An Open Letter to Malik Zulu Shabazz:

Dear Mr. Shabazz:

We’ve been forced to visit your island of hate and discrimination by reading about your antics in the news. Yet if you weren’t so frightening, we would have invited you to a quite wonderful event this past weekend. Instead, we’ll have to leave you adrift in the ocean as we row back ashore to a more civilized and hopeful place.

As the loudly anti-Semitic, racist and anti-Israel leader of the New Black Panther Party, you’ve demonstrated that there is no room for love in your heart, only hate. But this event was abundant with love, and with an appreciation of the shared and painful experiences that blacks and Jews have suffered through history.

The event was the seventh annual multiracial, multireligious seder at Central Reform Congregation. One of five seders of various types that CRC holds during Passover, Saturday’s service and meal brought together Jews, African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem and black Christians to celebrate our collective release from bondage and our highest aspirations for a future when all will be free.

The combination of African drumming, traditional seder tunes and contemporary compositions by Rick Recht provided a musical underpinning to which all present could relate. And when the Exodus story was interlaced with allegory about the American slave experience, all present perceived the need to speak out and in unison about the indignation and shame of slavery, bondage, hatred and discrimination of all types.

But Mr. Shabazz, we’re not sure you could relate to this message of commonality, or universality. You are too busy espousing hateful conspiracy theories about Jews and 9/11. About how Jews control the media. About Jewish complicity in the African-American slave trade.

You purport to stand out against hate crimes, Mr. Shabazz. How can you with one hand wave the wand of freedom for all and with the other brandish a cruel scythe? We don’t get to mangle history to promote our own political and social aspirations; at least, we’re not supposed to.

And yet, Mr. Shabazz, you do just that, ignoring the proud and substantial history of Jewish leadership in fighting the filth of racism and injustice. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League have for decades spoken about the dangers of any group, not just Jews, being singled out for disparate and violent treatment by others.

So many Jews were at the forefront of marching on behalf of freedom and desegregation in the Deep South of the 1950s and 1960s. Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And we see it as our mission to continue that legacy, Mr. Shabazz. The Jewish Light (need we point out that we are a Jewish organization?) itself devoted a full special section in two parts last year, funded by the Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis, about hate crimes and how to combat hate in American society. And as recently as four weeks ago we called out over a hundred members of the Missouri Legislature who were bent on condemning Missouri Muslims to further shame by adopting a hateful bill that singled out Muslim law in the most discriminatory way possible.

We’re busy fighting for social justice here, Mr. Shabazz. Not just here at the Light, but throughout the Jewish community. In the gathering room of CRC. In the offices of the ADL. In the collaborative efforts of the Jewish Community Relations Council. By talking, sharing, supporting, empathizing.

By caring, and by loving. But not by hatred.

The example laid down by CRC and its partners at the seder table last Saturday shows how those unfazed by hate can find the path toward love and justice. The essential element is to show folks that there is another way, a way that doesn’t lump people together into a nameless, faceless mass, making it oh-so-much easier to condemn them to the darkest recesses of people’s minds.

The way is to sit at a table, talk to one another, break bread with one another, share in the anguish of yesteryear, revel in the hope of Jerusalem (or Dimona, Israel, home and so important to so many Hebrew Israelites who have emigrated from North Africa to Israel).

Sharing stories and a meal across from one another may be painful to you, Mr. Shabazz. It requires treating each individual as just that, not as an anonymous object of hate. We feel sorry for you, that you lack the internal fortitude and courage to treat Jews as people, the same lack that slaveholders in America exhibited for two centuries.

So until you’re ready to jump onto that boat and row ashore, Mr. Shabazz, we’re afraid you will be nothing more than a fleeting memory of that isle of venom where the rogues of history reside. As we wave goodbye, we turn our backs on you, and claim our spot at the seder table, alongside all those we proudly consider our brothers and sisters.