Blog

By: Rabbi Steve Schwartz 

The following is a text version of Rabbi Schwartz's Shabbat sermon from February 17th, 2019. 

It has been quite a week for Ilhan Omar, the freshman congresswoman from the state of Minnesota. 

The 37-year-old has a compelling story. 

She was born in Somalia, the youngest of seven siblings, and lost her mother when she was only two years old. The Somali civil war began when Omar was in her early teens. She and her family fled the country, spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, before being admitted to the U.S. as refugees. Ilhan Omar and her family first settled in the Virginia area, before planting roots in Minnesota, where she went to high school and college. When she first came to this country, Ilhan Omar did not speak a word of English.

Omar's rapid rise through American politics began in high school and continued through college, where she worked on various political campaigns and advocated for myriad issues. Three years ago Omar became the first Somali born Muslim legislator in the United States following her election to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Just a month ago she was sworn in as the first ever Somali born Muslim member of Congress. In her personal life, she is a wife and a mother to three children. She is smart, charismatic, and outspoken.  Mrs. Omar is also young and grew up in the world of technology, which means like many politicians these days, she is a Twitter user.

And that is what got her into some trouble this week, and brought her into the national spotlight.  

Mrs. Omar has a history of actively supporting the Palestinian cause, and has, in the past, not hesitated to criticize Israel. But earlier in the week she sent out two tweets that contained traditional anti-semitic motifs. One referenced the idea that Jews are overly concerned with money, and the second, that Jews somehow are secretly controlling the government.  

The public reaction to these comments was swift and furious. The Jewish community was quick to condemn the tweets. Various Jewish organizations from around the world released statements that called attention to Mrs. Omar's anti-semitic tone. The freshman representative received severe criticism from both sides of the aisle in Washington. In the words of past Beth El President Jerry Schnydman, she had a ‘come to Moses' meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after which Mrs. Omar sent out a tweet that apologized for her previous statements, which in part read as follows:  

“Anti-semitism is real, and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize.”  

Some in the Jewish community have not been satisfied with Mrs. Omar's efforts to mend fences, but at this point, I think we need to take her at her word. But an apology is worthless unless it is backed up by action, so we'll see in the months ahead whether her actions show a more profound sensitivity to the Jewish community and a stronger understanding of what anti-semitism is. As the saying goes, time will tell the tale.

We might have expected better from Mrs. Omar. After all, her story is in many ways the same as the stories of our own families: that of an immigrant, escaping war, who spent in a refugee camp, arriving in this country with no money and unable to speak the language, working hard, obtaining an education, and becoming successful, making a better world for her children. That is a story that fits my family, it fits Becky's family, and I am guessing many of your families because it contains all of the classic elements of the Jewish journey to America.

Indeed, Mrs. Omar knows what it feels like to be an outsider - to be marginalized - and we might have hoped that precisely that experience would have helped her to understand what Jews have struggled with historically. It is a curious irony of this whole business that if anyone should understand Mrs. Omar's experience it is the Jews, and if anyone should appreciate our experience it is someone like her �" because we've both been looked at and treated as ‘other.'

Mrs. Omar is easy to spot in halls of Congress as she is punctilious about wearing her hijab �" what is that? The religious head covering worn by observant Muslim women as a sign of their connection to their faith and respect for God. Her commitment to wearing the hijab if anything shows the courage of her convictions, and it is yet another connection to the Jewish experience because as Jews we certainly know what it means to wear religious garb. We have, for example, the tallit that many of us are wearing this morning. We also have the kippah. I suspect the Jewish community would take great pride in young, Jewish member of Congress who showed up to work each day wearing a kippah. 

You could make the argument that the Jews invented religious garb. Spend a few minutes reading this morning's Torah portion, and you will get a sense of the importance of the priests' ritual clothing. Specifically, this morning's portion describes not only the robes worn by the High Priest, but also the special breastplate, the head covering, and all of the intricate details the Torah discusses. I don't know of any other tradition that codifies the use and type of ritual clothing the way Judaism does. The High Priest's special garments made him stand out, and he was immediately recognizable to the entire community. The clothing he wore held him to a higher standard, serving as a reminder of the special duties that he had to serve the people and to serve God.  

Certainly, Mrs. Omar's hijab makes her highly visible, to the point where she is one of the most immediately recognizable members of the House. I would argue that it is because of her visibility that she has an opportunity to be an example, both to the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. I think the question she has to answer for herself is what does she want to be an example of?

If the answer to that question is fairness and tolerance, justice and understanding, and equality and possibility, then her apology is a step in the right direction. We can only hope and pray that she will take the lessons from this experience to heart and that she will continue to walk on that path towards a better, brighter, and more tolerant future for all.