Hold us to a higher standard

If you haven’t been following what’s going on in Brooklyn, here’s a quick summary. It’s a mess. A real mess. And it’s supposedly about COVID 19 restrictions. In a nutshell, there’s a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to comply with the regulations. It’s by no means the whole community, but enough people to have attracted attention.

Defenders of both Tischler and the protestors claimed that the treatment they received wasn’t consistent with the treatment of other protestors in the past few months. The Black Lives Matter protests (some of which were marred by violence) were cited as examples to illustrate the so-called unfair treatment that the Jewish community had met following these events. Whereas the complaint might sound reasonable, it betrays a number of more dangerous possible subtexts: that either they will say anything rather than take responsibility for their own behaviour; or that they have no desire to live by a standard that demands that they respect the law of the country.

There are times when we need to call out unfair treatment, and there are times when antisemitism is a real and dangerous problem. But this isn’t one of them. Instead of crying foul, those involved should be grateful that they are being held to account, they should look inward to their own behaviour, and they should consider the damage that they are doing to the reputation of Jews around the world.

Jews are connected. We take pride when a Jew wins a Nobel prize and when a fellow Jew succeeds internationally. We seek out Jews when we travel, and we rush to claim heritage when we hear of a person with a Jewish sounding name. But what follows is that we feel shame and responsibility when a community on the other side of the world behaves in a way that isn’t consistent with who we want to be.

At times like that, we should be grateful that we are held to a higher standard and grateful for the reminder.