But We Did Not Speak Up

Let me paint you a picture:

Masked soldiers conduct arrests with no warrants, based purely on the race or ethnicity of the victim. Said victims are then taken to mysterious facilities where they can be held for days, weeks or months in inhumane conditions with no access to any legal representation. No one who knows them is aware of where they are or what is being done to them. These acts are performed with impunity, with the full support of the state. We are told these are national security measures necessary to make our nation great again. How long these people have been here is no matter; neither is their criminal record or lack thereof, nor is their legal status to be in this country: even a citizen can fall victim. Journalists and protesters are also vulnerable — anything to obfuscate and eliminate the truth. 

This description might sound like it applies to events in some foreign authoritarian state — North Korea or Russia, perhaps. But it’s happening right here, right now, in the United States of America. Since Donald Trump’s re-election, his Department of Homeland Security, employing both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol, has been working to achieve his goal of deporting 3,000 illegal immigrants a day, which adds up to over a million a year. In their efforts to achieve this, the DHS has engaged in a cruel and ruthless campaign to capture and deport as many people as they can in whatever way they can. They arrest parents picking up their children from schools, lay in wait at courts for people coming out of mandated immigration appointments and illegally raid homes without a warrant. Their victims are then detained in gulag-like centers, and they can be moved to new locations in such a manner that they effectively disappear in the system. Some people are deported to countries from which they left because of great danger, some are deported to countries they aren’t even from, and notably, some have been sent to the notorious El Salvadoran prison CECOT. This nightmare is happening here in our own backyard.

All of this upsets me immensely, but it is not the sole cause of my frustration. What adds to my anger at these injustices is that I am a member of a community toward which a similar series of events was directed in the 1930s and 40s: the state-run campaign of persecution we now refer to collectively as the Holocaust. We constantly and correctly hold to task all those who stood by and let it happen and consider them guilty for ignoring our plight because “it wasn’t them.” As Martin Niemoller stated with hindsight and regret, “Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.” And now, when much the same is occurring to the vulnerable among us, we find ourselves in the same position: silent. Most of us are ignorant of it, some willfully so, and others are dismissive of claims of injustice. Some are even supportive of the DHS’s extreme measures. Those people are damned, but ignorance and silence is damning as well. It is imperative for the sake of others and ourselves to speak out and decry the very crimes we once experienced as a community. 

So why does the American Orthodox Jewish community not decry this injustice? Why is it ignored? What benefit is gained by our silence? Am I to guess that it is because this administration bends slightly more towards our community’s favor on certain issues? Because we are willing to sacrifice America’s vulnerable for this party’s guarantee of security for Israel? Ignore the fact that the right, which I’ve heard offhandedly is “the party of Torah values” grows more conspiratorial and antisemitic by the day. Never mind that adopting such an attitude plays into bad faith critics’ “double loyalty” accusations against us. Take no notice of all those being trampled on, because things are good for us. We are no longer like those immigrants and it is up to them to do the same, to climb the ladder we pull up after ourselves. Besides, we will have Israel; we will have a place to go to in the event that things get bad here. And all those we stepped on in the process of achieving this security are mere extras in the Jewish narrative. Those from whom we have benefited in this country exist for that sole purpose, to be benefitted from, and they are therefore not owed any consideration. That is the attitude we have cultivated in our comfortable myopic complacency.

Being in Yeshiva University in the current environment adds insult to injury. Our President, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, gave the benediction at President Trump’s second inauguration. Many assume that this places a rabbinic and communal stamp of approval on this administration and its actions. President Berman has affirmed this assumption to be correct: in several emails, he has praised the administration’s actions concerning Israel, the only issue that matters. Yet in all other areas, our university has been silent. Its silence, which could be charitably assumed to result from fear of upsetting the administration, suggests agreement. 

Is Torat Adam, the idea of each human’s infinite worth and potential, a value that we actually live by? Does it apply to the children and parents abducted from schools and soccer games or taken off the streets? Or is it merely a platitude that sounds good during assemblies? 

President Berman has also recently engaged in efforts to have a dialogue with and emulate other faith-based universities he sees as our peers. This is in alignment with the rightward-shifting Modern Orthodox community’s embrace of “Judeo-Christian values,” which has increasingly allowed the ideas and rhetoric of the Christo to encroach upon and affect the public view of the Judeo. Yet even as emulators on this stage we fall short, for Pope Leo has made a call defending migrants. ICE has gassed and fired upon clergy members praying at the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago. Our supposed peers have the moral clarity to meet this moment. Why have we fallen short? 

There is a modern Talmudic machloket (argument) in the Jewish world over the mantra “Never Again.” One side says it means “Never again will something like the Holocaust happen again to anyone,” while others have it as “Never again will the Jewish People specifically be attacked like this.” It seems our community has chosen the latter. We have chosen universal indifference over universal compassion and thus become the very people we rail against.

And even now, the latter half of Niemoller’s statement is coming true. The TPUSA America Fest has exposed the growing schism in the right over classical antisemitism, targeting Ben Shapiro specifically. I worry that we will reach the point where our silence becomes our own downfall, where the mechanisms of the state being developed now for unaccountable authority are wielded against us. Niemoller documented the devastating result of such silence when he said, “Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

I am so impassioned in my criticism for one reason: because I care. I care about my community. I feel betrayed by its current actions and inactions in the present moment, and I worry where such a path might lead in the near future. So take my words as a plea: a plea for action, for courage and for a rededication to the ideals of truth and compassion that are emblazoned on the side of our buildings. Remember what we once were, who we are and what we stand for. When the vulnerable are attacked, let us be the ones who break the chain and speak up.

This article was written before the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti on Jan 7 and Jan 24 in Minneapolis. 

Photo caption: ICE immigration raid scene

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons