The master of ceremonies stood on a platform in Times Square, loudly inveighing against people of non-color.
Flanked by two assistants dressed, like he was, in colorful caps and robes adorned with Jewish symbols, he spewed particular malice at “so-called Jews.”
Occasionally, the lead man would nudge one of his helpers who had missed a cue to read from the bible he held. The addled assistant would then fumble to find the place and, pointing with his finger, stiltedly read a pre-designated verse.
A nearby display board was inscribed with the names of the shevatim in English. Opposite each was a novel identification: one of 12 African or Caribbean nationalities.
My immediate reaction, when first spying the trio, was amusement. But then it morphed into pity for the poor guys. How sad, I thought, that people created in the Divine image, capable of meaningful accomplishments, can see themselves worthy of dignity only by belittling others, even stooping to steal their identity.
The performers were members of the “Black Hebrew Israelite” group, in the news of late because of a video and book, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which were effectively recommended on social media by a professional basketball player, leading to his suspension and loss of endorsement income.
The group’s credo is that Blacks are the real Jews, and that what less-addled folks call Jews are imposters. The fellow behind the film and book, Ronald Dalton Jr., received that revelation in a prophecy, in case you were wondering.
Amid more nuttiness than there’s room for here, Mr. Dalton’s works deny the Holocaust; include a fabricated quote from Adolf Hitler (“believed to be said in a secret document in an undisclosed location”); approvingly references Henry Ford and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and ahistorically accuses Jews of having played a major role in American slavery.
In short, it’s sewage soup, spiced with poison.
And one can order a steaming bowlful, like anything, from Amazon.com.
Which has led a number of Jewish organizations, including (if it can be categorized as Jewish these days) the Anti-Defamation League, to petition the retail giant to remove the book and film from its merchandise.
They contend that the material promotes “anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power, control and greed, minimize the Holocaust, and allege a global Jewish conspiracy—all of which actively endanger Jewish safety here and now.”
Indeed.
But removing the stuff from Amazon is a weak, even potentially counterproductive, response. The book and film are available from many sellers, and efforts to stymie its sale will only further embolden the weak-minded to claim, “Aha! You see? The Jews do control the world!”
Rather than play whack-a-mole with evil or inadvertently empowering it, the more effective strategy is to do all that can be done to simply fight falsehood with fact, and racism with ridicule.
Let it be shouted from the rooftops (and, more effectively, offered in public school classrooms) that African and Caribbean free people of color, not a tiny number of slave-owning Jews, were the engines of American slavery.
And that violent members of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, as an FBI report stated, hold “beliefs [that] bear a striking resemblance to the Christian Identity theology practiced by many white supremacists.”
And that Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother was murdered in 1974 by a Black Hebrew Israelite preacher. And that the killers of three people at a Jersey City kosher supermarket in 2019 (and earlier, of a police detective) had shown interest in the malignant movement.
And that, the same year, the machete attack on Jews celebrating Chanukah in Monsey was perpetrated by a man whose journals contained Black Hebrew Israelite balderdash.
And then there are the comedians, who these days are more respected by young Americans than the media. If some of those entertainers, especially black ones, focused some of their mockery on well-deserving racist and anti-Semitic myth-mongers, countless minds could be nudged to countenance reality.
In the end, of course, there’s no “cure” for either idiocy or anti-Semitism (or the common combination of the two). But, as hishtadlus goes, trying to squelch it doesn’t compare to simply fighting it with facts.
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