More delicious hysteria. <\/p>\n
Rabbi Matthew Soffer writes<\/a>: And then they came for me\u201d is not the phrase keeping me up at night. We hear so many people speaking out against Trump\u2019s hate speech, including his fellow Republicans Dick Cheney and Paul Ryan. To say, \u201cI did not speak for them because I was not Muslim\u201d doesn\u2019t reflect our reality \u2013 people are speaking out. Instead, the phrase that haunts me, the text that pervades my mind, is the title of Harvard Professor Daniel Goldhagen\u2019s controversial book, Hitler\u2019s Willing Executioners.<\/p>\n Goldhagen\u2019s thesis sent shivers down readers\u2019 spines, as he argued against the dominant assumption that the devastation of the Holocaust can be attributed to the actions of Hitler and Nazi leadership. Instead, Goldhagen shined the flashlight on the \u201cordinary German,\u201d who, he argued convincingly, was ready and willing to engage in the dehumanization and eventual extermination of the Jewish people. What could be more ominous and bleak than the realization that a modern, sophisticated, intellectually advanced society could be \u201cprimed\u201d to engage in the most evil, barbaric campaign in the history of the mankind?<\/p>\n I am haunted by the possibility of \u201cwilling executioners\u201d in our midst. Huge segments of our own population are receptive to the thesis that Muslims do not belong in America; that the enemy is Islam as a whole. Meanwhile a vast majority of devout Muslims in America live in fear, sandwiched between the radicals who claim to speak for Islam\u2014 and who wish to obliterate their allegiance to American freedom\u2014 and the growing segment of the American population, now telling them that they are the problem, that their religion and nationality are incompatible.<\/p>\n Last Friday, I joined the Muslim community at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, during their prayer service. With 1400 worshippers gathering, listening to the peaceful sermon by their Imam Sheikh Yasir, I was joined by a few of my Christian colleagues, as we offered words of solidarity and comfort to conclude their service. I said nothing overly profound\u2014 I affirmed the Jewish commandment \u201cv\u2019havta l\u2019rei-echa kamocha\u2014 you must love your neighbor as yourself,\u201d reminding them that the community of Temple Israel loves those who love peace; that our clergy are committed to fighting against hate speech; that they are not alone. Afterwards, people lined up to shake our hands, some of whom with tears streaming down their faces. I heard about their everyday experiences \u2014 the glances on the T, the unspoken fear they sense in the workplace from their colleagues, the comments they overhear not only in the news but in the streets. They are terrified.<\/p>\n And as I hear countless people around me scared to death by the statements of Trump and other popular figures, my attention turns to the minds and hearts of those who hear hate speech and respond: \u201cYes!\u201d Is it fathomable that we could be witnessing a \u201cphase 1\u201d of \u201cTrump\u2019s willing executioners\u201d? Will we even know what it looks like if- or God forbid when- history takes its first steps to circle back to lure humanity once again into its abysmal, homicidal propensity? Or will the American people pretend that the mandate to \u201cnever forget\u201d is irrelevent when the victims are Muslim?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More delicious hysteria. Rabbi Matthew Soffer writes: And then they came for me\u201d is not the phrase keeping me up at night. We hear so many people speaking out against Trump\u2019s hate speech, including his fellow Republicans Dick Cheney and … Continue reading