New Dirty Word: Diversity

Here's the first installment in my "Seven New Dirty Words" series

Last month, I suggested that President Trump and his enablers were deploying Orwellian language inversions worthy of satire. Of course, one of the great tragedies of this political moment is how deeply unfunny Trump is. For Jews, our second favorite love language — after arguing — is humor. So, humorless people like Trump, Vance, and Stephen Miller (I know, I know) are a real drag to those of us looking to the likes of George Carlin z”l to take the edge off.

Anyway, in this series, I intend to explore these new dirty words (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Nuance, Context, Compromise, Compassion) and try to make a case that these qualities are more important than ever. My hope is not to do this in a reactionary way, as if to claim that any and all critique of the Left is invalid. In fact, I’m not here to defend the Left, as I believe conceding the argument that these are liberal or progressive and not conservative values detracts from their power as core American (and Jewish) tenets. Indeed, though reasonable people can disagree about the specific application of any virtue (“virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,” wrote Shakespeare), MAGA’s McCarthyesque cynicism is the surest sign that the movement’s bombastic commentary on these words should not be taken seriously.

That cynicism was on full display last week in the Administration’s response to the brutal antisemitic attack against the Boulder Jewish community’s Run for the Lives event during which 15 people were injured, some, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, quite seriously. My friend Rabbi

Marc W Soloway

wrote beautifully in reflection about this brazen attack on his congregants and community:

Six of the most seriously injured victims are Bonai Shalom members, wonderful, loving, generous people who have given of themselves in so many ways and helped build this community. These are people who deeply care about justice and have been activists in all kinds of ways, caring about human dignity and peace. It is incomprehensibly cruel that they now have burned bodies.

But neither Rabbi Soloway, nor the American Jewish Committee, which recently mourned the brutal slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim at their young professionals event in Washington DC, question the critical importance of diversity as an American good. Soloway reflected on the previous Friday night in Boulder when they hosted the Jerusalem Youth Chorus. “Mostly from East and West Jerusalem,” he wrote, “these are young Palestinians and Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians, who sing together in Hebrew, Arabic and English and who engage in deep dialogue, sharing and listening to each other’s painful stories and very different narratives.”

For its part, the AJC strongly challenged the Trump administration’s motives when it implemented a new travel ban on the heels of last week’s firebombing. In a statement, they said:

We are concerned that the broad Proclamation issued June 4 seeks to address this alarming issue in a way that lacks a clear connection to the underlying problem and will have an adverse impact on other longstanding immigration and refugee policies.

I’m sure George Carlin would have something hilarious to say about a travel ban, justified by the Boulder terrorist attack, which includes nations like Afghanistan, the Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Yemen — but not Egypt, the terrorist’s country of origin.

Of course the cynical nature of this latest attack on American diversity is made worse by pinning it on the ostensible defense of American Jews, as if the best thing for one minority population is to limit its exposure to other minorities. But the real problem here for the Jewish community is that MAGA is trying to drive a wedge between our perceived interests and our core Jewish values. On that first point, while Jews have good reason to feel less safe and secure in America today, the false sense of security we gain by simply walling ourselves off from others will also serve to further other and isolate us. The more we hide, the more we surrender control to those standing beyond our gates. Ghettos, in the final analysis, whether created for us or by us, have not been good for the Jews.

But to speak of Jewish self-interest alone is profoundly unJewish. The Torah does not begin with Chapter 12 in which we meet the first Jewish family; it begins with Chapters 1 in which we meet the first human beings. The human story is our Jewish story, and each human is created in the divine likeness being therefore of equal worth. This doesn’t mean we must prioritize any life over the life of a loved one, our family, or our community (more on this when I write about equity). But it does mean that each life matters equally to God, and being followers of God, we Jews should aspire to protect and preserve life wherever we can.

This is why the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) famously proclaims: “Anyone who destroys a single life is deemed by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a single life is deemed by Scripture to have saved an entire world.” This is a beautiful statement about the immeasurable value of human life, but the Mishnah goes further, suggesting what is most special about human beings is not simply our similarity to God but our simultaneous similarity and dissimilarity to one another.

[A single person was created] to proclaim the greatness of the Holy One of Blessing, for humans stamp many coins with one seal and they are all like one another; but the Ruler of Rulers, the Holy One, stamps every human with the seal of the first one, yet not one of them are like another.

Human diversity is central both to human existence and to human thriving. I’ve written many times over the years about the value of having been raised in and raising my own children in a diverse neighborhood. Beth Am benefits from and contributes to our diverse community in Baltimore City, and as part of Beth Am’s 50th Anniversary celebration, we heard powerful testimonials from congregants about the importance of diversity within our ranks. The fact of the matter is that difference makes us better. We better understand people when we strive to know them. And knowing others, and letting them know us is, in the final analysis, the best way to attain perspective — a critical component of knowing ourselves.