Get your knee off my neck!

The nation, if not the entire world, is in an uproar. The terrible and inhumane treatment of a member of America’s largest minority, an act of murder and unthinkable cruelty, has spurred on demonstrations in unprecedented numbers. Whites, blacks, people of all ages, religions, and nationalities, have taken to the streets, and the outcry does not seem to be subsiding by any means.

To tell you the truth, I could barely bring myself to watch the video. Just reading the gruesome details of the event and seeing a photo of the white police officer’s weight being supported for eight minutes, on May 25, by the neck of a fellow human being, the skin of whom of a starkly different hue, a treacherous and inhuman act which caused the latter’s death, was enough to turn my stomach in indignation and utter revulsion - a deep sorrow for the human condition and unconscionable maltreatment of minorities that still rears its ugly head, in 2020!

There are no words.

With this article, I attempt not to condemn nor to condone the excessive force used by law enforcement agencies of our nation. At the same time, I choose not to discuss the rectitude of  the expression of protest and anguish displayed by the masses - to legitimize the methods of expressing protest displayed by many of the said demonstrators - from sea to shining sea. Rather, I choose to examine their dismay, in a slightly deeper perspective - because, I must admit, it’s rather perplexing: 

Everyone has seen, I’m sure, some footage of protests, and in many cases, the detestation felt toward the government and law enforcement is palpable. Why and how has this contemptuousness erupted so strikingly? How did so many Americans become so anti-America? And why has this scorn for the powers that be exploded so dramatically at this time?

It is so odd, and even inexplicable.

At a time that our governmental agencies have taken great pains to protect their constituents, to advocate the well-being and health of the populace as a whole, in a most unprecedented manner! We have witnessed a complete overhaul of almost every state’s health guidelines, governments shutting down all non-essential operations, both economic, leisure-related, and educational activities,  for peoples of all ages, for the expressed purpose of preserving every and all human lives, mainly those of the elderly or immunocompromised. Economies have been placed at a stand still, parks and playgrounds closed, schools shut down - all for the sake of saving even one single life. The benevolence of our government agencies has been remarkable and is unparalleled! While saving our lives, the government shutdowns, for our best interest of course, and our utter survival - or the survival of our elderly and enfeebled neighbors - have been accompanied by huge sums of governmental monies graciously showered upon us, issuing generous payments to all Americans, irrespective of their prior employments, to make up for their loss of work caused by the said shutdown. In other words, the governments are not only saving our lives by restricting our ability to congregate, but actually compensating and even enriching us at the same time!

How is it imaginable that these very Americans, receiving all sorts of economic perks from the state, and whose lives are being saved by the states’ public health policies, are now taking to the streets and throwing stones at police cars?!

What’s going on here? It seems, then, that an isolated incident of racial intolerance and brutality, extreme and heart wrenching as it was, was not the only act of persecution that spurred on this show of unprecedented government disapproval on the behalf of millions of Americans.

In fact, there is another minority here - not only African Americans - who constitute a minority much larger than that of skin color or continental origin. In fact, the minority to which I refer used to be a majority, but has recently been reduced to the minority:

The individual.

The state governments of our nation, a nation once famous for protecting the liberties of the individual, have issued harsh and restrictive regulations, in the advent of Covid19, and have overstepped their boundaries in taking away the said liberties. And as we approach our fourth month of the new order in America, people have had enough; and as the well-known state motto of New Hampshire goes, “Live free or die.”

The majority of our nation, each his or her own individual minority, is healthy and not immunocompromised. Of course we love our elderly and infirm, but allowing government to force the individual to give up one’s G-d given rights to pursue one’s own life, liberties upon which our beloved nation was founded, is intolerable and unconstitutional. The government realizes its impropriety all too well, and seeks to balance the forfeit of the individual’s liberties by offering financial compensation, as mentioned above, and Americans are taking it. Boy are they taking it.

But the void is still there.

