thinking jewish

How You See It

Shortly after the presidential election, I got a call from my dad.

"Do you remember your first interaction with a black man?" he asked. I did not. So he began to tell me a story.

I was three. He and I walked down the street. I probably had a red wagon in tow - it went everywhere in the neighborhood with me. I probably wore black and white saddle shoes - my mother made me, I will resent it till the day I die.

And then we passed a black man on the street. It was no spectacular interaction. He probably said hello, and we greeted him back in response. But this was the early eighties, and my father was a child of the sixties. This was no 2008. So my dad was nervous about the future racial ideas of his firstborn son.

And so he asked me, "Did you notice anything about that man?"

Behind his question was so much. Did you see that his skin is a different color than ours? Did you see that his ancestors were slaves in this land? Did you see the pain of his life, the inequality of his reality? Is he different from you or are we all the same?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way we see things, about the way we internalize the reality around us and how we choose to perceive it.

Just the other night, at a swank hotel bar in Los Angeles, I joined a group to watch the latest episode of one reality television show or another. And as we cheered and laughed and socialized, there, in the middle of our cohesive, sat a woman whom none of us knew. She seemed nice, and she did not smell. But upon closer inspection, something seemed off.

She laughed for no reason, and sat and stood with no cause. She seemed nervous and anxious; she tapped her legs and continually looked over her shoulders. And then she would speak without reason, say things that made no sense.

She was, clearly, detached from reality. Maybe schizophrenic, maybe having one type of mental break or another. Who knows. But she sat herself in the middle of our group and went about her thing, regardless.

And then, in a moment especially awkward, she spoke to our group. The words from her mouth were half gibberish mixed with sound English.

From the other end of the room, a woman yells back at our guest, "Yeah, lady. Just keep on living on whatever planet you're on!"

The disgust was palpable. The contempt seethed through her words.

It was clear that our guest's reality was so far detached from the context in which we found ourselves that I could not feel anything but empathy for her. I felt bad. I hurt for her.

The prophets of our tradition called out in my mind. Care for the widow, look out for the orphan. Be mindful of the stranger amongst you, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

The only solace came from the fact that this woman, our guest, had no appreciation of the fact that she was being made fun of. She went back along her way, in her own world, her own universe.

I was sad. Sad that this woman was plagued by such mental disease. More sad that another human could use her disease as a source of ridicule.

Because yes, it was weird and awkward to have a mentally ill woman hanging out in "our" bar. And yes, it was uncomfortable to listen to her rants.

But all those feelings had to give way to the more important emotions: concern for her well-being; hope that she would get home safe that night; realization that my choice was to either accept her difference or just try to pretend that she did not exist; appreciation of her struggle, and how much more difficult it was to be her than it is to be me.

The prophets, the sages, the texts, the Creator, they all stand together and yell to us to choose carefully the way we internalize the reality before us. How will we choose to react? How will we choose to perceive? How will we choose to see it?

See, I set before you blessing and curse. Choose blessing... choose life.

When I walked down the street with my dad on that day during the third year of my life, we stopped for a moment as he asked if I noticed anything different about that black man whom we'd passed.

"Yes!" I said.

His heart skipped a beat. My son's a racist, he thought. What will he say?

I looked up, and in all my three-year-old innocence, responded, "He's got a mustache!"

Look Who's Coming to Dinner

In all the excitement, the joy and euphoria, it's easy to miss the picture of America's newest First Family.

At first, in our post-modern, post-race world, there seems to be no issue. They're Americans. I'm American. We're all American. He's our newest president.

So what?

But in the speeches and the parties and the breaking news of last night, something dawned on me - something which for the last twenty months of this election cycle seemed like a non-issue.

Only a century and a half ago, in this country, on our farms and in our cities, people who's skin was colored black were slaves - not indentured servants, not mistreated individuals, not second-class citizens. No, they were slaves.

And then they were freed.

And the generation of slaves passed, and a new generation arose - a generation of African-Americans who were citizens without rights. We did not sit next to them on buses, we did not drink from their water fountains. That generation rose up against the injustice. They fought to be a part of this land's narrative, to be one and equal.

They succeeded, at least on paper.

