Bryan Schwartzman: Before we start today's show, I have a quick announcement: Our little podcast is doing a live recording on Zoom and Facebook Live on Friday, January 29th and we're inviting you to attend! We're pretty psyched for this show. It's part of this year's Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest that's happening over Tu B'Shvat and is sponsored by a whole bunch of Jewish organizations. The topic will be Human Composting -- yeah, you heard that right - with special guests Rabbi Seth Goldstein and Rabbi Adina Lewittes. Please feel free to join us for a lively conversation followed by a Q&A where we'll take questions from you, our live audience. The best part? Tickets are free, but you have to register for the Festival to get the access link. So, we've got the registration information in our show notes -- click or tap on that link to sign up. Again, that's Human Composting. Friday, January 29th, 2 pm Eastern Time on Zoom and Facebook Live. We really hope to see you there! Alright, tossing it to myself, let's start the show. Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Aryeh Bernstein: I would love to reach a point where it is totally incoherent to be a politically-conscious Jew, who cares about Torah at all, who isn't in favor of reparations because it's the core political principle of our own religious identity. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman and our guest today is Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein. We'll be discussing his essay, The Torah Case for Reparations: A Jewish View. As a reminder, the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, that's Evolve.ReconstructingJudaism.org. The essays are not required reading for the show, but we recommend checking them out. Bryan Schwartzman: So, for those of you who might be brand-new to the podcast, what is Evolve? What is this website we're talking about? Well, Evolve is an initiative of Reconstructing Judaism that's the basis for our podcast. It promotes the ongoing evolution of the Jewish community by launching collective, communal conversations about the urgent issues of our day. It brings together people to listen to one another's point of view and to interact respectfully. In this way, we hope to enhance the ongoing evolution of Jewish civilization. Bryan Schwartzman: I know what you're thinking, "That all sounds great. But what is it exactly? What are we talking about?" First and foremost, Evolve is a website, Evolve.ReconstructingJudaism.org, devoted to in-depth, thoughtful pieces. Right now, you can find entries under 14 different topics, everything from antisemitism, to race, to climate justice, and so much more. If you're looking for ways Jewish perspectives might be relevant to your life and the issues of our day, you'll find it on these webpages. So far, we've based all our shows on an essay from the website. Bryan Schwartzman: And there's more. There's Evolve Web Conversations. There were 10 last year and more on the way this year. There's also the Adult Education Program. We'll provide more information on our show notes, on our website, but these are resources, curricula for having real conversations, either in person or online. Evolve is about meaningful conversations about the Jewish present and future, and these real-world interactions truly exemplify the mission. Bryan Schwartzman: On today's show, I'm excited to welcome Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein. In his Evolve essay, "The Torah Case for Reparations: A Jewish View", he explains how reparations play an essential role in the Passover story. He connects the reparations described in the Exodus to the idea of monetary compensation for African Americans or descendants of American slavery. This idea has come up several times on past episodes, most explicitly on Episode 4: Slavery and Its Atonement: The Jewish Obligation to Confront Slavery's Legacy, with Rabbi Toba Spitzer. We're returning to the topic because we think it's important to consider and because Rabbi Bernstein makes an argument we haven't heard before, one that asserts the idea of reparations is central to the Jewish story. Bryan Schwartzman: Okay. Now, I'm thrilled to introduce our guest, Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, Avodah's National Educator. He's also a consultant for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and Farm Forward's Jewish Initiative for Animals. He's taught at Mishkan Chicago's Social Justice Beit Midrash, and is now Senior Editor of JewSchool.com Bryan Schwartzman: In addition to speaking out on reparations, his 2018 Eli Talk, The Rod and the Whip: Accountability for Law Enforcement, has generated conversation on police reform. All right. Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, welcome to the show, it's fantastic to have you here. Aryeh Bernstein: It's fantastic to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. Bryan Schwartzman: My pleasure. Really excited about this topic, interested to delve into it. I just want to start at the heart. There's been a lot of discussion, certainly over the past five or six years, about the idea of reparations. There have been a lot of different Jewish arguments around this, and you've stepped in and said, "Whoa, it's even more central to the Jewish story than you think, it's right there in the Torah, it's right there in the Exodus." So, can you explain why reparations are central to the Exodus Passover story? Aryeh Bernstein: Thank you. I was a latecomer to the issue of the cause. I read, like many other people, Ta-Nehisi Coates magisterial essay in The Atlantic in 2014, "The Case for Reparations". And as I read it, I just had a lot of clarity. I mean he actually introduces it with a passage from Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, the laws about how to send away what's called a Hebrew slave, it's really more of an indentured servant at the end of servitude, and making sure that they have startup wealth. Aryeh Bernstein: As I read his article and read that passage, I really began to see, with a lot of clarity, passages that I'd been reading my whole life and had never really thought about in that context, specifically throughout the Book of Exodus, Shemot, and even earlier, in Genesis, in Bereshit, when Egyptian slavery is introduced and when it's narrated, the liberation is always tied to the requirement for the Israelites to take Egyptian property. Aryeh Bernstein: At the burning bush, God speaks to Moshe, to Moses, and says, "Here's the deal. I've heard the plight of my children in Egypt. You're going to go back down there and you're going to help liberate them. And, at the end, don't forget to ask of their neighbors, gold and silver, clothing, property, to take out." On the eve of the Exodus, after nine plagues, right before the slaying of the firstborn, in the 11th chapter of Shemot, Exodus, God is telling Moshe to speak to the people, just break down, "Here's what's going to happen. This is it, last step," and says, "And don't forget," God even pleads, use the word "na" , pleads with Moshe, "People, don't forget to take property from your neighbors, ask them for their property." Aryeh Bernstein: And then, in the 12th chapter, it's narrated, they did it. And this is understood in Rabbinic tradition most pointedly in a passage in the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, as reparations. It's sloppy reparations, but the validity and importance of taking Egyptian property was because they owed the Israelites money for hundreds of years of labor. Bryan Schwartzman: Sloppy because it's not a carefully worked out formula or a truth and reconciliation commission. Aryeh Bernstein: Right, exactly. But it doesn't seem like Pharaoh is really going to convene a Reparations Committee with a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission. So, the message seems to be, from the Torah and from the Rabbinic tradition, reparations are so central, so core in elements of liberation that even if you have to use somewhat pressuring or underhanded or sloppy imperfect methods to do it, you have to do it. Aryeh Bernstein: God even pleads with the Israelites, "Don't forget to do this, I know you," as if to say, and some of the commentaries go this direction, "I know you, I know that you're just going to be like, "I don't want to bother, let's just go free."" No, for liberation to be real, there has to be, first of all, the financial terms to be able to remain free, and also there has to be, I think, the achievement of awareness of the justice of one's liberty that is achieved through reparations as well. Bryan Schwartzman: So, you mentioned the Talmud, and I think your piece also talks about, and tell me if I'm wrong, that there is at least one mention that maybe this is what led to the sin of the golden calf, where the gold came from. Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah. The Israelites had a lot of property, really a lot of property, coming out of Egypt, and you see history of that gold and other precious property in the life of the people. So, one is that, if you're ever reading the story of the golden calf and you wonder where they get all this gold from, that's where they got the gold from. And the Talmud, in Tractate Berachot, really works that out. And the fascinating thing is even though the Israelites remain throughout all history to be terribly, terribly blamed and excoriated for the sin of the golden calf, that's considered one of the low points in Jewish history, the Talmud and the people who participated in are blamed, their death is justified, but God is attributing some of the responsibility, sort of like, "Well, what do you expect them to do?" Aryeh Bernstein: So, there's an awareness that the property accrued from reparations sometimes leads to bad things and, yet, nowhere in the tradition, including the places that deal explicitly with that, does anyone in the Rabbinic tradition ever consider, "Wow, they did bad things with the property. I wonder if maybe they shouldn't have gotten it." I think the message that comes out of that is that the problem isn't reparations, the problem's money, people and -- the problem is people! People sometimes do bad things, but the justice