Blood, Tears, Guts, Bravery, the Best, the Worst, & Our American Legacy (VaYikra)

I returned just last night from several days away after co-leading a group in the Deep South through an organization called Tzedek America (my new job!).

What a time to be flying! The snaking lines filling the Atlanta airport are difficult to describe and worse than the pictures. Yet, despite the chaos and extra stress, I would say that the best of humanity shone through (for the most part…more on that later!).

The majority of passengers were patient and uncomplaining, and followed the rules, respecting others, because we all wanted to get to our destinations. The TSA workers, performing their jobs without pay, were kind and warm, some even smiling, initiating and engaging in conversation. There was one who called out to the crowds, “Please don’t ask me if I can help you…You’ll only make me cry!”

It was so the opposite of what one would expect, and I looked at the guy standing behind me in line. We smiled at each other; “How sweet.”

In fact, everywhere we went during this trip, I was surprised to find so much of the best. Here we were in the South, with its brutal history, surrounded by, served by, taught by mostly Black people who showed nothing but kindness and sweetness; the opposite of what you might expect.

After three hours of standing in line (and dealing with some of the more frustrating of humanity), I missed my flight (which is when I finally lost it and cried, after holding it together for so long, even though I’d expected it).

But I was booked on a later flight, and also put on standby. As people heard their names, everyone cheered (the best). Miraculously, I was among them! Also miraculously, I was in bed by 10pm.

I woke up to learn that I had gotten home less than two hours before the tragic crash which would have kept me stranded in Atlanta another day. I was horrified and grateful at the same time.

Thinking about it later, I realized that horror and gratitude, and the worst and best of humanity, were all major themes that came up for me on this trip, all through the lens of American slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and on into the continuing tragedy and crime of the American Pipeline to Prison phenomenon.

I went into the trip thinking of myself as (very) well-informed around this history (and still think that). But it didn’t prepare me for what I experienced. The museums and monuments developed by Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative are unique; you feel as if you were there.

We were a group of around 35 Jewish young teens and their parents accompanied by several rabbis and a Black pastor, Pastor Rondell, from L.A. We visited Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma. We met “Foot Soldiers” of the movement.

Pastor Gwendolyn Webb had participated at age 14 in the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham. Trained to bear attacks by police with water hoses and dogs, she spent seven days in jail, nobody knowing where she was or if she was alive or dead, barely eating because the food was moldy.

She came home so filthy and stinky that, before even hugging her, her mother tried to hose her down with the garden hose; her grandmother stopped her, saying, “She’s had enough hosing.”

The tears started for me when I heard what it was like for Pastor Gwen’s mother who had made her promise to stay away…the heart wrenching choices people make, that mothers make, and to what end…I could only imagine how very hard it is when it doesn’t feel like a choice anymore: the risks they took because they were “sick and tired of being sick and tired”…the risks they took that their parents couldn’t, for the sake of their parents and their own futures...

Among many more things, we visited a sculpture park depicting slavery in all its forms, and a monument that brought alive the history of lynching, all extraordinary and very painful.

But walking through The Legacy Museum in Montgomery was overwhelming to the point of making me feel physically sick at one point. I needed to let the tears flow. As I got to the end, a Black guard smiled and asked if I needed a re-entry pass. When I said no and thank you, she said something about her hopes that it had been a meaningful experience.

I choked up again, and all that could come out of my tight throat was, “I have no words.” And although I thought, “what a lame thing to say,” her reaction was a sigh of gratitude that came out in an almost-whispered “thank you” of feeling “seen.”

It’s such a common saying that this country was built on the backs of immigrants. But an equally (or even more) true statement that this country was built on the backs of slaves. I learned that, at one point, fifty per cent of (white?) New Yorkers owned slaves. Broadway was built by slaves! And that’s in the North!

This is our legacy, yet we don’t really grasp the concept because we haven’t really been taught. So many of the the movies made, the images of slavery we’ve been given, have been sanitized. What I saw was that we can’t even begin to imagine. Yet that is the gift Bryan Stevenson has given us; we can begin to imagine. Because we must see the reality.

This week we begin the Book of Leviticus, VaYikra (And He Called), the third book of Torah.

If you read it cold, it feels so utterly irrelevant: Temple sacrifices, expiation for sins, the animals brought depending on the type of sin, depending on if it’s for an individual or a communal sin, and depending on the means one might have: blood, guts and various organs…

But communal sin and its cleansing, blood spilled—these things feel much to me like making reparations.

In the Temple, it involves a live animal that must be killed and cut up. You are faced with the blood and gore. You have to look at the insides, handle the guts, experience the blood on your hands, spread it and fling it around.

We have become desensitized to gore. Our movies are full of violence. We feel nothing as we see vampires dig their fangs into the necks of other humans. This is what I saw all around me on the airplane.

We might ask, how did we get to this place?

But the answer is obvious. We are a society of traumatized people, white as much as Black, as Pastor Rondell pointed out: if you’re capable of carrying out violence, torturing, killing, or seeing people suffer; when you can have your picture taken at a communal celebration of a lynching with a hanging figure in the background and you smile for the camera; if you watch a violent movie and feel nothing or laugh; that’s the result of trauma. A communal trauma resulting in closed hearts.

How do you open them again? How do we find healing?

It starts by confronting the blood, the guts, and what we’ve done as a society, as many have said.

It would have made total sense had we, a group of white Jews, been the recipients of anger and resentment from those who went through the Civil Rights movement, especially with the backsliding we experiencing as a country.

Yet, as white people on this trip, all we received was open hearts, love, and gratitude. And an enduring faith: faith in God and faith in humanity.

The people we met, these Foot Soldiers who sacrificed and struggled and won on many fronts, but also lost, were so grateful and touched by the effort we made to bring our bodies and hearts to hear them speak, to learn their history—to “see” them. As I heard it articulated, each time they get to talk about their experiences, each time they face their history and experience others witnessing it, it brings healing.

And the gifts they passed on, what they gave us in exchange was the love in their hearts and open arms.

One of these people was one of Rev. Martin Luther King’s bodyguards, who insisted on having our group of forty come into his house to meet him in Selma. We took pictures with him on his porch. His warmth and love beamed. We were told afterwards how important these visits are for him, how the presence of groups like ours lifts his spirits.

I had forgotten that this journey was a two-way street, lifting each other up and giving each other hope. In the end, it was the human interactions that brought healing for everyone as we all faced the blood and gore together.

On this trip, we had a glimpse of the worst of humanity, but also the absolute very best.

VaYikra, the title of this week’s Torah portion, means “And He called.” We are all called to do something important, to make a difference, big or small, while we’re on this Earth.

Let us hear that call and have the guts to face the worst so we can bring out the best. Let us have the guts to take the risks we need to take, for the sake of our future, for the sake of all.

And say Amen.