Bob Schwartz

I won’t repeat the news story this morning from a Richmond, Virginia middle school. You can find it. It is enough to say that it is one more story about white American kids and racial intolerance in 2017.

It’s easy to see the advances we’ve made. Many parents look at their children and see genuine color-blindness. Whether this is our doing (maybe a little) or just the social environment, it is heartening to see.

But these days have made clear that racism in America is not gone, at any level, at any age, and may be on the ascendance. Which brings me to institutional religion, the churches and the synagogues.

Institutional religion is by its nature conservative, not politically but philosophically and practically. Holding on is continuity and coherence, moving on can be a kind of letting go.

As the 1950s slid into the civil rights era of the 1960s, churches struggled to keep a balance between the drama of the most idealistic beliefs and the pragmatics of congregational support. It was, in some ways, a repeat of what had happened a century earlier in the fight against slavery. As it was back then, the response for many churches was a bland silence.

But that was not enough for some in the 1960s, as Christian and Jewish leaders took to the pulpits and the streets and almost shamed their congregants into standing up for right. In the long run, it worked, and we can see the progress that has been made.

Yet nothing is forever, especially in the social tides. Every day serves up another story, some very clear, some more subtle, all of them pointing to racists among us, even in Congress, even in middle schools.

Those politicians, those bureaucratic executives, those middle schoolers, many of them claim religious affiliation, many of them attending church or synagogue. Leaders and pastors are not to blame when messages and exhortations of tolerance don’t get through to hard-headed, hard-hearted faithful listeners. But when they don’t speak up at all—pointedly, regularly and loudly—then they are shirking their mission and responsibility. If they see something, they must say something.

Children sometimes lie, and some of us lied as children. It happens. That’s why we teach The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’ story early. The simple and useful lesson: There will come a time when it is very important to be believed—to avoid getting eaten by a wolf—and no one will believe you.

Here is the story, as found in Aesop’s Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs:

The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’

There was a boy tending the sheep who would continually go up to the embankment and shout, ‘Help, there’s a wolf!’ The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf, but when the boy shouted they didn’t believe him and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf. The story shows that this is how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them.

Some never learn that lesson, because they always get away with (or think they get away with) lying all the time. Manchild Trump is one of those.

Maybe, just maybe, he is growing to regret no one believing him. In the middle of a distasteful controversy about his failure to deal with the families of fallen soldiers, it is reported that he just told one widow, “He knew what he signed up for.” Trump denies saying this. Most Americans don’t believe him.

It’s not clear that this controversy is “the thing” that politically wounds Trump among his docile and subservient Republican colleagues. But if it is, Trump may finally learn the lesson of the story. Unless, of course, he always thought the story was only about the wolf.

I get the news I need from the weather report.
Paul Simon, The Only Living Boy in New York.

When my dearest wakes up, she sometimes asks, “Has he broken the world yet?”

Most mornings, I can’t answer. Because most mornings, I avoid the news as long as possible. Not just because it is likely to include some outrageous, if not globally existential, story. Because it is not an improvement on the new day that has begun, with possibilities admittedly ranging from the excellent to the challenging. Sunny, cloudy, stormy.

Sometime after the preliminaries, the news will creep in or barge in. Some of it will matter, some of it will be an invitation to silly diversion or to demonstrate shallow or deep cleverness, including schemes to make things better.

Boker or. Morning of light. Again.

So many questions. Who is this man? Why did he do it? Who are the victims? Why them? Who are the loved ones who suffer? Who are the heroes who made things better and kept it from being worse? How can we lessen the chance of this happening again?

These and related questions are part of the media coverage and part of our own thinking about this tragedy.

But even if we answer every one of the questions to our satisfaction—which is unlikely—there will still be an ineffable mystery that goes beyond not having an answer. There is something about this for which we don’t have and can’t form a question.

In a time when so many are willing to tell you the answers, and when some of the more insightful are willing to first ask better questions, there are still some things that have neither questions nor answers. And in that standing mute and mindless in the face of mystery is a rare moment.

So the day of self-reflection and modest (or dramatic) aspiration on Yom Kippur is over. The break-the-fast meal has been gladly eaten. You go to sleep and wake up.

Who are you today, the day after?

It is like an amplified New Year. On the civil and secular calendar, the New Year arrives, a big or small celebration, and some people make resolutions. Yom Kippur is the culmination of ten days of New Year, more if you add the preparatory contemplation of Selichot, and instead of a party is a deep dive. Not a cruise ship with entertainment floating on the surface of the ocean, but an exploration—maybe reluctant exploration—below into the dark places.

Having thought about better and worse, will you be better? Is it possible, is it bearable, is it advisable, for every day to be Yom Kippur?