It is Hate Speech, Not a Meme
Way back when, at my first pulpit in Cary, North Carolina, I accepted many invitations to speak at area churches. Cary is a Southern boom town in the Research Triangle, known as the “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees” by the old-timers. The area never had much of a Jewish community until the explosion of the tech industry. Case in point: My congregation of 100 families had just one adult who was born in the South. Everybody else was transplants. In Cary, my Jewish congregation was much of the town’s diversity.
One evening, I visited a church just outside of town. The questions about Judaism began rather typically. Do Jews really not believe in the New Testament? How do you interpret the Adam and Eve story? And, then, there was a question, asked timidly, that stopped me in my tracks:
“Do you still sacrifice animals in your synagogue buildings?”
Everybody else nodded– like this question was also on their mind. I felt like laughing. I felt terrified. I felt relieved that I had driven to this church if only to answer this one particular question. I realized: The person asking the question only frame of reference about Judaism was the Bible. They had no idea of how Judaism developed after destruction of the Temple and the cessation of animal sacrifice 2000 years before.
For the weeks that followed, I felt an uneasiness. How many people in the community around me also had such outdated, outlandish, over-the-top questions and conceptions about the Jewish people? I felt like the Other.
This week, when I watched the presidential debate and heard Donald Trump talk of immigrants eating dogs and cats, I thought of this church visit. There are critical differences, of course. The church members had questioned me with good intentions and a desire to learn and break down prejudice; Donald Trump spoke to incite hate and prejudice. The church members had questioned me in a private forum, not on national television. I could not stop thinking of a Haitian immigrant, living in Springfield, Ohio, feeling like the Other and being frightened of what their neighbors truly thought of them.
As my Facebook feed filled up this week with memes of dachshunds in hamburger buns and kittens hiding in fear, I laughed, of course. But I also worried. Some Haitian families kept their children home from school this week out of fear. There was vandalism and threats made.
I thought of Pizzagate and the vigilante who arrived at Comet pizza with a gun. I thought of slain prime minister Yitzchak Rabin, whose assassin was inspired by careless words. I thought of the generations of our ancestors for whom blood libel—the hateful rumor that Jews used the blood of Christian children in their matza—was a terror-provoking, very real threat.
Our words matter. The words of leaders matter even more. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” we read in Proverbs 18:21. Donald Trump’s words on Wednesday night were dangerous and irresponsible. Xenophobic remarks, especially when those words are spoken by influencers, can be deadly. We need to call it out.
We can laugh at dachshund memes. We can roll our eyes and look the other way. But someplace, someone heard what Donald Trump said and believed him. And that can have tragic consequences.
