Gabriel Finder
The violent assault on Charlottesville by various hate-groups—a coalition of self-declared White Supremacists, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis and others—on August 11 and 12 shook the town’s residents to the core. Particularly tragic were the homicide of Heather Heyer, a peaceful protestor who dedicated her life to the creation of a just society, and the deaths of Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen and Trooper Berke M. Bates of the Virginia State Police in a helicopter accident. On the surface, Charlottesville is a tranquil college town, a liberal enclave, although class-based and racial tensions percolate just beneath the surface. But this assault was mounted by and large by outsiders. It united the town—for a while. But the failure of the police to prepare adequately for and stem the violence, which was to be expected, since these hate-groups came to Charlottesville armed—Virginia is an “open-carry” state— and looking for a fight, has become a topic of heated discussion and has led to calls in some quarters for the resignation of the city’s mayor, Michael Signer. Signer, himself Jewish, who made forceful statements on national media immediately after the riot, calling the nation’s leaders to task for emboldening hate-speech and bigotry, has received numerous death threats. Although things have returned to more or less normal, if you scratch just below the surface, Charlottesville is wounded. And so is the University of Virginia (UVA), which is the hub of the town’s cultural, economic, and political life.
UVA’s community felt utterly violated by the invasion of these hate-groups on university grounds on Friday evening, August 11. Brandishing tiki torches, their members marched on UVA’s venerated Lawn, surrounded a statute of Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, assaulted students who stood in front of the statue in counter-protest, and shouted “You will not replace us. Jew will not replace us.”
The university’s administration had already planned a teach-in on Saturday afternoon in peaceful response to the hate-groups’ rally planned downtown on that day. This event was to consist of some two dozen workshops for the community—fall semester classes hadn’t started yet—led by university faculty and Charlottesville residents. Workshop topics ranged from UVA’s own checkered racial past to the leading role of African Americans in the development of jazz. I was to lead a workshop on the Nazi roots of beliefs professed by the hate-groups that descended on town. But this event had to be cancelled after the mayor and then the governor declared a state of emergency and the university was closed. It has been rescheduled.
To its credit, the university’s administration formed an emergency task force, led by the dean of the law school, to lead the response to the events of August 11–12. Its first priority is ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff in the event of another threatened invasion on grounds by hate-groups.
Jews in Charlottesville and at UVA have good reason to be concerned. On the day of the rally downtown, the hate-groups gathered under not only Confederate but also Nazi banners emblazoned with the swastika and more arcane symbols from the Third Reich. A group of armed men marched in front of the Reform synagogue downtown, Nazi flags unfurled, and threated to burn it down while intrepid worshippers were holding Shabbat morning services inside. Although we live in America in 2017, it felt like Germany in 1938.
Indeed, the beliefs and terror tactics of these hate-groups come right out of the Nazis’ playbook. In the local paper, a leader of one of the groups was quoted as saying that Jews were “the implacable enemy of our people and civilization.” These groups hate blacks, Hispanics, gays, immigrants—indeed, anyone who is not “white,” which they understand in outdated and racist genetic terms. But in their perverse vision of the world, Jews, not deterred in their pursuit of power, are the masterminds, behind the scenes, of a perceived assault on their values and way of life. Traces of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf in the hodgepodge belief system held by these groups are unmistakable.
UVA faculty from across the university have mobilized and within the first couple of weeks of the fall semester have already organized a plethora of lectures, workshops, and teach-ins. The Jewish Studies Program, led by a steering committee composed of five of its faculty members, is playing a leading role in this effort. The Jewish Studies Program was one of the first on campus to issue a statement condemning the violent speech and actions of the hate-groups and mourning the deaths of Heather Heyer and the two state troopers. The statement also emphasized the commitment of Jewish Studies faculty to open, but civil and respectful discourse in their classrooms, in which all students regardless of their faith, origin, skin color, or gender are welcome. We in Jewish Studies have made a collective effort to open our office doors to students who want to discuss what happened and how they feel, and we have participated in significant numbers in Hillel events to show support for Jewish students. Already this fall the Jewish Studies Program is bringing Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College to UVA in October to speak on antisemitism, and professor emerita Phyllis Leffler of UVA will give a lecture entitled “White Supremacy, Southern Jews, and the Civil Rights Movement” in November. The program is also co-sponsoring panels of UVA professors, including Jewish Studies faculty, on fascism and the link between white supremacy and antisemitism. “Emerging Questions on Holocaust Testimonies Research,” an international conference already planned months ago for early November, which is being co-sponsored by USC Shoah Foundation, the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, and Western Galilee College in Akko, couldn’t be more timely. More pertinent programs are being planned for the spring semester.
And yet many of us in the Jewish Studies Program feel frustrated that Jews in the academy are always expected to support programs to combat racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments, but that we often stand alone when it comes to denouncing antisemitism, that we still have to make the case to many of our colleagues in other academic units that antisemitism in America, as well as racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments, has to be taken seriously, and that if we don’t call attention to it no one else will. At the same time, many of us can’t help but harbor an uncomfortable feeling that programs that we sponsor on antisemitism will come across as a shrill demand from a privileged group to draw attention to it if we don’t always couple them with examinations of other forms of prejudice and bigotry.
On Friday night, erev
Shabbat, September 8, Hillel at UVA sponsored a Unity Shabbat service
and dinner. Some 250 students attended, augmented by several Jewish
Studies Program faculty and members of Hillel’s national board. A
large number of students were non-Jews, showing support for their
Jewish friends. It was a wonderful sight to behold. In her discussion
of the Torah portion for that Shabbat, a Jewish student, while
expressing hopeful optimism, confessed that she was feeling “alone”
and “helpless” after what had happened here. Listening to her was
quite sobering for those of us on the faculty who attended. Her words
show that Jews on campus, as well as non-Jews, be they people of
color, gay, trans, and straight, still require healing. We faculty in
the Jewish Studies Program have our work cut out for us.
Gabriel Finder is the Ida and Nathan Kolodiz Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia.
