"God spoke to Moses after the death..."

Those are the first words of this week's Torah portion, Acharei Mot. God speaks to Moses after the death of Aaron's two sons, and gives instructions on how to be safe, and how to draw near to God's presence, and how to atone when we miss the mark, and how to foster an ethical and upright community.

Acharei mot: after the death. I am speaking with you today after a death, too. All week long I've been struggling for words. After the second shooting spree carried out by a white nationalist at a synagogue on Shabbes. After multiple arsons at Black churches, and an Easter massacre in Sri Lanka, and a massacre at a mosque in New Zealand. After death after death after death.

What can I say to you at this moment when white nationalism and white supremacy are terrifyingly on the rise, tacitly approved by a president who chillingly called the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville "very fine people"? At this moment when the family of Lori Kaye z"l are still in the week of shiva, their loved one's burial still fresh and their grief still raw?

Torah gives us instructions for safety within the ancient sacrificial system, but there are no instructions for safety today in a synagogue or mosque or church or gurdwara. There are no instructions for ensuring safety today if you are a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Sikh, or a person of color, or an immigrant, or a refugee living in the shadow of white supremacy.

And I am no Moses, and I do not have a direct line to God. But here is what I think God would say, if God were in the business of speaking to us directly in language that we can hear and clearly understand. I think God would say: you're all in this together.

I read part of the Poway shooter's manifesto. (I'm not naming him, because I don't want to give him the satisfaction of fame. He is Amalek; may his name be blotted out.) The hatred made me sick to my stomach. The unreasonableness of the hatred made me sick to my stomach. The belief, counter to any reason or fact, that Jews are evil and engaged in conspiracy and that it was his white nationalist Christian obligation to kill us on sight, made me sick to my stomach.

It doesn't make any sense to me. Because hatred doesn't make any sense to me.

Let’s be clear, that hatred is directed at us. This is a frightening time to be a Jew. And... let’s also be clear that it’s not only directed at us. The horror of what is aimed at us, as Jews in this world today, is also aimed at Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus and people of color and immigrants and queer people and refugees. It is hatred of diversity, hatred of difference, and it harms us all.

In this case, the damaged soul who opened fire at Chabad of Poway had also attempted to set fire to a mosque. That one human being had literally tried to go after two different religious communities. But it's not just about him. It's the whole system of white supremacy. It is a twisted, tangled, interconnected web of hatred for all of us who are not Christian-white-supremacists.

Antisemitism is not separate from islamophobia, is not separate from homophobia and transphobia, is not separate from hatred of immigrants, is not separate from hatred of brown people, is not separate from hatred of refugees...

We are all in this together.

And the best response I can offer to this latest atrocity is: we need to keep on living. We need to keep on being Jewish -- visibly Jewish, publicly Jewish, Jewish when we lie down and when we rise up, Jewish when we are at home and when we are walking on our way! Because if we hide who we are, or shrink who we are, then we’re letting them win -- we’re letting people who are driven by hatred and intolerance deny us a source of meaning and connection and joy and love.

And we need to keep on living, together. In relationship with each other. In solidarity with each other. Celebrating and uplifting each other. Standing up to protect each other. We need to build and strengthen our relationships with all peoples who are fearful and targeted by white nationalism and white supremacy: people of every faith, people of every skin color, people of every ethnicity, people from every country, people of every gender and sexual orientation.

If we turn inward and focus only on our own safety, or if we imagine that our safety lies in ensuring that someone else is more marginalized than we are, we’re helping those who would harm us. If we let them drive a wedge between us, we are doing some of their work for them.

But if we make common cause with others who are marginalized, we can stand together against those who would annihilate us. And we will prevail, because we’re not letting them pit Jews and Muslims against each other, or people with different skin tones, or people of different ethnicities, or people from different nations. We win when we understand that our diversity is our strength.

The white nationalists want a narrow world where everyone who is not them is slaughtered, or subjugated, or erased. We can resist by building a world that is precisely not that. We can resist by joyously being who we are, and by embracing humanity's glorious spectrum of differences, and by standing up in common cause to protect others. That’s what I believe God asks of us.

Because we are all in this together. And together, we are stronger than any community could ever be alone.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the d'varling I offered this morning at my shul, cross-posted to my congregational From the Rabbi blog.