The collected sermons, drashot, and articles below can serve as inspiration for your own reparations-inspired divrei torah on Reparations Shabbat. The summaries were written by Rafael Morris, Reconstructing Judaism’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Rabbinic Intern.
Our Country Was Built on a Stolen Beam: The Call for a National Reckoning (Rabbi Sharon Brous, Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2017/5778)
In a Rosh Hashanah sermon, Rabbi Sharon Brous uses the Talmudic concept of a ‘house built on a stolen beam’ to call for national reparations towards Black Americans. She argues that there is consensus among traditional Jewish sources that the owners of any structure or enterprise founded upon an injustice have an obligation to make restitution towards the wronged party. While rabbinic views may differ on the nature of the compensation owed, there is agreement that compensation is indeed owed. Brous emphasizes that the contemporary United States was built on the foundation of slavery, a proverbial ‘stolen beam’, and articulates how these historical harms persist in ongoing forms of injustice and inequity today. She declares that as Jews, we have a particular responsibility to support reparations, both as victims of historical injustice and as recipients of national reparations in the wake of the Holocaust. Brous asserts that reparations are integral to collective teshuvah, and are a necessary part of taking responsibility and atoning for the history of this society. [Please note that some of the information on Australia in this sermon is inaccurate and highly misleading.]
The Road to Reparations (Rabbi Toba Spitzer, Yom Kippur Sermon 2022/5783)
In this confronting Yom Kippur sermon, Rabbi Toba Spitzer discusses how shying away from the role of white supremicy in the history of the United States perpetuates ongoing structural racism – and how this same American-grown white supremacy was a key influence on Nazi policy and propaganda. Spitzer praises the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and awareness about racism and racist history that has occurred in the five years since her earlier talk ‘Slavery and its Atonement’. But she also condemns the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black communities through police brutality, infrastructural neglect, and legislation that attempts to restrict or erase the history of slavery in the classroom. Spitzer emphasizes the parallels between the process of reparations for Germany and that of the United States. She discusses how the process of reparations forced the German people to engage with the crimes on which their society had been built, and she argues that the U.S. must do the same. In particular, she endorses H.R. 40, which would establish a congressional committee to discuss reparations and what it would look like. As Spitzer exclaims, the analogy between the U.S. and Germany is not merely one of similarity; the two are causally linked. Nazi Germany took explicit inspiration from the U.S.’ use of ‘scientific’ racism and eugenics, and its deployment of lynch mobs to subjugate racial minorities. ‘The Nuremberg Laws,’ she points out, ‘were inspired by… Jim Crow’. These connections, Spitzer claims, only strengthen the obligation of Jews in particular to lead the charge in support of reparations. Only by acknowledging and taking responsibility for our history can we achieve moral closure and perform teshuvah.
Slavery and its Atonement (Rabbi Toba Spitzer, Yom Kippur Sermon 2018/5779)
Speaking from the pulpit on Yom Kippur, Rabbi Toba Spitzer draws on three ‘priestly concepts’ from Torah in calling for national reparations for slavery. These ideas establish a stronger, more demanding notion of both individual and collective responsibility in a society built on historical atrocities. The first is the idea of taking responsibility for a murdered person found on the road. Spitzer describes how sin morally and ritually pollutes the land, and how the Torah mandates that those in nearby settlements measure their distance from the body. She urges us to measure our own metaphorical distance from the harms of slavery and colonization, warning that we may find ourselves more entangled than we realize. Second, Spitzer reminds us that sin is not a private affair; the Torah is concerned with the way it ritually contaminates the community, regardless of individual blame. White people, even those whose ancestors migrated to the U.S. after the abolition of slavery, still benefit from lasting economic consequences of both historical and continuing racial oppression. Third, Spitzer explains that whether conscious or unconscious, whether willful or structural, sin must be atoned for – and that such atonement involves coming to know the sin in question. She calls for a shift in collective consciousness as part of a national confrontation with our past. Finally, Spitzer draws an analogy between the sin-offerings of animal sacrifice given to the priests and the need for public, material reparations as articulated by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The Torah Case for Reparations (Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, March 29 2018)
In this article, Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein thoroughly explores the interpretation that the treasure the Israelites took from the Egyptians during the Exodus was a form of reparations. He presents reparations “as a foundational concept in the core narrative and legal texts of Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism”. Connecting the Hebrews’ actions during the Exodus to the Biblical mandate to ensure freed slaves are not sent off empty-handed Bernstein explains how the rabbinic tradition views this not as plunder but as justly deserved reparations for centuries of slavery. With an insightful take on the Medieval rabbinic debate over the legitimacy of the method by which the Hebrews took reparations, Bernstein argues that there is consensus on the justice of reparations. He explores how this material compensation was essential to the ongoing spiritual life of the community in the construction of the Mishkan and draws parallels with the way that reparations from Germany enabled Israel to achieve economic success. At the same time, he draws an analogy with the use of this wealth in both the sin of the Golden Calf and the more questionable actions of the Israeli government to develop a powerful commentary about the relationship between national trauma, material compensation, and dignity, declaring that “reparations are not reserved for the unimpeachably virtuous. Bernstein concludes by championing H.R. 40 as a legal pathway to formally discussing how to implement reparations at the national political level.