of reparations is not based on the pure righteousness of the people. Coates writes about that explicitly, especially when he reprinted the essay in his book, We Were Eight Years in Power, he writes about that and some of the very bizarre opposition claims. Aryeh Bernstein: The other piece of that is that if you want to point out the bad things they did, the mishkan, the Tabernacle, was also built with the property that they brought out from Egypt. And the Torah says, in the 25th, I believe, chapter of Shemot, Exodus, God commands them to build a mishkan, a tabernacle, veshakhanti betokham, "So that I can dwell within them," as if to say the possibility of God dwelling in the Jewish people was enabled by reparations. What would have happened had the people ... maybe we understand why God was pleading with them, "Don't forget this step." What does it mean, theologically? This is a much more speculative question, but what does it mean, theologically, to say that God's ability to dwell among us depends on our full achievement of liberation through receiving reparations? Bryan Schwartzman: So, you're, at heart, a Jewish educator. Why do you think I've never heard this story or framed this way in Hebrew school or at the Passover Seder? Is that something you're trying to change? Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah, I've been asking myself that question as well because it's right there. In fact, it's funny you mention the Passover Seder. We explicitly refer to this in one of the most popular poems, songs, across the Jewish ethnic spectrum, The Dayenu poem, where we go through all these different component parts of the liberation and say each one of them would have been sufficient reason for us to celebrate tonight and sing the songs of Hallel, the freedom songs. Each one of them would have been enough, Dayenu, all the more so, when all these things happened. Aryeh Bernstein: One of the steps there is had God brought us out from Egypt and not given us their money, ve-lo natan lanu et mammonam, Dayenu. And so this is a very popular song, people read it at their Haggadah. I subsequently realized, just in the last couple years, starting to look through some American Haggadot, it seems like the American religious tradition was maybe uncomfortable with that story. There is a long tradition, even back to medieval commentaries, as I discuss in my article, of the episode of the Israelites asking the Egyptians for their stuff, or borrowing their stuff, causing discomfort among some commentary. Aryeh Bernstein: Now, some of the medieval commentaries, they sound a little over-the-top; as the young people would say, they sound "extra" in their assertion, their insistence that when the Israelites asked for Egyptian property, "This is a full-fledged gift, it was all on the up-and-up, everyone knew what was going on, there was no trickery." The reason they're nervous is because the word "sha'al", in Hebrew, can mean ask/request, it can also mean "to borrow," it's a normal word for "to borrow". And the Torah says explicitly, vayenatzlu et-Mitzrayim, which means they emptied out Egypt or they shook down Egypt, it might mean they exploited Egypt, that's what it means in modern Hebrew. So, there is that anxiety about it. And then they'll come to try to justify, "Well, we weren't going to get it as ..." some of them, like Rabbenu Hananel, will say, "Well, it was justified." Aryeh Bernstein: But, sometimes, they're playing both sides. And I think, if I remember correctly, in my pre-2014 Jewish education, this was one of those places that a lot of polite, bourgeois liberal Jews were uncomfortable with. Yeah, we're grateful for the liberation from Egypt, but why do we have to trick people on the way? Why do we have to take all their stuff? My guess is that Jews earlier in American history, especially, were very nervous about being associated with money, being money-grubbers. Aryeh Bernstein: And when you see how twisted internalized anti-Semitism can make people's thinking that because we're worried about being depicted as money-grubber financial exploiters, we're worried about -- at the moment of being destitute slaves who have been exploited by the most powerful superpower in the world and we're getting out -- we're worried about repatriating some of what's owed to us in the first place. But the liberation is, from the very beginning, identified with liberation with reparations. It has always been central in our biblical Rabbinic text and in our liturgy, in the Haggadah; when we talk about the liberation of Egypt, we're talking about liberation with reparations. It's been right there. Bryan Schwartzman: Hi. If you're enjoying this interview, please hit the Subscribe button and be among the first to know when a new episode appears. If you're a new listener, welcome. Check out our back catalog of lots of groundbreaking conversations. Do you want others to experience this kind of dialogue? Please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or leave a glowing review. Positive ratings really help other people find out about the show. All right, now back to Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein. Bryan Schwartzman: So, you wrote a much longer piece in Medium, [on] which your Evolve essay is based. When you first set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, what were you primarily hoping to accomplish? Are you hoping to change religious school curriculum? Are you hoping to get reparations actually higher on the Jewish organizational political agenda? What's the goal, if your piece has the kind of impact that you aim for? Aryeh Bernstein: Thanks for asking, that's a good question. I think there are two goals. One is the actual political goal, I think American, and really international politics and government should be grounded in the politics of reparations. I mean, I focused more on the case of descendants of Africa in the United States, but, certainly, Indigenous people here, Haiti with France, Argentina and many other countries who had been colonized by Spain, etc., there are many reparations claims around the world, grappling with colonialism, and here in this particular case. Aryeh Bernstein: So, there has been a bill submitted in the House of Representatives for 35 years in a row, H.R.40, which calls for creating a congressional commission, fully funded, to study reparations and come up with a plan. So, I think U.S. Congress should pass that into law. It's never even made it out of committee. It has gained strength since Coates's article. I think that should happen. In terms of the Jewish community, obviously the Jewish community is a small piece of the American population, but it's a piece I'm in and everybody's got to do their part and do their lane. Aryeh Bernstein: So, I would like to see it become a central part of Jewish organizational consensus politics. I would love to reach a point where anytime some Jewish group goes to meet with an elected official who's half blowing us off and not really preparing for the meeting or finding out what we care about, and they want to just be blow-hards and show how good they are to the Jewish people and Jewish interests, they immediately go into, "Yeah, I support reparations," the same way they'll now go into talking about how pro-Israel they are, regardless of what the interests were. Aryeh Bernstein: Jewish groups get this all the time, they're coming about some domestic question and the politician comes and talks to them about how pro-Israel they are, like we didn't ask. I would love for that to be the case, that any governmental official assumes, "If the Jews are coming to me, it's about reparations I've got to approve," because everybody knows that's the basic Jewish story. It is totally incoherent to be a politically-conscious Jew, who cares about Torah at all, whoever does a Passover Seder or a circumcision ritual or anything, who isn't in favor of reparations because it's the core political principle of our own religious identity. Bryan Schwartzman: And where is it right now in terms of the Jewish agenda? Is it still considered not mainstream in the organizational world? Aryeh Bernstein: I think there's a long way to go. I do see a lot of movement. In terms of the Reconstructing Judaism movement, the fact that you're having this podcast on this topic and you wanted the excerpt from the article, this is a topic that's coming on, Moment magazine recently had this feature where representatives of different streams of Jewish life- Bryan Schwartzman: "Ask the Rabbi." Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah. They had nine different rabbis, and reparations was a recent topic. The Reform Movement, most boldly, as is often the case, often leads the way on progressive politics things on a muscular national scale. To their credit, the Reform Movement, at their national URJ gathering last year, I don't remember the exact wording of it, they passed a resolution to center reparations in their movemental work, so I think that's important. Jewish Renewal, I know their rabbi, Arthur Waskow, who's been talking about ... he also excerpted from my article recently on something. Aryeh Bernstein: So, I think there is some movement. In the burgeoning Jewish left, there's actually a bunch of different pods and circles around the country, with [inaudible] and independent groups who are forming reparations learning groups, organizing groups, etc. So, I think we have a long way to go, but I think that there is momentum that matches general national momentum of moving this from the fringe issue that it was considered as late as 2014 to something that is actually having some momentum and teeth, including with some municipal legislation in different places. I think there's a long way to go. Aryeh Bernstein: And I'm also interested in Jewish spiritual liberation. Going back to your question a few minutes ago, Bryan, about why, if this is so central, why didn't I ever hear about it in Hebrew school, which is something I've thought about a lot, too. What have we suppressed? What have we been unwilling to come to terms with in terms of our own formative story? What have we been afraid of? What's happening whenever the most obvious reading of something is