Black Lives Matter
Like many of you, I can not believe we actually need to say this at all, as if it’s not clear.
Black lives matter, red lives matter, white, yellow matter, all the colors of the corn, as the Native American people say, that are similar to human skin colors. All are sacred! Arab lives matter and Jewish lives matter. I left my Kabbalist main teacher in '97 because he thought that Jewish life matter MORE than Arab life. How sad it is!
I have served as the Rabbi of the Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz for 14 years (2001-2014). It was a week-long meditation retreat for all nations in the death camps.
One of the things I learned there is that as humans, we need to DEHUMANISE the other in order to be able to hurt them. The Nazis were heavily brainwashed to not see the Jews as real humans. They were “rats” and “snakes” and all kinds of pests. Not humans.
I also learned that the holocaust with all its horrors was a human experience. It was an outburst of utter cruelty that is a part of human potential. Humans CAN do that to other humans, and the psychological mechanism that enables it uses our ability to dehumanize the other so we can hurt them.
I am human. The murderer cop is human. Floyd who was murdered is human. The raging riots in the streets are made of humans. We all matter, and at the same time, we all have the potential to be Nazi to each other, as well as the potential to WALK in the world AS LOVE.
I do not want to hold a sign in my hand that states the obvious BLM!
I want to create more and more communities where these kinds of statements will never be needed at all because love and respect, truth, and honesty are at the foundation of these communities.
As the old world crumbles down and fights its way to its end, I strongly feel the call for us, for many of us, to create the new world. Not by fighting against anything, but by living our simple honest truths.
Ohad Pele / June, 2020
