By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal
SAN DIEGO –I was appalled by one of the comments that I heard repeatedly in the wake of the murderous rampage at a Milwaukee Sikh temple last Sunday: the white supremacist shooter who attacked it probably mistook it for an Islamic house of worship. As if that is any kind of excuse or justification.
Bigotry, acts of terror, and hate crimes are despicable and detestable regardless of whom the victims are.
On his CNN blog Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation wrote:
“We Americans flatter ourselves as citizens of a “land of liberty” where religious freedom is sacrosanct. And we have much to brag about in this regard, not least a First Amendment that guarantees religious liberty and the separation of church and state. Yet the United States also has a long history of religious bigotry.
“When murderers target and kill religious minorities simply because they are nonwhite or non-Christian, something of each of these traditions dies. So we need to redouble our efforts to keep both vibrant.”
In parashat Eikev, Moses teaches the Israelites: “You must not bring an abhorrent thing into your house, or you will be proscribed like it; you must reject it as abominable and abhorrent, for it is proscribed.” (Deut. 7:26)
Moses was speaking about idolatry. He warned the Israelites that if they brought idols into their homes, it would eventually lead to their own destruction.
But racism, bigotry, and violence are also “abhorrent things.” If we bring them into our own homes not only will they proliferate, but eventually lead to the destruction of our own society. Once hate is unleashed, it goes in many different directions and is nearly impossible to rein in.
The attack on the Sikh temple should outrage us, but we should not be any less outraged when any house of worship is attacked. As a Christian minister said when he was interviewed during a memorial service for the victims of this murder, “An attack on one of them is an attack on all of us.”
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Rabbi Rosenthal is spiritual leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego. He may be contacted at leonard.rosenthal@sdjewishworld.com
A very important and timely column especially from a Jewish perspective and voiced by an esteem religious leader. We Jews, as victims of centuries of discrimination and hate need to be highly intolerant of any hatefulness directed toward other groups due to race, religion and sexual orientation.