This is a large part of the reason I no longer consider myself Jewish. I'm disgusted by the racism that pervades our community. The othering of outsiders, and the elevation of our own community over others at the cost of our humanity. Racism doesn't only hurt the people who are being discriminated against, it also turns the discriminators rancid. The Nazis who suffered the loss of their humanity by being compelled to believe that the Jew was lower than them, lower than a rat. Even as they gleefully shoved the Jews into the ovens, they were also killing a part of themselves. That is the situation we find ourselves in when we ignore our black brothers and sisters who suffer the same indignities, torture, and murders that we once faced, and could easily face again. We become dead, like a golem formed of clay and pain. George Floyd called out for his mother as he died, his throat crushed under the knee of a fascist. Jewish mothers know that cry, the cry of a boy in so much pain that he can only call to the first person who ever gave him love.

I was reading an article on the splc website about the New Black Panther Party (not linking to to it because it is horrifying, look it up yourself if you are brave). The NBPP is a violent hate group that particularly despises Jews. I was troubled when I read that they resent the fact that when the Holocaust ended, Jews were given a homeland, while black America was given a Holocaust of their own lasting hundreds of years and it still has not stopped to this day. That inequality makes them mad enough to kill. We Jews had the opportunity to hunt down and prosecute Nazi war criminals, yet Confederate warriors are lauded in the US, with statues erected in their honor.

Our black and brown brothers and sisters need our support, so we can work to heal the suffering as human beings together. Please help save them. Go Protest if you can do so safely. Write to your representatives. Listen to the black voices telling their stories of suffering. Demand real systemic change. Do not let up. Do not take your knee off of the neck of racist policies. Do not be a Jacob Frey. Do not look them in the face when they ask for redress and say "no" to them. They've been hearing that for more than four hundred years Tell them "yes. I want things to change, because the way things are run now is intolerable for anyone with an ounce of humanity in their body."

Please, fellow Jews, please make me proud of you. It's going to take a lot of hard work, but one day, if we fix our shit, I might once again be proud to call myself a Jew.