. Of course there are the few exceptional rabbis who have been faithful and prophetic witnesses for years and who have paid for it in terms of losing jobs or careers but for the most part the American Jewish progressive community have not felt the urgency to speak out against this ongoing settler colonial military occupation that has been going on for over six decades. Their silence is deafening.

As I reflect on our Advent lectionary passage about John the Baptist, that wild man who ate honey and locusts and calls us to prepare the way, I find it ironic and strange to find one of the strongest prophetic voices of our time coming from a Norwegian doctor, “I saw children beheaded. I have pictures.” His work to save lives in Gaza (again) and witness the horror of genocide and then to speak about it has made him a hero  and an enemy of the state of Israel. He is banned from entering Gaza for life.

God can’t breathe when any of God’s children’s are strangled to death by violence. It is an important step to take to say in public “I can’t breathe” in solidarity but then you must do something to make sure others can. You may or may not know what is like to be a racially profiled person in the US or a Palestinian here. You don’t have to know this daily humiliation or suffering to identify that it is morally and legally wrong. You don’t have to experience it to know that when one suffers we all suffer.

I want to bottle this outrage from the rabbis from NYC and pour it on the heads of the Palestinian youth as an anointment and a sign that they too are part of God’s vision for a redeemed world. Their lives and their names are holy. Their lives matter.

I don’t believe we can celebrate God’s coming incarnated in a vulnerable baby unless we can see all of these children as our own. You may or may not be able to breathe in solidarity but do know that God the creator, the parent, is struggling to breathe, to find enough oxygen to live in these polluted cities, these desert places of relentless violence.  

Creator God, you who have counted every hair on our head.
We come to you today to remember those who have died.
Each one has a name
Each life was sacred
for we are all created in your image.
We commend them to your Spirit
so they may have peace finally.

Everyone has a name
given to him by God
and given to him by his parents
Everyone has a name
given to him by his stature
and the way he smiles
and given to him by his clothing
Everyone has a name
given to him by the mountains
and given to him by the walls
Everyone has a name
given to him by the stars
and given to him by his neighbors
Everyone has a name
given to him by his sins
and given to him by his longing
Everyone has a name
given to him by his enemies
and given to him by his love
Everyone has a name
given to him by his holidays
and given to him by his work
Everyone has a name
given to him by the seasons
and given to him by his blindness
Everyone has a name
given to him by the sea and
given to him
by his death.

 

Footnotes

Everybody Has a Name—poem by Zelda

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/3275/auto/EACH-OF-US-HAS-A-NAME

 

IBA Censors B’tselem radio spot listing names of Gazan children Killed

http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20140721_children_killed_in_gaza_have_names/

 

Rabbis Recite Kaddish, Jewish Mourning Prayer, For Eric Garner, Later Arrested In NYC Protest

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/rabbis-arrested-eric-garner-protest_n_6276522.html