Why My Tribe Must Stand With Standing Rock

I am the member of a Tribe, but I am neither Native American nor Canadian First Nations. I am not an Indigenous or Aboriginal person. I have no homeland to call my own, because I am the proverbial 'Wandering Jew'. My people wander the earth, immortal in our ability to transmit our culture through generations, but without a homeland or place to rest until the end of time.

I was raised in a Conservative Jewish home, I went to Hebrew School, I went to synagogue with my family. We celebrated Jewish holidays, practised ancient traditions, ate some pretty impressive food, and remembered our people's history. My family is descended on both sides from the Tribes of Y'israel, not the most holy Cohen Tribe. You might know something of the Cohen Tribe, Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame introduced a very critical piece of Jewish religiosity in the symbol of the Vulcan Salute. He first noted this hand gesture as a child when in temple with his family, whose Cohen roots called for special observances, one of which was making the hand signal presenting the Hebrew letter Shin (ש meaning Shaddai, another name for g-d) during the most high holidays, such as Yom Kippur. The point is, the Jewish people have a Tribal history rich and vibrant as any Indigenous culture, and we share one more thing, a history of brutality and genocide against our people.

To me the Jewish practice of Tikkun Olam, a concept defined by acts of kindness performed to perfect or repair the world, is my guiding principle.

I am a survivor too, not just from general anti-semitism, but because I am descended of an orphan of the Holocaust. My ancestors were driven from their homeland to place to yet another place, facing religious and ethnic persecution at every turn. My maternal grandfather (may his memory be but a blessing) was the youngest of his family of 8 brothers and sisters living in Mezerich, in what is now the Ukraine. He was the only one not yet married, and the only one without children. His parents were aged, and he was sponsored to come to Canada in the early thirties by a Canadian family, where he first worked in a lumber camp in Manitoba, but later settled in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. My grandfather never turned a hungry man away from his home, when he was married and settled he often had young Jewish refugees to Canada join his family for meals on the Sabbath, sharing what little they had. He also worked in his tiny Jewish community, preparing burial clothes without knots in the stitching so the soul can freely leave the body. Like many Indigenous groups, we have very important ways of honoring and remembering our dead.

When my Zaida went back to Poland, to the Shtetl to visit his family, on what would be his final time, he sailed the oceans for weeks. At a time when you travelled long voyages on ships, you planned to stay for more than a few days. When he arrived, his family knew what was coming for them, the Nazi party had risen to power in Germany, and they were fearful he might not be allowed to leave. He left as soon as it could be arranged. On his return to Canada's safe embrace, he wrote letter after letter to the dozens upon dozens of family and friends he left behind by no choice of his own. No letter ever got through. They were all returned to his empty hands and heart.

We now know the entire town was rounded up and shot into a mass grave nearby. Women, children, the elderly, each and every person were slaughtered for no other reason than being who they were, born into a different set of beliefs, but still so very human, so entitled to live a life free of tyranny and violence. He had only one cousin, a fragile and gentle woman, who survived under the care of her resourceful husband and his connections with a network of Polish farmers who hid them in holes dug deep into the earth under withering fields for years. She had a serious mental breakdown during her time in the freezing ground, she never got over the loss of her family, not ever, and her luck in making it to the US after the war, to live in Detroit, Michigan was the only thing that saved her.

My maternal grandmother had wanted to be a nurse, but was dissuaded as it wasn't something nice Jewish girls did. She instead volunteered her spare time to work in a local hospital for the mentally ill. She was one of the first in her large family born in Canada, and had remarkable progressive parents. On occasions they even let her eat non-kosher food if she chose to do so, as she was the one in control of her own person. I know that my mother is the product of their influence and modelling, and I followed in kind. I am the Nurse my grandmother was not allowed to be, and it is a connection to her I will always treasure.

I am no longer religious, I choose to call myself spiritual; I believe in something that connects and surrounds us all, a power in people and in nature and the universe that is magical and wondrous and continues on and on. To me the Jewish practice of Tikkun Olam, a concept defined by acts of kindness performed to perfect or repair the world, is my guiding principle. The phrase is found in the Mishnah, a body of classical rabbinic teachings, is often used when discussing issues of social policy, insuring a safeguard to those who may be at a disadvantage. It is the very basis of my essence, a belief in Social Justice, Human Rights, and Civil Rights for each and every being on this planet. We will gain more from the lifting up of others than we can ever learn from dividing and labeling. We have richer lives through embracing our diversity and commonality than by fighting it.

My views on the State of Israel are conflicted, and not really something I generally care to discuss. I do however find the ongoing war against innocent Palestinians to be the most shameful aspect of Israeli politics, and as I am Ashkenazi (European) as opposed to Sephardic (Middle-Eastern) I do not see Israel as my homeland, certainly not as it exists today. But I have hope. We must recognize that the 'Jewish State' is currently at war with another Indigenous population, and I cannot condone it.