unseen by an entire population? I think that Jewish liberation also depends on understanding the profound goading messages of our Torah and Rabbinic tradition in a deep way, and that what it's saying is that release from exploitation and slavery is not liberation if there isn't a real accounting for the damage done over the time of the oppression. Bryan Schwartzman: If Jews are going to make the argument in the secular sphere that reparations and this call for justice is rooted in our Torah, and you could argue American society has, on some level, been shaped by the Torah and the Ten Commandments. Does it matter whether the Exodus, historically, happened? Or is it enough that this is sacred to Jews and to Christians and it's shaped our tradition for thousands of years? Or does it matter whether this was a historical event which there's scant archeological evidence for? Aryeh Bernstein: That's a really good question. And I'm not sure I'm totally settled on it. My instinct is to say no, it doesn't matter. I think that might be disingenuous, I don't totally trust myself when I say that because I think if I really believe that it definitely did happen, historically, then I think that might actually give even more oomph. I don't want to settle that question, "Does it matter?" What I will say is that even if it is not a historical record, and I don't primarily interact with the Torah as an historical document, and I think that a lot is lost by doing so, I think it's still extremely profound to say that what we are as a people, we have shaped our identity of telling a story about having experienced exploitation and oppression, and that the end of that exploitation and oppression is liberation through reparations. Aryeh Bernstein: The Torah is insistent on interrupting the cycle of exploitation and oppression. The Torah is interested in basic equality being the law of the land. So, if you're from the perspective that the stories of the Torah are not historical, then it's really striking to me that the Torah creates a background story of brutal slavery and oppression and drives a throughline from that to regular economics, regular market economics. Poverty is a travesty, the Torah doesn't allow poverty to happen. Human societies allow poverty to happen, and the Torah is outraged by that and interrupts it, and the Torah sees poverty as a systemic structural issue as descendant from and connected to chattel slavery. That's what the story of reparations is really telling us about, that there are implications, legally, halachically, beyond just reparations. You want to say that you think reparations for former slaves is radical? The Torah is saying that's the stepping-off point, that's not radical, that's basic. What's more radical is that we even apply the values and the logic and the legal apparatus of reparations to cases where there wasn't slavery in the first place, but there was economic exploitation. Bryan Schwartzman: A very common response, and I'm no different, but I feel across the political spectrum, when first hearing or thinking about reparations is to conceive of the practical reasons, challenges, why it might not work, ranging from just figuring out who it would be eligible for, to how you would get enough money to make it meaningful, to now, with our fractured political environment, how under-privileged, poor whites might react. So, why is it, I think in your view, and also in Coates's view, not the right approach to start with problems, questions/objections, and to get to the process of examining reparations and what it could mean? Aryeh Bernstein: Well, I obviously can't speak for Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I can recall things he's written and I can speak for myself, building on that. First of all, again, when people jump to all the ways it couldn't work, maybe it can work. That's why we should pass H.R.40 into law and see. You and I, as average citizens who try to be informed but don't have a staff budgeted by Congress to really do proper research and bring in economists who have worked on this, we may be overwhelmed by seeing it as impossible. There's a lot that might seem impossible. Doing repairs on my apartment might seem overwhelming to me because I don't know anything about construction. But if I hired in some people who actually know something about it, it might not seem overwhelming at all. Or it might. Aryeh Bernstein: Sometimes, you find out, "Yeah, you're going to have to start from scratch, it's not worthwhile." Let's pass H.R.40 into law. And that's what's amazing about Coates's thing, people short-circuit when ... The halachic upshot, if you will, of Coates's article is pass H.R.40, form a congressional committee, let's see, let's fund and budget fully researching this and what it could look like. Reparations have happened in different places in the world in different ways, let's study different methods, let's explore the questions from philosophical perspectives, from economic perspectives, government perspectives, etc. Bryan Schwartzman: You talked about secular Torah. What's the one-line principle, you think, animating the idea of reparations, is that- Aryeh Bernstein: When you steal stuff, you have to give it back. Bryan Schwartzman: That's it? Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah. The notion that this is radical, this is only radical if you just assume that bullies taking weaker people's stuff is the law of the land. The Torah doesn't seem to assume that, I don't assume that, my kindergarten teachers didn't assume that, and I don't think that there's any reason why it should be different on the international scale because since Europe stole a lot of stuff in the name of Christianity, therefore it's okay. Why do I feel committed to that? I'm not Christian. And Christianity stole a lot of stuff from me, too. Why we would have to make exceptions to say bullying and theft is okay when it's France from Haiti or Spain from South America, etc. It's completely ludicrous. I mean colonialism is completely ludicrous, imperialism is ludicrous, from a moral perspective, and we're just supposed to ... but saying that somehow makes you anti-patriotic or anti-American? Fine. Well, then, anybody who says that, they're the ones then identifying America with theft. I didn't do that. By calling for reparations, we're saying America doesn't have to be about theft. You can actually say, "This was an error that can be repaired, or at least partially repaired." But all the people who are like, "This isn't who we are" should be the people who are most eagerly pushing for reparations in the United States and internationally, everywhere. Bryan Schwartzman: Okay, another short timeout here. If you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve, on the podcast, on the website, in our web conversations, or even the curricula we're producing, you can engage in citizen philanthropy and support us. Every gift matters. There's a Donate link in our show notes. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. All right, now back to Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein. Bryan Schwartzman: There have been, in U.S. history, several attempts or examples of reparations on bigger and smaller scales, and one of which -- you grew up in Chicago -- happened in Chicago, with regards to victims of police brutality. Can you tell us that and how it might be connected? Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah. I think this is one of the examples of local reparations ordinances that have been passed in recent years, since Coates's article, that can, I think, give us hope that there will be local efforts and attempts that can create a national movement. Police around the country and around the world are always, almost by definition, corrupt ... well, forget about definition, by fact, have been corrupt, racist, and violent. Certainly, here in the United States, where their origin is in slave patrols, and Chicago in particular has a very gruesome and brutal history of police brutality, especially against Black people and especially against poor people. One particular extreme manifestation of that was, for many decades, there was a police commander, named Jon Burge, who ran a unit that tortured people, tortured poor Black people, and framed people. He was unbelievably corrupt and brutal, even by Chicago police standards. Aryeh Bernstein: Finally, I forget exactly when, some years ago, it finally came to light and he was prosecuted. Jon Burge was prosecuted, and then there was a long case of expunging the records of his victims. That's still going on, there are still victims of his who are in prison, but most of them a free. In, I think it was 2016, if I remember correctly, the Chicago City Council passed a reparations ordinance that included significant financial reparations to victims of Jon Burges's unit and their families. It also included requirements for there to be a public reckoning, that all Chicago public schools have to include units on the Burge torture episode in their curricula, I think in one elementary grade and one high school grade. Aryeh Bernstein: And there had to be the creation of a public exhibit. The central branch of the Chicago Public Library, the Harold Washington Library downtown, has a long-term exhibit there, where you see the pictures and you put on headphones and hear testimonies and interviews with victims of Jon Burge and learn about it. So, there's both this truth and reconciliation aspect and the financial payment aspect. I think that's a bare minimum, that's a starting point, and that there should be much more of this happening everywhere. Aryeh Bernstein: And, honestly, just to help on-ramp people into the concept of reparations, every time somebody is injured on the job or anytime somebody is victimized by police misconduct and the city or the state pays them a settlement, what do you think that is? That is reparations. We actually have this in place in a lot of places. We've never taken it on for slavery. Originally, there was the plan for every released slave to receive 40 acres and a mule, and then the North just allowed the South to get rid of that and the North laid over. Bryan Schwartzman: I think President Johnson