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History Not Obliged To Make You Feel Good

History Not Obliged To Make You Feel Good

Dear Snoop Dogg:

You could have been honest about it. If you had, I’d still think you wrong as two left shoes, but at least I could give you points for guts.

As it is, I can only shake my head in appalled wonder at your entirely gutless Instagram attack on the remake of “Roots” that aired last week on the A&E Networks. You called for a boycott, saying, “They just want to keep showing the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago. . . . When you all going to make a (expletive) series about the success that black folks is having? The only success we have is ‘Roots’ and ’12 Years a Slave’?”

Thus spoke the star of “Soul Plane.” And it raises a simple question: Negro, are you out your d–n mind?

Allow me to share some Wikipedia research. No, that’s not a definitive source, but the results were still persuasive. Know how many productions — TV, feature film and documentaries — about the 246-year epoch of American slavery I was able to identify? Forty-six. That’s since “Birth of a Nation” in 1915. By contrast, I found 136 American productions about the 12 years of the Holocaust, which ended in 1945.

Somehow, I have never once heard the complaint that there are too many Holocaust movies being made. And it is simply inconceivable to me that a Jewish entertainer would say something so asinine.

Yet, here you are complaining about too many slave films. Not that you’re alone. Every time some film or TV program dares recount this grim history, I hear some white people argue that telling these stories is “divisive” and even “racist.” “‘Roots’ is depressing,” writes columnist Cal Thomas.

Well, boo-hoo.

Few people ever really tell the truth, ever admit the real reason they say such things. People like Thomas do not admit they fear feeling blame and guilt at seeing what ancestors did. People like you do not admit they fear feeling shame and fury at seeing what ancestors suffered.

I learned long ago that white guilt is about the most useless emotion there is. Anything that makes you feel guilty, you will eventually resent and react against. So I don’t need or want white people’s guilt. I’d be happy to make do with their acknowledgment of historical and present-day reality and maybe a little simple human compassion.

As to black folks’ shame and fury, well, I can’t imagine it’s a barrel of laughs for a Jew to watch “Schindler’s List,” either. Admittedly, a Jew doesn’t walk out of that movie and rub shoulders with the heirs of Nazi Germany while you and I do live side by side with the heirs of antebellum (and Jim Crow) America. In that sense, at least, ours is the heavier emotional burden.

Still, I think Jews, by and large, understand something that escapes people like you and Thomas: History is not obliged to make you feel good. Its job is to tell you who you are and where you came from so you can pass that down to your children, and maybe anchor them in identity — and purpose — beyond that imparted to them by the video channel.

I suspect Jews also understand that if you don’t tell your story, others will, and in the end, you won’t recognize it. A docent on a Southern plantation recently wrote of white visitors asking if slaves got paid for their work, signed up for jobs they wanted, or “appreciated” how well cared-for they were. It’s safe to say none of them were ever “depressed” by “Roots.”

It’s a funny thing, Snoop. Back when rappers like you were being condemned for your profane tales of street life, you defended yourselves by arguing that you were simply reporting the truth of urban America. This was real, you said, and you challenged critics to deal with it.

So it’s ironic, a quarter-century later, to find you whining about “Roots.” You want real? Brother, this is as real as it gets. And it turns out the one who can’t deal with it is you.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2016 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

American Jews Are Protesting Trump’s Planned AIPAC Speech

American Jews Are Protesting Trump’s Planned AIPAC Speech

It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening. The American Jewish community is beginning to call Donald Trump what he is: a dangerous person.

A few months ago, the Republican Jewish Coalition — which represents some of the deepest-pocketed donors on the conservative super PAC circuit — laughed along with Trump as he said that he was “a negotiator like you folks, we’re negotiators.” He continued: “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t renegotiate deals? This room negotiates a lot. This room perhaps more than any room I’ve ever spoken to.”

The Anti-Defamation League defended those remarks, for some reason.

Now, it’s different. Trump has spent the past two months proving two things: that his casual racism is purposefully used to appeal to America’s white nationalist underbelly, and that he could actually be president. 

When the American-Israeli Political Action Committee announced last month that Donald Trump would speak at their annual policy summit, many took it as an affront to values in the Jewish community that call for challenging racism and demagoguery.

Three days ago, the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish group in the country, put out a statement saying they would “find an appropriate and powerful way to make our voices heard” during Trump’s appearance at AIPAC, claiming Trump’s “campaign has been replete with naked appeals to bigotry, especially against Hispanics and Muslims,” and that “in recent days, increasingly, he appears to have gone out of his way to encourage violence at his campaign events.”

URJ’s former president, Rabbi Eric Yoffe, wrote an editorial yesterday supporting the action, and another group, “Come Together Against Hate” has announced that they’re planning a mass walkout during Trump’s speech.

