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Perspectives on Hate From a Rabbi and a Quondam Neo-Nazi Skinhead

Published March 16, 2017 at 5:18 AM MST

Since the beginning of the twelvemonth, there have been at least 100 bomb threats targeting Jewish Community Centers across the nation. Synagogues and cemeteries take been desecrated in New York, Pennsylvania and recently, Arizona. Today nosotros hear two voices on the subject of detest, its manifestation and destructive potential. First a Rabbi in Flagstaff and second a sometime neo-Nazi skinhead both of whom know the depths of the emotion.

How-do-you-do My name is Rabbi Mindie Snyder. I am the spiritual leader of Congregation Lev Shalom in Flagstaff, Arizona.

I had the good fortune of growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where in that location are many Jews. Many different kinds of Jews. The Jewish history in Philadelphia is pregnant. There was a certain sense of safety and security within my Judaism. I didn't feel othered. And then sometime during high school the news reported that my synagogue had been vandalized. Things had been stolen from the holy arc. Swastikas had been painted on the walls and windows were smashed. And that's when I actually stated seeing bigger crimes against our people.

Violations the Jewish people through sacred spaces like synagogues, like cemeteries has been increasing over the past 2 months in item.

The first matter I feel is outrage that people feel they are entitle to or have the right to harm an entire group of people. And whoever is perpetrating these crimes probably doesn't realize that the harm they do to the Jewish community worldwide affects our Muslim friends, our Christian friends. These are family to us.

Rabbi Mindie Snyder of Congregation Lev Shalom in Flagstaff.

What is non being discussed in the media as much as maybe information technology could exist is the relationship betwixt the expressions of-and I'g going to use the term 'hatred of Jews' because 'anti-Semitism' was coined past a German person many years ago preceding Globe State of war Two. And what does anti-Semitism really mean? Information technology almost sound similar a euphemism. And then let's talk about hatred. One of the things that's not being discussed is the root of hatred. What hatred really is. How hatred grows. How hatred is perpetuated over generations. How hatred is expressed, not merely in its near dramatic fashion, like God foreclose bravado upwards a building. Simply there are some very subtle expressions of hatred. That one can hear.

Hello my proper noun is Christian Picciolini I am the co-founder of Life Afterwards Detest, a non-turn a profit that helps pull people out of hate groups. I was a member of America's outset neo-Nazi skinhead gang.

I was first recruited in 1987. I was a normal kid and at 14 years old I was searching what all kids are searching for. I was looking for an identity. And a human being came up to me i twenty-four hours when I was smoking a joint in an alley. And he looked me in the middle and he took the joint from my rima oris and he crushed it with his boot and he said 'don't you know that'south what the communists and the Jews desire you lot to do to go on you docile?' I was suddenly struck with this human's charisma. This man who was America's first neo-Nazi skinhead. And he promised me paradise. He promised me the bullies would finish picking on me, that I would vest, that I wouldn't feel marginalized any more.

The racism isn't something that they lead with. They lead with pride, they lead with acceptance, they pb with a sense of nobility if y'all were to fight confronting the enemy. And information technology was always an 'us against them' narrative. It was always somebody else's fault for the problems nosotros were experiencing in our lives. That immigrants were taking our jobs, that blacks were moving in to our neighborhood and increasing criminal offence and that the Jews were in control of our lives, in control of the media and the finance systems.

I got married at nineteen years old and we had our kickoff kid, and I held my child in my arms and suddenly reconnected with the innocence that I lost at 14 years sometime. And I had something tangible to dear instead of something to hate, and it inverse my priorities.

In 2009 I establish the backbone to co-found an organization called 'Life After Hate' which is an system dedicated to helping people undo from detest groups and hateful ideologies. I knew how hard it was for me and others to get out. Fifty-fifty though nosotros had lost the ideology it was difficult to give up that community and identity.

On Election Day a bucket of gasoline was kicked over on to all these smoldering sparks that already existed beyond the U.S. And now the folks that are involved in these movements and hateful ideologies experience very embolden because some of the same things that are being said past our leaders at present are what we said 30 years agone. While we didn't call information technology the 'lying press' we called it the 'Jewish press' nosotros know that'southward the same thing. Nosotros understand that when they phone call for a ban on a sure faith that'southward something we were calling for 30 years ago.

When I'yard asked what we tin can practice to solve the xenophobia and racism it's a pretty daunting question to try to answer and what I recollect nosotros can do is only affect the people that are closest to us. Our family, our friends, our coworkers. And nosotros can do that not by being confrontational or ambitious but nosotros tin can exercise that by listening. Because when nosotros listen people will eventually give u.s. the reason why they might be going down a certain path of hatred or violence or prejudice. These are difficult conversations to take. Nobody likes to take these very uncomfortable conversations but the truth is we need to because we're disconnected now more than ever.

My goal is really to but listen, understand and connect people who might have different backgrounds and so we tin can realize we have more similarities than differences.