In pursuit of justice, we must teach our children the facts of intolerance and discrimination

Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue…. (Deuteronomy 16:18-20)

But let justice well up like water, Righteousness like an unfailing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

During my first semester in graduate school, I took a class on religion and politics. My professor practiced the Muslim faith. The morning after the 2016 presidential elections, he shared with the class that his six-year-old daughter had asked him over breakfast, “Daddy, today at school, should I tell people I’m not Muslim if they ask me?”

He somberly advised her not to worry, but she didn’t need to tell.

During a discussion on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness as part of a new social and racial justice program at The Temple in Atlanta, a woman described what she taught her children about “the protocol for being pulled over as a black person by the police.”

She told them they should sit still with their hands visible in their laps and to remain calm, as appearing nervous would make them look suspicious.

The woman said that as her children were still young, she did not feel it was time to explain they “already looked suspicious due to the color of their skin.”

The woman said that as her children were still young, she did not feel it was time to explain they “already looked suspicious due to the color of their skin.”

A 10-year-old student in a Hebrew school class I taught told me, “my parents know I’m gay, and they said they still love me, but I shouldn’t tell people, especially grown-ups, that I like boys. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I should ask.”

And most recently, I was asked by a friend if she should tell her children “the truth” about why there were so many police cars outside the synagogue when she dropped them off on Sunday mornings.

Parents grapple with tough questions

I am not a parent, and I do not judge any of these mothers and fathers for the way they answered their children’s questions or instructed them on how to behave in specific instances.

What is clear to me is what they all have in common: the parental instinct to protect their children, both physically and emotionally.

I sometimes felt as a child that my own parents couldn’t be bothered answering the tough questions. I no longer feel that way. Instead, I believe they too wanted to protect me.

I sometimes felt as a child that my own parents couldn’t be bothered answering the tough questions. I no longer feel that way. Instead, I believe they too wanted to protect me.

I know they wanted to protect me from fear and hurt feelings, as well as to preserve my childhood innocence and naïveté. I believe my parents wanted to shield me from the hatred and intolerance awaiting me in adulthood.

However, new studies on child development have taught us more about how to speak to our children without dismissing their experiences, allowing them to develop confidence and establish their place in this world.

We take these steps in hope our children will grow up knowing their voices are important and they will stand up for what is right and speak up when they notice something wrong.

Seek opportunities for honest conversation

This is a wonderful aspiration and a hopeful course for the next generation. But it is not the only motivation for more honest conversations with our children.

New studies on child development have taught us more about how to speak to our children without dismissing their experiences, allowing them to develop confidence and establish their place in this world.

While some voices encourage sharing and spreading ideals for a better tomorrow, others feel emboldened to silence these voices and replace them with ideas of hate and discrimination.

The age of social media has brought on the terrible new spread of hateful speech via phone and keyboard, emboldening the angry “warriors” of cruel rhetoric to put these ideas into action and threaten our communities, schools and places of worship.

Facing that painful reality, we must teach our children the facts of intolerance and discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender identity, sexual orientation and physical, mental, psychological and intellectual disabilities.

How can we help our children become aware and alert to personal threats and provide them the ability to recognize threats toward others in our communities?

5 Tips for Talking with Children About Anti-Semitism

The Jewish Social Service Agency has published 5 Tips for Talking with Children About Anti-Semitism, providing basic tools I believe apply to all forms of discrimination:

Ensuring our conversations are appropriate for children’s age, level of development and knowledge level.
Reassuring children they are not alone in the face of intolerance and that others outside their specific group can help defend them.
Explaining that anti-semitism and acts of intolerance of any kind are forms of bullying, with the distinction between types of bullies (those who act from a place of ignorance and those who actually intend harm).
Relaying the importance of taking action against prejudice while understanding the limits of children’s control in certain situations.
Emphasizing that children must remain alert to acts of intolerance, for their own safety and the safety of others.

Sarah Kay: ‘If I Should Have A Daughter’

While considering this topic, I recalled a poem written by Sarah Kay, founder of Project VOICE, a group devoted to educating and inspiring students through creative writing, poetry and performance.

Sarah presented her poem, If I Should Have a Daughter, at a Ted Talk conference in 2011, where she describes the lessons she would want to teach her daughter one day, based on her own experiences and lessons her mother taught her.

The final verses of Sarah’s powerful poem illustrate how she would tell her child about the “bad things” in life. She writes, “And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.”

Alden Solovy: ‘You will not succeed, You of hate’

In closing, I add a contemporary prayer by creative liturgist Alden Solovy. The Hebrew stanza comes from Psalm 121:

You will not succeed,
You of hate,
You of violence,
You of blood and venom.

My people have seen your kind
For generations,
For millennia.
We have stood before guns and knives,
Gallows and gas chambers,
To outlive our persecutors.
Greece fell. Rome faded.
The Inquisitions, the Pogroms,
The Treblinkas and the Babi Yars,
All failed.
The people of Israel live.
The nation of Israel lives.

Hinei lo-yanum v’lo yishan shomer Yisrael!
Adonai yishmarekha mikol-ra, yishmor et-nafshecha.
See, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps!
God shall keep you from all evil, God will keep your soul.

No, you will not succeed,
You of hate, You of violence,
You of blood and venom.

A blessing for peace

May these words be a light to you and your children, to your students, to your colleagues and to your friends.

May they be a blessing for the continued fight of the Jewish people toward peace and a blessing for the peace of all other nations who live under oppression and in fear.

Amen.