The Saturday morning service proceeded as expected, no different than countless others that were blessed by the coming of age bat mitzvah ceremony of a well rehearsed, delightful young lady celebrating her thirteenth birthday. She had just finished her recitation of the haftorah, a chanting from the book of First Kings. She stood on the altar as the rabbi praised her poise and accomplishment. Just as the rabbi was about to convey the traditional blessing that God would watch over and protect her, and grant her peace, heart-stopping drama engulfed the sanctuary.
The serenity and solemnity of the service were loudly interrupted by the blare of an electronic alert. This was not a drill. Lockdown procedures should be initiated. Some 400 worshippers slid from their seats to the floor between the pews. Many of them stayed crouched for the near 30 minutes it took for the police to confirm the alarm had been falsely triggered.
Services resumed where they had been cleaved. More than a few congregants admitted they were scared. Why shouldn’t they be, given recent attacks on Jewish congregations and individual Jews across the country but especially in the greater New York metropolitan area.
The alarm sounded on a morning when the bat mitzvah was not the only reason Jews had gathered. After kiddish, an after prayers light meal and gabfest in the social hall, congregants would reconvene in the sanctuary for the first of three conversations on hatred featuring Derek Black, a former white nationalist now, in his words, “an advocate for anti-racism.”
Was the alarm merely coincidental or triggered by an attempt by his former comrades to silence him?
The story of Derek Black has been documented in the book “Rising Out of Hatred” by Eli Saslow, the broad outline of which is, he was born 30 years ago into a leading white nationalist family. His godfather is David Duke. His mother, Duke’s ex-wife, subsequently married his father, Don Black, founder of Stormfront, a white nationalist, anti-Semitic Internet site. Derek was groomed to assume leadership of the movement. It was only after attending New College in Sarasota, Fla., that Derek experienced a gradual rejection of his parents’ principles which, he said, are based on misinformation and untrue “facts” often preached by tenured professors at white nationalist conferences. Naturally, these professors keep a low profile of their beliefs when not among their racist cohorts. (For a more in-depth article on Derek, here’s a link to a 2016 piece in The Washington Post written by Saslow: http://wapo.st/2dF28ZR?tid=ss_mail).
White nationalists, Derek explained, believe multi-cultural societies are failures. They oppose immigration and racial intermarriage, actions they say contribute to “white genocide.” Moreover, their anti-Semitism is founded on the belief that Jews advocate for multi-culturalism.
When white nationalists marched by torch light in Charlottesville, Va., while chanting “Jews will not replace us,” they were decrying Jewish support for immigrants they feared would take the jobs of white Americans.
At the core of white nationalism is the belief that people of color and Jews are inherently inferior to whites. White nationalists do not believe man-made regulations or behavioral tendencies towards minorities have contributed to racial inequality. Being exposed to truths that undermined the validity of white nationalism scrubbed Derek’s allegiance to the movement his family helped catapult to national attention. That was in 2013. He has since been a vocal adversary.
Derek is a handsome, preppy looking, strawberry-haired man. Soft spoken. Small featured. It would require a large leap of imagination to visualize him as a storm trooper propelling thoughts of racial intolerance. But it is equally true that intolerance and non physical prejudice may reside in all of our psyches, implanted there by parents, teachers, television and other media, preachers, perhaps not on purpose but surely by their choice of words, subtle actions, casual references to people, places and events.
Among the takeaways from Saturday at temple were two irrefutable points. No place is a sanctuary any longer from crazed individuals. No synagogue, no church, no mosque, no school. Precautions must be taken. Lock down drills must be practiced.
Second, intolerance flourishes when facts and truths are maligned.
Derek Black was home schooled, a fertile mind willing to absorb the bile his parents planted within him. He was fortunate to encounter a handful of tolerant students at New College who enlightened him and shepherded his transformation. It would be unrealistic to assume many other white nationalists would enjoy the same revelatory experience.
The struggle for the soul of our country, for any country that harbors factions that advocate discrimination, is long term and can only be waged by adherence to truths based on facts, not biases.