A public charter school in Utah sparked controversy over the weekend after announcing that parents could “exercise their civil rights” and opt their children out of the school’s Black History Month curriculum. After widespread backlash, it’s walking back this decision.
Torah teaches Black lives matter. Torah teaches all lives matter. This truth has resonated around the world with non-Jews and Jews who are Black, indigenous and people of color and Jews who aren’t. Movements and political positions come and go, but the truth of Torah is eternal.
While the truth of Torah is beyond time and space, we are called to live out our faith in a particular, often messy context, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the civil rights movement of our day. Future generations will look at how we met this challenge, to be true witnesses of a holy God. Our positive witness will be seen and replicated across the globe. Fortunately, the American Black Jewish partnership provides an example of doing this. The civil rights movement consisted of a diverse coalition of participants communists, Black nationalists, Black power advocates, revolutionaries and Christians, among many others.
“Let’s give each other a chance,” he said. “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again.” He called upon his fellow Americans to put an “end to the grim era of demonization.”
It felt good to hear those words. As we’ve learned over the past four years, what an elected leader says matters. But that moment of comfort didn’t last long.
The reset that so many of us say we want will not be easy to achieve.
I write a lot about the ethical requirements of productive conversation. So, when the Knight Foundation and Kettering Foundation invited me to write a piece for their joint project on the future of democracy and civic life, I jumped at the opportunity. The project includes my contribution: “The Conversations of a Self-Governing People.”
The Movement for Black Lives Hard At Work: Five Organizations To Know
December 16, 2020 at 6:57 pm
An ecosystem of organizations, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has been hard at work in communities across the country creating opportunities, providing resources, pushing for social change and more. Since coming together in 2015, the national network boasts more than 150 organizations dedicated to helping Black communities learn, organize and, most importantly, take action. After such a tumultuous year, its work has become more vital than ever, and it includes initiatives that touch on everything from Black farmers to inequalities in the cash bail system all powered by the tireless efforts of M4BL members.