Known to God Alone

Today,  Cook County observed the annual Interfaith Memorial Observance for Indigent Person. In the past year, 138 people, overwhelmingly male, were buried by Cook County Medical Examiner.
This service was an effort to lend dignity to their passing and to celebrate the lives of people who may have been loved by others, may have experienced love, but who died alone.

Appropriately, the Interfaith service was held in the heart of the city, at the beautiful Chicago Temple, opposite the City of Chicago offices at Daley Plaza.
I had the honor of chanting Psalm 23 and the traditional El Maleh prayer for any Jews who might have been among the deceased homeless people. I felt I was praying for them all.
A Muslim women offered a beautiful prayer celebrating the divine spark in all humans. There were Christian and even Zoroastrian prayers too.

All the names of the deceased were read at the service.

On September 23, 2010, three people were buried who had no identification. They are listed in the record as "unknown." When the man (of the Isma'ili Shia faith) who read the names of those who died that day came to the "unknowns" he said, instead "known to God alone."

I met wonderful people who work with the homeless and who talked about the challenges of getting people to accept help. It is sad that these men and women could not be helped while they were still alive.

1968: Destruction in Chicago and the Birth of West Bank Settlements - Part 1

                                                            

Martin Luther King addressing a crowd about school segregation

Chicago - July, 1965

        
Where did all the Jewish lefties go? Jews feature prominently in the annals of American socialism and progressive activism. From Emma Lazarus to Saul Alinsky, from the sweatshops of the Lower East Side to the communes of the 60s, Jews were at the forefront of progressive politics.
Much has been written about the Jewish neocons and about how success has moved Jews to the right.
One of the unhealed wounds in the Jewish narrative is the exodus to the suburbs in the 50s and 60s. The so-called "white flight" from America's cities involved Jews in a particular way. Rabbi Robert Marx, a well-known progressive activist in Chicago from that era (and beyond) recommended Dr. Beryl Satter's book, "Family Properties" to me. She is an historian. Her book is well written and is thoroughly researched. But this book also reads like a thriller. Dr. Satter follows the trail of her father, an activist lawyer and landlord on Chicago's West Side who died prematurely of stress-related heart disease. Satter tries to piece together her father's life, tracking how he became the victim of his own idealism and circumstances.

What I found compelling about the book was how she depersonalizes loaded issues. Satter describes how individuals became enmeshed in much greater forces, particularly institutional racism. During the 50s and 60s, federal agencies regulated a racist system against Blacks. This took decades to undo.  Anecdotally, my experience is that Jews tend to remember Black violence and the destruction of solid, middle class by Black homeowners and tenants. Satter shows how Whites' collective memory of the inner city riots is highly selective. Whites do not remember the extensive, officially tolerated White attacks on Blacks. Rampaging white hordes received police protection as Blacks were intimidated and Black property was attacked. A universal principle applies here. Just as in Israel/Palestine and British Raj India, the onus of non-violence was placed entirely on the oppressed minority. Any occurrence of Black violence dominates our memories. All the White violence - which was far more prevalent and was backed by racist government and business policies - was deleted from the White narrative.
Rabbi Marx tells me how anti-Semitism played into the tragedy that Whites know as "white flight." The WASP establishment knowingly directed the Black migration from the South to Jewish neighborhoods such as Lawndale on the West Side of Chicago. Their assumption was that Jews were the only minority that would tolerate racial integration. This brought Blacks and Jews into conflict. Jews became the interface between the African-Americans and non-Black Chicago.

The most inflammatory federal policy was the infamous "redlining." A neighborhood block had to be 100% White to receive the highest credit rating. As soon as one Black family moved in, the entire block was downgraded. Entire communities of White lower middle class Catholics saw their hard-earned equity evaporate overnight. The so-called "blockbusters" who brought in Black families to White blocks were vilified by the White community.

Westlawn and other West Side and South Side neighborhoods became almost 100% African-American in a few years. Jews fled northward to the north side of Chicago and to the far north suburbs of the city.

Chicago 1968 riots

The climax was 1968, with the the assassination of Martin Luther King. King had moved from Alabama to Chicago in 1965 from Alabama to establish a base for the northern States. His assassination in April 1964 triggered massive riots hat lasted for days. Mayor Daley called in thousands of national guardsman. 28 city blocks were destroyed in the fired and violence. The physical scars are visible to this in the city's vacant lots. Lawndale was etched in White consciousness as a place too dangerous to visit.

For Jews (and other White people), the memory of that time shaped their relationship to the city as they escaped from the city's melting pot to White suburbia.

In part 2, I will suggest how the Jews flight from the city has shaped American Jewish attitudes to Israel.