Are we Responsible for the Sins of our Ancestors? The Torah Case for Reparations Part 2 (Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, D’var Torah for Parashat Behukotai 2021)
Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein follows up his 2018 article ‘The Torah Case for Reparations’ with an exploration of how communal guilt and responsibility persist through the generations. Bernstein points out an apparent contradiction in Rambam’s Mishneh Torah: in one section, he gives the text for confession as ‘Indeed, we have sinned’, but in another, he writes ‘indeed, we and our ancestors have been guilty’. He notes that this contradiction stems from two different Biblical sources: Leviticus 16:21, where confession is communal but still contemporary, and Leviticus 26:39-40, which mentions the sins of the ancestors too. Bernstein notes that the ancient rabbis struggled with the latter, and in particular how to reconcile it with the decree that ‘children shall not be put to death on account of their parents’. Their solution is informative: ‘when they hold onto the deeds of their ancestors… they are judged on account of them’. Applying this logic to the contemporary situation in America, Bernstein eloquently presents modern-day white Americans as continuing to benefit from the sins of their ancestors, taking care to remind us that ‘in Jewish law, adopted ancestors are ancestors’. And thus, argues Bernstein, we are obliged to take responsibility for these historical crimes.
D’var Torah for Parashat Bo (Rabbi Deborah Jacobson, January 23 2021)
In her drash on Parashat Bo, Rabbi Deborah Jacobson contrasts the conditions under which slaves attain their freedom in Torah with the experience of emancipated Black slaves in American history. In Parashat Bo we read about how during the Exodus, the Israelites went and took spoils from the Egyptians. This material wealth, which the rabbis interpreted as reparations for slavery helped sustain them in their wanderings, furnish the Mishkan, and build the infrastructure of their burgeoning nation. Similarly, in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to provide generously for slaves when we emancipate them; ‘do not let him go empty-handed’, we are told. Rabbi Jacobson explores how in the wake of the American Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, emancipated Blacks received no such largesse. Left penniless and destitute, they were thrust into poverty. Jacobson details how attempts during Reconstruction to give them a fighting chance were systematically shut down, with white supremacy deploying an arsenal containing everything from lynch mobs to redlining to maintain the racial hierarchy. A century of racial terror had a tremendous impact – and ongoing – impact on social and economic equality and opportunity. Rabbi Jacobson examines just how white folks manage to remain ignorant of his history, and asserts the imperative for white Americans to educate themselves on the history of the U.S. and to learn more about reparations for the sake of collective liberation.
Hinenu: Being Here with Truth (Rabbi Benjamin Barnett, January 6 2020)
Rabbi Benjamin Barnett’s article is a passionate defense of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual value of discomfort. Drawing together a tapestry of anecdotes and insights, Barnett explores the various ways we avoid confronting uncomfortable truths – from deflecting blame to family pride. He exposes what hides behind the immigrant narratives of Jews in America, and how the opportunities Jewish immigrants to America seized upon were unavailable to or actively disenfranchised Black and Indigenous people. Borrowing the words of David Whyte, Barnett describes confession as ‘the stripping away of protection, the telling of truth which might once have seemed like a humiliation, [and] becomes suddenly a gateway’. Instead of seeking comfort, Barnett urges us to exist with the uncomfortable truths about ourselves and about our ancestors. He advises us to live authentically and take responsibility for historical wrongs not only as individuals, but collectively and in the public sphere.