squashed all that. Aryeh Bernstein: Yeah, because he was an opponent of Lincoln, even though he was his vice president. Bryan Schwartzman: So, I wanted to close by asking, as we look to the start of the Biden administration, on your justice work, on your work on reparations, are you hopeful? What are you looking forward in the next year, two years? Aryeh Bernstein: Well, I'm hopeful in the sense that harm reduction is really important. You got an explicitly white nationalist administration out of the White House, that's a huge deal. I voted for Biden, obviously; I hope that's obvious. I don't support Biden, I'm not optimistic about him, but Biden, for me, being in the movement for human rights, for environmental and human dignity and justice, Biden is an enemy that we can actually confront. Somebody like Joe Biden actually has to be somewhat responsive, he's dependent on us. The radical right thrives on our discontent. Biden's weakened by our discontent. So, I'm optimistic that our movement can continue to operate. I fundamentally don't have any reason to expect the policies of a Biden administration on their own would be that much different from the Obama or Clinton administrations. I mean Joe Biden was Bill Clinton's main foot soldier in the Senate for the 1994 crime bill, so I'm not very optimistic about Biden. However, he's accountable to us, and also he's not out to set up concentration camps for babies, and that's a big deal. Bryan Schwartzman: So, is there somewhere you draw optimism or hope from- Aryeh Bernstein: From the movement. I think that a lot of liberals start their political analysis with elected officials and don't know about movements, and I think a smart political analysis starts with people's movements, understands what people's movements are doing, and finds elected officials who are accountable to them and learns how to flip them. You've seen the left, the world of community organizing has been really buoyed, not just in the last four years, but going back further, the left has been ascendant in ways that I think it hasn't been really since the FBI assaulted it so heavily in the late 60s and 70s. And that's why I draw optimism from that. Aryeh Bernstein: And I think that sometimes that translates into elected officials. Six of the 50 members of the Chicago City Council are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, five of them came into office in our last election last year, that's a real shift of power. So, I think things like that are happening on local levels. I think you're seeing it in Congress. The group of progressive Democrats who are willing to say no to Nancy Pelosi's moderating influence and say, "We care about a Green New Deal and we don't think that that's radical, that's just basic, as a starting point," that group is growing, and the party has to deal with that, the country has to deal with that, and I think that gives me a lot of optimism. Aryeh Bernstein: And my continuing ongoing relationship with studying Torah. Studying Torah, doing mitzvot gives me optimism, not optimism that things will be okay, but that they can be. There is wisdom in the world, there is justice in the world, from our Torah through the prophets, Hazal, our Talmudic rabbis, up to today, we have traditions in which we can resist tyrannical suppression of truth and favoring of exploitation, we can resist that and actually proliferate truth, understanding and justice. Our Torah can continue to be a wellspring of goading and inspiration to us, as it is to me. Bryan Schwartzman: Rabbi Bernstein, thank you so much for your time, this was a fascinating discussion, we covered a lot of ground. Aryeh Bernstein: It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. If people want to read the longer version of the article, thanks for excerpting it on Evolve. Just search The Torah Case for Reparations, it's on Medium. The Eli talk you mentioned, look for Eli Talks on YouTube, or in My Jewish Learning, for The Torah of Police Accountability, I believe that video is called. And follow the work, go to the Avodah YouTube page, you'll see other videos and other similar social justice Torah teaching. Bryan Schwartzman: And we'll definitely provide links to all that on the show notes on the website. Aryeh Bernstein: Fantastic. Bryan Schwartzman: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein about his Evolve essay, The Torah Case for Reparations: A Jewish View. That essay was adapted from a longer Medium essay, which we've also linked to, so be sure to check that out. So, what did you think of today's episode? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about meaningful conversations, and that includes you. Send me your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you have. You can reach me directly at my real email address, BSchwartzman@ReconsctructingJudaism.org. And we'll be back next month with an all new episode. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song, Ilu Finu, is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. The show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and I'll see you next time.