But our country is still divided.

In all my life - a life of education and vast experiences, of a world-class public education and world travels - I have had one African American friend. And even that is a stretch. He lived on my floor in freshman year dorms.

Lest I confuse, however, let me be clear. I have had one African-American friend in all my life not because I never became friends with the various African-Americans I met along the way. No! Along my whole way, in twenty six years of privileged life in America, I have not encountered more than a single non-white.

Beyond the commercial interactions, beyond the fleeting conversations, between life in the suburbs of San Diego and the college streets of Berkeley, the towers of New York and Brooklyn and the city-scape of Los Angeles, just one. One.

My building manager in Brooklyn was black. So was one professor at Berkeley. So was my doctor during a few episodes of faked sickness during childhood.

I remember coming back from the doctor's office and hearing my mom ask me about the new doctor. It never occurred to my young mind to describe him as black. He's nice, he helped, he saw me quickly, all seemed relevant. But the color of his skin was not.

And I remember my mother's surprise and pleasure in seeing this. I did not get it. My color-blind young eyes could not. But she did.

So last night, as I watched the streaming tears of celebrities and the proletariat, of Oprah and Jesse Jackson and Malcom the plumber, I was so moved seeing their dream come to life. I was so taken-back realizing, for the first time, that this was not merely an African-American being elected president, but, rather, the culmination of a two hundred year struggle.

In that moment of understanding, their tears became my tears, their excitement, my excitement. I know what it's like to see the success of your people's deepest hopes. I know what it's like to see a new generation enter the promise land, to revive long lost dreams of salvation, to realize that the future ahead is, indeed, brighter than the dark past behind.

As I looked at that Chicago stage, at that platform surrounded by bulletproof glass in the middle of a sea of celebration, I saw four people, my new first family, and felt myself in them. In Barack and Michele, and Sasha and Melia I saw the culmination of all my hopes and dreams of what this great nation is and can be.

Issues aside, forgetting for a fleeting moment the arguments and debates and policy papers, I felt proud that they represent me, that he is my president. Because in him I see the hope that I crave. In him I see the culmination of my dreams, of all our dreams - of my hopes, just as much as the hopes of those African Americans who are merely one, or two, or even three, four or five generations removed from slavery.

He's not their president. He's not my president. He is our president.

Because, lest we forget, Barack Obama's family never witnessed slavery. Half of his lineage are Hawaiian whites. The other half only recently came to these shores. And, nonetheless, his story can inspire former slaves to feel like they succeeded.

So too can his story inspire me. He rose from nothing to everything. He brought enemies together. He stands poised to lead the world into a new era.

His ability to represent each of us is his success.

That is what makes this a great day in America. That is what makes the months ahead so exciting.

Yes We Could

I blinked, and blinked again. And with each successive flushing of my eyes I became more and more certain that I was not seeing reality. It didn't feel real. It didn't seem possible.

But it was.

The cool air blew through the flatlands of Southern California today. Fall began on this early November day. The winds of the season brought with them change.

My generation came of age in a time of war and violence, hatred and Republicanism. Since we started college, politics were a place where Republicanism ran rampant, where the ideals that seemed so right and true were repressed.

Kyoto, 9/11, Mideast Peace, torture, civil rights, world respect. Our country spent the last eight years on a steep descent from the high hopes of the end of the twentieth century to a new dark reality of the twenty-first.

More than this made me angry, it made me detach. I felt so much less inspired by the unexpected story of a bunch of revolutionaries with the grand idea that every man was equal, every man worthy. I forgot the struggles for freedom, the marches westward, the successes and achievements and inspirations.

I was embarrassed. I was uninspired. I was sad.

And then, at the most unlikely of moments, from the most unexpected of places a man emerged with the vision and charisma to forge together a movement of Americans.

I listened to the acceptance speech tonight. I made phone calls on Sunday. I wore t-shirts, and buttons and stickers. I argued, I rallied, and wrote in support. And not in so long have I felt so much a part of something big like this.

It still doesn't seem real. I worry I'll wake up tomorrow and learn it was a dream. But in the meantime I just want to scream. I want to cry and dance and shout.

A new era dawns tomorrow.

Let it begin.