Transforming our Unjust World and Personal Teshuvah: Considering Reparations for Slavery (Mark Pinsky, October 26 2021)
Mark Pinsky weaves together a touchingly personal exploration of his own experiences with activist burnout and an investigation into the national failure of the United States to take responsibility for its history of slavery. What binds the two together, according to Pinsky, is the common thread of ‘failure of imagination’ – the inability to conceive of a more just world where calls for reform and repair are taken seriously. Pinksy is disarmingly frank about his own struggles with cynicism, particularly in the light of his own mortality. At the same time, he condemns the way the US government has left H.R. 40, a proposed resolution that would establish a committee to merely discuss reparations, languish without a hearing for decades. In both cases, his conclusion resembles that of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ in his 2014 essay ‘The Case for Reparations’: we must at least seriously consider the issue, and doing so is an ethical responsibility. Pinksy offers a confronting outline of both the potential financial cost of reparations and the plausible economic benefits, both framed in light of the moral weight of ignoring history. Ultimately, Pinsky declares that we ‘must learn to start new things even though we may not be able to move them forward or live to see them through’.
How Teshuvah can Inform our Thinking on Slavery and Reparations (Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, D’var Torah for Parashat Bo 2020)
In this challenging D’var Torah for Parashat Bo, Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari questions whether the booty that the fleeing Israelites took from the Egyptians can truly count as reparations. On the contrary, he suggests that genuine reparations must actually involve repairing the damage done – for both victim and perpetrator. Taking the demands of the Movement for Black Lives as paradigmatic, Fornari asserts that “those who have profited are responsible for the process of repair”. He envisions reparations as a form of collective teshuvah, that simultaneously restores the dignity of victims and the moral status of perpetrators. Fornari also acutely observes that American democracy has not yet reached even the first stage of teshuvah, which is “to stop causing harm”. Condemning the way that slavery persists within the American prison system, Fornari nevertheless expresses the hope that through teshuvah, American democracy can transcend its darkest sins and become something more.
Reunderstanding Jewish Historical Trauma: Moving from the River to the Watershed (Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, December 27 2021)
Rabbi Rosenberg’s article is a radical reframing of the narrative around Jewish historical trauma. Moving away from what Baron called ‘the lachrymose [teary] view of Jewish history’ as a steady river of traumas and humiliations beginning with the Exile, Rosenberg instead posits Jewish history as a watershed – a complex, interconnected network of waterways with no single direction or current. Borrowing Aurora Levins Morales’ concept of ‘medicinal history’, designed to ‘restore to the dehistoricized a sense of identity and possibility’, Rosenberg outlined three main tasks for shifting the narrative of Jewish trauma. First, she urges us to broaden our view beyond a narrow Ashkenazi lens to acknowledge the multiracial experience of Jews, which includes Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. Second, she campaigns for being more specific when discussing particular traumatic events, understanding them in their unique cultural context, rather than as part of a ‘river of inevitabiltiy’. And finally, Rosenberg calls for us to learn about non-Jewish communities’ experiences of collective and overwhelming harm, and to integrate this into our own knowledge. The narrative of Jewish survival is incomplete, she observes, without the background of those who did not survive.
A Jewish Perspective on Reparations (Moriel Rothman-Zecher, November 21 2014)
In this evocative article, Moriel Rothman-Zecher asks us to imagine that life for Jews in present-day Germany resembles life for Black people in the present-day United States. Both compelling and disturbing, this framing device throws the parallelisms between the Jewish and Black experiences into sharp focus. Rothman-Zecher contrasts German reparations for the Holocaust and the associated shift in the German collective conscience with the absence of analogous national actions by any United States government. In condemning the ongoing oppression, poverty, and police brutality faced by Black people in the U.S., Rothman-Zecher demonstrates the connection between unaddressed historical wrongs and a national culture and economy that permits these continuing injustices. In light of our similar experiences, Rothman-Zecher argues that American Jews have a “unique obligation to support reparations for African Americans”. He urges his readers to begin by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay ‘The Case for Reparations’.
