blogs/brentspodek

I was riding the subway not long after my grandmother died many years ago.

I was consumed with pain at the loss of this woman who was so important to me, yet all around me, people were acting as if everything was okay. I was consumed with pain and they had the gall to talk with friends, read the newspaper, stare out the window. 

In my moment of pain, their banality was obscene. 

I was reminded of that moment, of feeling isolated in my pain, as I've just watched another video of police officers shooting a black man. This time, it was Terence Crutcher who, like me, was 40 years old, and like me, had young children at home. He was similar to me, but I'm at my desk and he's dead.

Lest you be confused, this is the death of a black person at the hands of police that happened on Sept 19. Not the one on July 6, not the one on July 5, not the one last year or the year before. 

I'm in my office, with a desk full of work, aware of the services which need to be planned, the congregants who need to be tended to, the funds which have to be raised, the events which need to be organized. 

And there's an obscenity to my every day, pedestrian work.

People kill people every day, for all sort of reasons. Some might be necessary, but none of them are good.

But these killings - of Crutcher and all the others, are done by people who work for me and for you. In the words of my teacher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, I might not be guilty of these shootings, I did not pull the trigger, but I am responsible. So are you. 

My grandfather was a NYPD officer, and I'm aware of the dangers of police work and the fears officers and their families have when they go to work. More than 130 law enforement officers were killed in the line of duty last year. That does not, in the slightest, justify killing people with their hands up, killing people at traffic stops, killing people in my name. 

The psalmist warns against speaking with smooth, reassuring lies (Ps 12:3) so I won't pretend there is a quick fix.

No "one click" or "donate here" which will end this state of moral emergency. But those of us with white skin, who get to feel confident that the police will help us, not kill us, must remember that our black countrymen and women don't get to feel that every day.

To pretend otherwise, to pretend that this is a normal, acceptable state of affairs, to pretend that black lives don't matter, is obscene.