Author Archives: Rabbi

The deck was stacked against Trayvon Martin from the very beginning.
As is often the case when trials are litigated in the media, the obvious is overlooked. The prosecution always bears the burden of proving a defendant’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is not just a platitude but a legal standard. It is not sufficient to prove a preponderance of guilt; that is the standard in civil matters – a “preponderance” of evidence pointing to liability, usually meaning more than 50% of the evidence. In criminal matters, a reasonable doubt is not a percentage but a sensibility – a doubt for which one can give a reason. That is why Zimmerman was not found “innocent” by the jury but “not guilty.” That is the legal standard. He need not have proved his innocence. The prosecution has to prove his guilt.
Is there any thinking person who can honestly state that what occurred that night in Sanford, Florida is so clear that there is no reasonable doubt as to George Zimmerman’s guilt? Of course not. Only the race hucksters, political opportunists and other charlatans looking to profit off this tragedy would ever aver such a conclusion and even then, not seriously.
And it is a tragedy. For sure, the sympathies of the masses were manipulated by the frequent publication of the picture of a 12-year old Trayvon – and not the muscular, tattooed, 6’2” tall 17-year old he was at his death. Nor was there any reference to several scrapes with the law that he had in the year before his death, some manifesting an aggressive tendency that did not accrue to his advantage on the night of his death.
But the tragedy was, sadly, not unlike other tragedies that occur in life for which the law has no remedy. Every time a jury finds a defendant not guilty there is a disappointed complainant who thinks the system is corrupt and too malleable. The judicial system prefers to err on the side of exonerating the guilty than convicting the innocent. From that perspective, the verdict was fairly obvious, even though I thought that the jury would be hung (i.e., incapable of deciding) at least for a lot longer than they were, if only because of the public pressure to convict that the jurors invariably felt. But they followed the law, which is not always synchronized with the emotions and certainly not with the mob sentiment of the race-baiters.
Tragedies occur on the roads and in the hospitals and at home. Often there is no criminal guilt and even no civil liability. Not every mishap or misfortune lends itself to judicial redress or punishment. It is a part of life that can lead to despair, but it can also lead to daily gratitude for what we construe as small things until their absence causes them to loom very large – children, health, marriage, work, shelter, etc. Such is life.
The elephant in the room that cannot be discussed in polite company is the obvious answer to the prevailing question: why did Zimmerman suspect that Martin was up to no good? The answer is that of course Zimmerman was “racially profiling,” a cliché that has attracted a dastardly reputation notwithstanding that all thinking people do the same on a consistent basis. Even Jesse Jackson, adding these days to his resumé of dishonor, said years ago that if heard the footsteps of teenagers behind him on an urban street at night, he would be relieved to turn around and see that they were white teens. Simply put, young black men commit a wildly disproportionate number of crimes in America, and especially in America’s cities. Their rate of incarceration far exceeds their percentage of the population. There are many more black men in America’s prisons than their percentage in the population (probably 6-7%) should warrant. It is not because they are specifically targeted but because they are the ones disproportionately committing the crimes.
The saddest aspect of that is that most of their victims – overwhelmingly – are other blacks, in terms of homicides and other street crimes. Blacks growing in the inner city struggle to remain alive, to stay in schools and to keep their homes intact. The number of young innocent blacks killed in Chicago alone is staggering and a national disgrace.
Such is not the result of poverty of wealth but poverty of values. With more than 2/3 of black children being born out of wedlock, most are raised without strong, stable paternal role models. In certain circles, that abandonment of personal responsibility is still blamed on the legacy of slavery despite its abolition 150 years ago. Despite the best efforts of many black mothers, education is often frowned upon, and the easy money that many inner city youth see in the flaunted wealth of the criminal warlords of their neighborhoods – until they are caught, and if they are caught – remains a tantalizing allure.
They are not helped by the grievance industry nurtured by the hucksters. And it is a lucrative industry that plays on liberal white guilt and is therefore self-sustaining. Nothing can ever happen that will end it. Even the election of a black American president and the presence of a black Attorney General have little impact on the hustlers. According to them, America is irredeemably racist, always was and always will be, and whitey should just keep on paying, and especially paying them. To be called a racist today in American is so hackneyed as to draw yawns, not rebukes.
The double standard is blatant but familiar. Blacks discriminated against in apartheid South Africa had far better lives and were treated far better than today’s black citizens of Zimbabwe. But just like black-on-black crime in America is essentially ignored, so too black governmental dysfunction and brutality in Africa is also ignored. Wherever whites are not the perpetrators of wrongdoing against blacks, the suffering of blacks is of no interest to the hustlers or their acolytes in the media.
That fatal distraction is the real cause of Trayvon Martin’s death. In the best of circumstances, excluding even the issue of self-defense (if, indeed, George Zimmerman was attacked and his head was being pounded into the pavement, what was he supposed to do at that point but defend himself?), Zimmerman was careless in the use of his firearm like countless others negligently drive their cars or wield their axes while chopping wood. Death by accident is always distressing and leaves a bitter taste, a sense of loss than can never be filled. Accidents do happen, and they are terrible.
The real issue is what can be done to reverse the perception that many young black men pose a threat to civil society, and routinely induce fear in passersby. Certainly, that is unfair to the young black men who are decent and hard-working, who long for a life of normalcy away from the maelstrom that is stirred up by the black activists, many of whom reside in tony white neighborhoods themselves. But that is the challenge for the black community – and for its leadership that has already failed them for decades and shows no signs of reversing course. The attempt to impute racial animus to Zimmerman – even to deny and discount that he is Hispanic – has been as unseemly as it has always been typical.