Demilitarizing Israel-Palestine

                                                


CTA, Chicago's public transportation system, is now hosting an advertizing campaign aimed at demilitarizing the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Of course, I support a campaign that espouses the mission of this blog.
Fifteen years ago, when I was living in Israel, the so-called two state solution was publicly supported by only one political party, the Jewish-Palestinian list, formerly communist, Hadash. This party was beyond the pale of the polite society I belonged to. I could not have voted for Hadash without wading uphill through a lot of social negativity. Hadash was communist. Worse, Hadash was non-Zionist.
Well, that was then, and now, even the racist Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Bibi "Terror" Netanyahu support the two-state solution. Now that the two-state proposal is part of standard right wing rhetoric it is clear that it carries no hope. The dream of a viable future for the  Israelis and Palestinians is best served by campaigns such as www.TwoPeoplesOneFuture.org

The CTA campaign reminds me of Israel circa 1995. An urgent and simple truth, that is ahead of the mainstream curve: we need to find a way for both peoples to share the land.

Many American Jews will argue that Israel is embattled and is in a dangerous neighborhood and Israel needs all the support it can get from its principal ally, the U.S. Therefore, the U.S. should continue to give Israel billions of dollars annually in military aid with access to some of the U.S. premium armaments,
I disagree. If Israel were truly under threat, the U.S. would rush to the rescue. This was true in Israel's traumatic 1973 Yom Kippur war and, it's abundantly clear that this is just as true today.

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu                                                       

This campaign will not put a dent in the military aid Israel receives from the U.S. Yet, it will educate Chicagoans as to how our tax dollars give the current Israeli government the confidence to dominate the Palestinians militarily.

The news last week that the Netanyahu government has successfully demanded that the U.S. commit in writing to providing 20 F-35 warplanes, before it was willing to consider a limited 90 day freeze West Bank construction in exchange, illustrates how damaging the current military relationship is.

For a powerful exposition of the scale of U.S. military aid to Israel, please watch this testimony by Josh Ruebner:

                                

Looking forward to seeing this campaign spread to other cities across the United States.

Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish fathers dream of a peaceful future for their daughters

                                                          

Biking through Chicago's Winter Blues

                

Chicago is a cyclist's dream. With 150 miles of bike lanes and more bike racks than any other U.S. city, my adoptive hometown is rightly proud to be the national leader in urban biking. We are helped by the uniformly flat Midwestern terrain. But the real credit goes to Mayor Richard Daley Jr. who has been a champion for bicycles. In addition to the network of commuting bike lanes, his administration has overseen the development of extensive recreational bike trails through parks across the city. The most famous of these is the 18 miles of trail along Lake Michigan. The city's biking culture is amplified through forest preserves across suburban Chicago.

                                            

I started bicycle commuting three years ago.  Gas prices had peaked and commuter trains were packed as people minimized their cars usage. In addition, the expressway that connects the city to the suburbs was under construction. At one point along the 21 mile route, the bike path runs through a tunnel under the six-lane expressway. The trail continues alongside the roadway before veering off, back into the forest preserve. In my first year of biking, it was always a thrill for me to pedal along, overtaking the stalled traffic along the interstate. The driving commute took so long that the time it took for me to go to the gym and then drive was longer than my bike ride. So, I saved my gym membership fee, some time and had a great riding experience through the forest preserve in the bargain. During the work week, there are so few people out in the forest preserve that the ride is safe and calm. In early morning, or around dusk, the deer were out. I came to know where the various deer families lived. The trees keep track of the seasons. There was one patch of forest floor along the Chicago River that is the first to sprout new seedlings every Spring. A cluster of tree seedlings springs up in a large circular patch. They grow to about a foot tall and then the canopies of the established trees overshadow the patch. Fall is golden. The winter is a constantly changing scenery of ice and snow.

                                                                         

Riding through the winter has transformed my relationship with Chicago's winters. It's not just the constant cold (averaging in the mid- to high  20s) or the occasional bouts of intense cold (O degrees or colder + the wind chill factor) or, even the gloomy, overcast days. The hardest part is how long the winter is. Come March, when we see on television how the rest of the world is heading outdoors, we Chicagoans still have  up to two months of the Chicago winter ahead of us.

Cycling has been my way of combating the Chicago winter blues. Many Chicago winter days are stunningly beautiful. By taking the battle to the outdoors, I don't feel closed in by the weather. With appropriate clothing and my winterized bicycle, I get to enjoy the outdoors, year-round.

The affluent North Shore suburbs along the shoreline of Lake Michigan keep the bike path clear, year-round. They plow the snow throughout the winter. I must be of one of the handful of folks who take advantage of this tremendous resource. This will be my fourth winter in which I regularly commute by bicycle throughout the winter.

Mayor Daley's administration is coming to an end. He steps down this winter. Looking ahead to February 2011, the city's mayoral race is being closely watched by Chicago's cyclists.  Which of the candidates will build on Mayor Daley's legacy?

                                                                               

                                                    Bon voyage, Mayor Daley, and many thanks!