AIPAC is one of the largest lobbying groups in the country. Their stated mission is to “educate decision makers about the bonds that unite the United States and Israel,” and, frankly, they’re quite good at it. This year’s policy conference — as it does every year — will feature speeches from the most prominent political figures in the nation: Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Donald Trump, among others. The event draws thousands of attendees every year.

Though most American Jews are Democrats, It doesn’t help Trump’s case with conservative Jews that he said he would be “neutral” in peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

As former Bush speechwriter Noam Neusner explained in The Forward recently, Republican Jews have plenty of reasons to vote against Trump: “[H]is appeal to nativism, or his crony capitalism, or his crassness, or his expressed desire for “neutrality” between Israel and the Palestinians, or his admiration for Vladimir Putin, or his quotation of Mussolini, or his approval of the crushing of Chinese democracy protesters, or his rejection of permitting any Muslims into the country, or his initial refusal to forswear the endorsement of white supremacists.”

According to the Washington Post‘s Rosalind S. Helderman, the Republican Jewish Coalition “is expected to debate how to deal with Trump during its annual meeting next month in Las Vegas.”

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Presidential Forum in Washington December 3, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

 

Prisoner’s Release, U.S. Moves Are ‘Hanukkah Miracle’ For Cuban Jews

Prisoner’s Release, U.S. Moves Are ‘Hanukkah Miracle’ For Cuban Jews

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

HAVANA — “Feliz januca!” — Happy Hanukkah — announced the emcee, as Cuba’s tiny Jewish community gathered at Havana’s largest synagogue and sang first the Cuban national anthem, then that of Israel.

Jews here are celebrating the holiday with an air of optimism long in coming. The opening of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, along with the release from jail of Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor who is Jewish, has energized a dwindling community that struggles to survive.

“This was a Hanukkah miracle,” said Adela Dworin, president of the Jewish community based at Temple Beth Shalom. “It was about time.”

Teens danced to klezmer music in the celebrations Sunday night, which saw the kindling of the sixth of eight candles in an ornate silver menorah. Several hundred people filed into the sanctuary, men with colorful kippa, children with construction-paper likenesses of candle flames on their heads. Hanukkah, an eight-day holiday also known as the Festival of Lights, represents a second-century rebellion of Jews against their oppressors in territory that is now Israel.

Only about 1,500 Jews remain in Cuba, two-thirds of them in the capital, where there are three temples.

Jewish leaders made a point of visiting Gross during his five years in prison and a military hospital, especially during Jewish holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashana, when they would take him latkes, chocolate or a menorah.

“We tried to help him maintain his tranquillity and his faith as a good Jew,” said David Prinstein Senorans, another senior leader of the community.

Dworin said that in Gross’ darkest moments of desperation, especially toward the end, he spoke of not wanting to live anymore.

“I reminded him our religion prohibits suicide; I’d like to think we planted a grain of sand and raised his spirits,” Dworin said in an interview after Sunday night’s Hanukkah celebrations. “We never would abandon a fellow Jew, whether you agree with his way of thinking or not.”

By March of this year, she said, Gross no longer wanted visitors, his depression that severe.

When he was first arrested for importing satellite and other sophisticated electronic equipment, there were reports that Gross was providing the material to the Jewish community. Cuban Jewish leaders quickly distanced themselves from that claim and say now that there was no formal relationship between the community and Gross in terms of providing Internet or other communications supplies.

“The Cuban government knew we were never involved; it would be ridiculous,” Dworin said.

Jewish leaders say that, despite their diminished presence, their relations with the Cuban government are good. They noted a Hanukkah visit to the temple a few years ago by President Raul Castro, who participated in the candle-lighting. In 1998, then-President Fidel Castro also dropped by in what was considered a groundbreaking gesture by a government that officially for years was atheistic and did not encourage free religious observance.

“Our synagogues are open, and we don’t need police guards,” said Fidel Babani, another prominent member and former president of the community.

Before the 1959 revolution, Cuba had a booming Jewish population, estimated to number at least 15,000. Jews had lived in Cuba since the era of the Spanish Inquisition, with a large influx in the early part of the 20th century from Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

The post-revolutionary communist government’s decision to nationalize businesses and seize many properties drove many Cubans, including Jews, into exile; others feared the official atheism of the ruling party’s early years. It was what Jews at the time called a migration stampede.

By 1989, considered the lowest point, there were fewer than 800 Jews left. The number has been on the rebound in recent years; it is no longer difficult to assemble a minyan, the 10 males required to hold a religious service, Babani said.

Still, no rabbi lives in Cuba. The person officiating over Sunday night’s ceremony was not an official rabbi; one visits periodically from Argentina.

“We hope the normalization (of diplomatic relations with the U.S.) means Cuban Jews will return and more Jewish groups will visit,” said Prinstein. “It is no secret: We live thanks to help from abroad.”

Photo: Children with paper likenesses of candle flames are among Cubans celebrating Hanukkah at Temple Beth Shalom in Havana. (Tracy Wilkinson/Los Angeles Times/TNS)