The real victory for the black community does not lie in further persecution of George Zimmerman but in coming to grips with its real problems, of which the Zimmerman episode is only the latest manifestation.

One of our most fascinating experiences in the recent months did not take place in Israel, but somewhere else entirely. The day after Yom Haatzmaut, Karen and I flew to Germany where we spent almost a week – five days in Berlin and one day in Cologne. Both are very interesting places, but also very sobering places to visit. One visits Germany, if at all, with solemnity. Certainly, I have no grievances against anyone who doesn’t want to visit Germany or buy German products; indeed, I still cringe when I hear the Volkswagen commercial that extols “the power of German engineering.” Such technological expertise was not long ago used to murder millions of Jews.
But there is no country in the world (outside Israel) that has a keener memory of the Holocaust; Germany is saturated in the Holocaust. There are dozens of signposts on the streets erected several years ago commemorating 75 years since the Nazis rise to power. Each signpost contains stories and pictures of what happened in that very place to Jews with real names and families and businesses, Jews who lived there, were persecuted, fled and escaped or were deported to their deaths. Nothing is concealed. Outside the train station nearest our hotel – on Tauentzienstrasse –there is a permanent sign listing the various concentration and death camps to which Jews were dispatched – from that very train station. The Holocaust simply cannot be escaped, a conscious choice that German officials have made.
Remarkably, there are brass plaques called “Stolpersteine,” or “stumbling stones,” on the sidewalks every few blocks – if you look down you can see and read them. These plaques – the tireless work of a non-Jewish German artist – are embedded in the sidewalks in front of apartment buildings where Jews lived, and record (in German), for example, “so-and-so Jew lived here, born 1892, deported to Auschwitz 1942, todt”. In both cities we visited, they were frequent and eerie sights, and the artist continues to add to them every year.
The recognition of the Holocaust is pervasive; in Sachsenhausen, just about 30 minutes north of Berlin, large groups of Germans – young and old – were touring the camp, on a Sunday morning in the spring. And the awareness of the inhumanity of the evil monsters who perpetrated the Holocaust grows and grows. In the bucolic setting of Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, where the infamous conference took place in a beautiful lakeside villa on January 20, 1942, the site now houses a museum that revealed, among other things, that the meeting to decide on the extermination of Europe’s Jews took all of 90 minutes. And not one person there objected to the mass slaughter in which they would all have a hand – and four or five of them escaped real punishment after the war.
Germany is not an easy place to visit –although I thought it would be harder – but it is astonishing that tens of thousands of Jews live there, including thousands of Israelis. In the main shul in Berlin, the Chief Rabbi and the chazzan, fine people, are both Israelis, one older and one younger. They work very hard reaching out to Jews. But I could not suppress one thought – why do Jews live there? Why do they come? Why do they stay? (You can ask that about the Jews of Teaneck too, but that question is coming from a different place.)
In reality, 90% are from the former Soviet Union, and they are awarded substantial benefits and pensions from the German government as soon as they come – as descendants of people invaded by Germany during WW II. There are very few German Jews, very few native Berliners – although I did meet some. Some young immigrants from the old USSR find out – quite suddenly – that they are Jewish and begin investigating Judaism. (The day we visited the shul in Cologne, a large group of much older Jews were practicing for a Russian-Yiddish concert they would soon perform.)
And here is what surprised me: the Kabbalat Shabbat was the most inspiring I had experienced in many years. The singing, the dancing – it was “Carlebach” as Shlomo Carlebach himself would have wanted, not routine but exhilarating. The dancing during Lecha Dodi went on for 25 minutes, but each minute represented a year or two that these Jews had been deprived of their heritage. That morning I had visited the site of Hitler’s bunker where he killed himself – and literally spit on his grave. I enjoyed it – but not as much as I enjoyed each foot stomping during the dancing that night during the davening.
At dinner, the Rabbi told me that almost everyone present was a Baal Teshuva, even those in religious garb. One young man, about 20 years old, is studying engineering, now wears black hat, sports a little beard and soon wants to make aliya. He knows that is his only real chance of remaining Jewish; the rest of his family – they all live near the Belgian border – are uninterested. Another boy recently celebrated his Bar Mitzva, and graciously accepted the Rabbi’s gift of a pair of Tefillin but only on condition that he commit to wearing them every day. He attends public school and is desirous of living a Jewish life –but only time will tell. For him, the next decade will be decisive.
And I noticed one other thing: every shtender (locker) in the shul was locked, and no one had a key. The owners of those shtenders are no longer in this world and took the keys with them. What a message: you can daven in Berlin, and even live there, but there is no future there. The shtender is locked. One cannot leave any inheritance for the next generation.
Why is the Rabbi there? Because there are thousands of Jews who will otherwise be lost to the Jewish people forever. That is his job – to ignite sparks, for this is the last round up before Moshiach. If not now, then when? That is his attitude, with all the hardship that he has– all his children and grandchildren live in Israel, there were recent threats to criminalize Brit Milah, and there are still sporadic attacks on Jews, sometimes from Germans but more often from the large Muslim population. There are great challenges – but the opportunity to save souls is exalted and fleeting. And, of course, that is the attitude of the local Chabad as well, that maintains in Berlin a beautiful, multi-million dollar facility with a kosher restaurant.
Each Jew is a precious soul and each Jew is a nation and a world in his own right. Jews who wish to make a difference lift their heads, step forward and put themselves on the line – even when others are quick to take shots at them. They are the saviors of the nation and the rescuer of souls. What is more exalting than seeing souls reborn and rejuvenated; what is more daunting than knowing that time is short; what is more challenging than knowing that if we too lift our heads, we can have a share in the rebirth of the Jewish people, and see G-d’s blessings descend on His people and His land.