But what has this got to do with the Indigenous Peoples of North and South Dakota, the Lakota and Sioux Nations? It is very simple. They have historically faced the same religious violence, forced migration, and outright genocide in even greater numbers than the Jewish people. Religion aside, it is wrong, it was wrong in Nazi occupied Europe, and it is wrong in every other part of the world where the First Nations and Aboriginal people face ongoing abuses to this day, and it is wrong at Standing Rock.

We may have spread far and wide, but when you look at our DNA, we are all family, we are all of the same Tribe, we are humanity itself.

We must come together as Tribal peoples, Jews (religious or not) and Native Americans share a similar tragic history. Our strength of culture and will to survive in the face of the most heinous treatment is the same. Our desire to connect to each other, to the land, to educate our own children to be able to face the harsh realities in the world mirror each other. Memory is important to us, our history is our shared legacy to our children. But most importantly, we cannot rest on our promise to never let it happen again. The Jewish people, though fewer in numbers, scattered across the globe, and divided by different adherence to religious and spiritual beliefs, have managed to bring the world's attention to our history, we are visible - but most importantly, we can also move with a degree of invisibility as a minority. Financially, the successes of our people have given us a voice and a presence that, although under greater anti-semitic threat that in previous eras, allows us to demand protection from governments and the United Nations. Indigenous peoples have less visibility, less mainstream voices, and therefore they are often set aside or misunderstood by those who refuse to acknowledge their shattering history.

The First Nations people I know personally are some of the most spiritually self-actualized people of my acquaintance. The have an innate ability to take the abuses they have faced and move through them with dignity and a grace I will never accomplish. I cannot speak for every single individual, and in every group, even my own, there are those whose actions I cannot condone. But I see so much common ground, so many echoes with my own history, that I cannot help but feel connected to the Water Protectors and every other person who is standing up and speaking out about the ongoing indignities being perpetrated against Native Americans. Their sovereign lands, their religious and spiritual places, their life sustaining resources are being destroyed in the name of greed, and it is unconscionable.

If my 'Hebrew' Tribe cannot see that we are connected to every other Tribe and every other oppressed group facing government interventions meant to steal vital resources and sacred lands, then we have learned nothing. We have learned nothing from our own history, and nothing from the values intellectuals and scientists who are telling us that we have already passed the point of no return on Climate Change. If we do not "Stand with Standing Rock" now, then we will have the blood of future generations on our hands, because together, we can stop this history from repeating.

When they burned down our Synagogues, destroyed our cemeteries and used our ancestors headstones to pave their roads, we were horrified. We wondered why the world was ignoring our plight, We prayed that it would end, that life would return to normal, that we could travel and practise our religion openly and with pride. We saw the desecration of our most sacred places, we were fed scraps and treated like animals housed in blocks behind barbed wire. We were witness to the ashes of our friends, families, neighbors, and communities being blown in great grey clouds over our living dead bodies, mere shells of bodies too weak and terrorized to think or protest.

We are seeing people tossed into prisons, their Human Rights violated, terrorized, numbered, and separated from their fellow Protectors.

Now we see the razor wire going up around Turtle Island, a sacred burial and prayer site. We see the militarized 'Oil Police' committing war crimes upon an unarmed, peaceful group of Water Protectors. We see people tossed into prisons, their Human Rights violated, terrorized, numbered, and separated from their fellow Protectors. We see misinformation moving through the media, propaganda from Energy Transfer Partners and North Dakota Governor Dalrymple. We see threats of restrictions on food, water, building supplies, and necessities of life being moved to the Oceti Sakowin Camp. The government of North Dakota is literally trying to 'Concentrate' the population of Protectors, remove all non-Native residents, and actively jam and block access to the media and communication with the outside world. The jailing and maiming of Journalists trying to cover the events and pass the story on to people outside of Standing Rock has been a hallmark of this movement. We have seen the denial of Emergency Services, medication for arrested individuals being withheld, and growing aggression from Dakota Access Pipeline builders and contractors. We have leaders that remain silent at this critical moment in history. Does this not strike anyone else as an echo of the Holocaust we swore we would never forget? I cannot be the only one to see the irony of Bankers and Politicians (some of them of Jewish heritage) perpetuating and participating in these Human Rights abuses on the most oppressed peoples in the United States today.

We must stand up, we must stand together. We all are descended of the same genome, the same ancient ancestors. We may have spread far and wide, but when you look at our DNA, we are all family, we are all of the same Tribe, we are humanity itself. I will forever stand beside those who face the kinds of oppression my ancestry has known through the ages. My heart is with the Water Protectors who have not only faced such a history, but still have managed to stay connected to the land, and still understand the connection between humans and the environment. It is the Indigenous peoples ability to see into the future that makes them so remarkable, for they can see something many of us cannot. We have one planet, one place to live, all of us share in it's ability to heal and thrive and flourish, and we will all share in it's destruction if we don't make this course correction now.