While Orthodox Jews across the nation were disconnected from the events of the world during the Yom Tov of Shavuot, cities from coast to coast were rocked by protests that unraveled into riots following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25 that was recorded by an onlooker.
“I can’t breathe” were among the last words that the unemployed 46-year-old security guard. For nearly all New Yorkers aware of recent history, we’ve heard these words before in a nearly identical incident. “Painful to watch, so angry that six years after Eric Garner was killed with an illegal chokehold we still regularly see similar brutality,” Councilman Rory Lancman wrote.
We’ve Seen This Before
The days that followed Garner’s death were marked with rallies in Manhattan, a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, public hearings, legislation requiring body cameras for cops, the failure of the grand jury to indict the officer, his firing from the department five years later, and the lengthy effort to ban chokeholds by law. Lancman attended some of the rallies and met Garner’s mother Gwen Carr, who became the public face representing African-Americans who lost family members to excessive police force. “These are heroic women who suffered the worst tragedies a parent can imagine. They relive the trauma at each press conference, legislative hearing, and when another mother joins this sisterhood,” Lancman said.
Perhaps that is why this time the rallies were not limited to one bridge, or a single city, and why the organizers and participants lost control of the message with opportunistic and desperate individuals looting and burning commercial districts across the country. Observing the unrest, Councilman Donovan Richards urged the public to focus on the context behind the riots.
“We have knelt. We have marched. We have voted. We have legislated. We have demanded better. And yet, oppression remains. For two months we’ve watched the Black community devastated by COVID-19. Then we watched George Floyd die with a police officer’s knee on his neck. So we protest police brutality and are met by more police brutality. There is only so much we can be expected to take.”
Richards’ statement followed videos of an NYPD vehicle running into a crowd of protesters in Brooklyn, and another officer pointing his gun at protesters near Union Square, among other examples that contributed to the rage of the past week.
Protests in Queens
While expressing frustration at the lack of police accountability, Richards also commended officers who empathized with demonstrators. One such act was in this borough, on the corner of Jamaica Avenue and 165th Street, where this past Sunday, the commanding officer of the 103rd Precinct, Deputy Inspector Vincent Tavalaro, knelt on his knee with the demonstrators in an apparent display of solidarity. Richards, a candidate for Queens Borough President, remembers Tavalaro as a former commander of the 101st Precinct in his Far Rockaway Council district. “Not surprised at his passion in building bridges one bit!” he tweeted.
A day earlier, a peaceful rally marched for a mile and a half from Diversity Plaza in the center of Jackson Heights to the 115th Precinct on Northern Boulevard. Not a single storefront window was broken, and not one police baton landed on a demonstrator. Likewise, a vigil in Astoria Park on Monday remained peaceful with a mostly masked crowd that went home as the sun was setting.
Lancman said that the difference with rallies in Queens is that most of the participants are residents of the community who do not seek to destroy the businesses and institutions where they shop and work, but he noted that with each incident of abuse by police, “we are one tragedy away from being engulfed in protest.”
Retailers are not taking chances. Queens Center Mall was covered with plywood panels on Monday and Skyview Parc in Flushing was ringed by a phalanx of officers. Within his own district, Lancman noted that no crimes associated with the unrest have taken place, and the 107th Precinct has not faced any protests. The damage wreaked by looters in lower Manhattan, Midtown, and neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx was condemned by Governor Andrew Cuomo in his Tuesday press briefing. “That’s called criminal activity. They have no right to wrap themselves in the flag of righteous indignation,” he said. “The police in New York City were not effective in doing its job last night. They have to do a better job.” Cuomo offered the state’s National Guard to any city requesting their presence in quelling the unrest.
The Jewish Response
Nothing happens by coincidence. On the same weekend when we observed Shavuos and racial unrest roiled the nation, the death of Rabbi Norman Lamm, zt”l brought up his sermons on the matter. In the archives of Yeshiva University, where he served as president and Rosh Yeshiva, there is his 1963 drasha on Parshas Ki Teitzei where he addresses the racial injustices of his time. “But this crime of shefikhat damim (homicide) is exceeded by the greater blot on our record: the methodical economic exploitation of one segment of our population, the systematic oppression of one race as the source of cheap labor and its designation as the first to suffer in any economic recession.”
The words of Rabbi Lamm resonate in the aftermath of Floyd’s death, and other black individuals killed by officers who exercised abuse of power. “Racism is not a thing of the past or simply a political issue. It is a real and present danger that must be met head on,” the Orthodox Union wrote in a statement on Monday. “As religious Jews, we believe the most important starting point for the national discourse that must take place is the recognition that all people are created in the image of G-d and that each human life is of infinite value.”
“In 2019, the American Jewish community experienced its most deadly, violent and disturbing outbreak of anti-Semitism. Thus, we are acutely sensitive to the essential imperative to foster tolerance and respect in this highly diverse society in which we live.”
We cannot condone the destruction of public and private property, which is why so many of us were aghast at the bail reform law passed last year in Albany which initially allowed for the release of individuals facing charges such as burglary and grand larceny. These two items have since been restored for cash bail. We trust that law enforcement can protect our homes, businesses, and lives. We are traumatized by the videos of looters having their way on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, where Jewish storefront windows were smashed and synagogues shuttered for the Coronavirus quarantine had graffiti sprayed on their walls.
Such violence justifies President Donald Trump’s call to label Antifa as a terrorist organization, and the distrust of Jewish leaders towards Black Lives Matter, which supports the boycott of Israel and violence against Jews in Israel. Neither of these movements has credibility in combating hate as they were either silent on violence committed against Orthodox Jews, or falsely assigning the blame to President Trump.
Most Jews in America either identify as white or appear that way in public. Jews of color being the exception here, most of us can never walk in the shoes of an African-American. The best we can do is to speak to our neighbors, try to understand their experiences, and work together to address the imbalance.
By Sergey Kadinsky
Can Queens Avoid Racial Violence?
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