Materialism cannot take the place of spiritual resolve and freedom. True, people have died, tragically, from Covid19. But the vast majority of Americans are not and were never really in harm’s way (as they are not senior citizens), already possess antibodies, or have recovered from the disease, realizing that the dreaded corona virus was much like the flu with which he or she had suffered the last flu season. As such, they see the government’s regulations as restrictive. Especially in lieu of the fact that “flattening the curve” is a policy, not really tantamount to an urgent call to save lives from imminent or tangible danger. In other words, this is not a plague in which all or any people could be at risk of losing their lives. This is an outbreak of an infection that really only threatens the lives of some Americans. The rest, then, while following the guidelines of a pandemic, are “pretending” to live in fear of losing their lives, while they are actually only following guidelines to “flatten the curve,” to slow down the rate of infections in order to enable health care facilities to better handle the intake of patients. This policy, then, doesn’t even prevent infections at all, it only slows down the rate, as stated. 

In other words, governments are treating its citizens as a whole, a general populace, not as a group of individual persons. Regulations are in place to lessen percentages, to ease and moderate fullness of hospitals, not to protect the individual. For, as explained, the individual’s life was not endangered in the first place - most of the individuals, that is. 

And however kindhearted and selfless an individual is - his or her liberties have been taken away, by force. And as the government “decides” what is essential and what is not, the rights of every individual are usurped, and hence, tensions have been mounting. 

It is these governmental “decisions” that have changed the United States of America as we know it. Sadly. 

Allow me to give some examples.

Firstly, another significant “minority”, substantially more sizable than that of African Americans, that is being grossly violated by the state is none other than the youth, and moreover, the family. Under the guise of protecting the elder Americans, the states have punished the youngest Americans by closing their schools, their playgrounds, forcing them into isolation, with no compassion! Our preschool and elementary-aged children are wallowing in solitude, starved of socialization, play, and educational upbringing, tormenting their spirits and depriving them of their vital needs as children!  

Families, especially those with numerous children, albeit an extreme minority in America today, are often locked up in inner-city apartments, with no backyards or city playgrounds available, with no schools, childcare, or playgroups for their children, suffering in silence. And with no end in sight! The emotional effect of systematic domestic imprisonment, boredom, and depression is indescribable, and the damage done to relationships is irreparable. 

This is the sacrifice, our government mandates, the suffering child and distressed mom must offer in order to flatten the curve and lower the numbers. But as the individual child and family sacrifices and suffers extensively, all for the so-called overall well-being of the general populace, or for sake of helping out our hospitals treat some of their neighbors, the individual starts to wonder - why? Why doesn’t my life matter too?

Another example of this is, of course, small business owners, watching their business’s viability drift into extinction due to government shutdowns. The government decides what business can survive, because they are deemed “essential,” and which ones are history. My friends, American freedom is history!

But the most significant minority I have been planning to discuss is none other than people of faith! And I can only talk about my own faith, as I’m not knowledgeable about the others. So here it goes:

I am a Jew. To those who adhere to the precepts of authentic and observant Judaism, religious congregating is essential.

Our prayers must be offered up communally. Our religious study, too, must be conducted communally. Our children, from first graders through collegiate ages, must study communally. Our religious life events like marriages must be conducted communally. This is our life.

As the government implements its policies of flattening the curve, deciding just what is essential and what is not, rendering our religious services and life events as non-essentials, it threatens to deprive us of our life, as it were; to destroy our religion.

(And just as to us Jews, Judaism, the right to live Jewishly, is our very oxygen - so too, to all mankind, liberty and right to individual choices to live with dignity and earn a livelihood, to raise mentally stable and happy children, to nurture families, are essential to human existence!)

Please consider the following:

The neck is a narrow bridge that connects a head to its body. Our religion connects our souls to our bodies, supplying us with meaning and resolve. These are life essentials. The government, by bearing down its weight - keeping our religious schools and seminaries closed and limiting our ability to pray, etc., with the full force and fury of state law enforcement operatives, as we have witnessed in New York City - on this very neck, our spiritual life line, is threatening Judaism with asphyxiation.

So I conclude with a heartfelt and desperate plea -

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Governor - get your knee off of my neck!