{"id":36166,"date":"2024-02-27T08:01:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T16:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36166"},"modified":"2024-02-27T08:03:31","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T16:03:31","slug":"how-can-we-speak-of-these-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/how-can-we-speak-of-these-things\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can We Speak of These Things?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnyone who sets [themselves] up as \u201creligious\u201d by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world<\/span><\/em>.\u201d \u00a0James 1:13-14,\u00a0The Message<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In 1928, Samuel Goldstein fled war torn Warsaw, Poland when he was a teenager. His poverty-stricken mother sent him and his sister, Jenny, on a boat to New York City, via Ellis Island. \u00a0The plan was for them to earn enough money to come back and live in Poland again. \u00a0Samuel worked endless hours as a tailor and model for men\u2019s clothing and by 1932 married Ruth Butler, a Jewish woman whose family immigrated from Russia. \u00a0By 1941, Sam owned his own tailor shop after years of working in Center City Philadelphia, eventually becoming the father of three young children. \u00a0Once the second World War started, Samuel and Jenny never heard from their mother again. By 1944, Sam started showing signs of mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which doctors linked to many Ashkenazi Jewish[1]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0people from his village in Warsaw. Placed in a mental institution with round the clock drugs, Samuel lived institutionalized until his death in 1989. \u00a0Ruth placed all three of her young children in the Jewish Foster care system of Philadelphia; her youngest child, a daughter named Sandra, was 10 months old. \u00a0Sandra was raised by a devout Jewish family for 12 years until Ruth decided she wanted her family back with her again\u2013with living so many years apart, the family never fully recovered to full health. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sandra Goldstein is my mother and even though she experienced a radical conversion to Christianity in her 20s, she suffered mentally and emotionally for most of her life because of the antisemitism her parents and grandparents suffered both in Europe, Russia and America. \u00a0My Jewish relatives\u2019s stories resonate deeply with, \u201cThe dislike of the unlike.\u201d Though being a Jewish woman was a battle for her identity, my mother raised me to somehow transcend our race. \u00a0For her, an identity in Christ was a far more powerful bond than an identity to her broken and battered Jewish roots. (When she converted to Christianity, her family shunned her telling her she was weak). \u00a0From my mother forward, and to the generations after her, a relationship to Christ frames our identity more than our race.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading this week\u2019s topic and book was sobering. Not only is antisemitism the \u201coldest racism in the world,\u201d but as Kenan Malik reminds us, \u201c\u2018racial prejudice\u2019, the French philosopher and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville noticed, seems to be stronger in those states which have abolished slavery than in those where slavery still exists and nowhere is it as intolerant as in those states where slavery has never been known.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 How can the way we talk about identity and race be different? What is our moral obligation as leaders to choose different experiences for ourselves and ultimately for our children\u2019s children? \u00a0What\u2019s at the heart and soul of our motivation when we speak of these things? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the crux of Kenan Malik\u2019s book,\u00a0Not so Black and White<\/span>,<\/em> is his keen observation that as a human race our motivation has been lost. \u00a0Where we used to be universalists believing that change was possible,[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0we\u2019ve now become performative in our anti-racism, fueled with malice, anger and pessimism. Here\u2019s what\u2019s helping me enter this divisive conversation as I recall Julian Treasure\u2019s wisdom in\u00a0How to Be Heard<\/span><\/em>:[4]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n