TIA Weekly Blog

D'var Torah from Friday, June 30, 2023

I know many of us are preparing for a holiday weekend celebrating America with BBQ’s and fireworks.  As we should.  

And at the same time, we are reading decisions by the United States Supreme Court announced this week that seem to turn programs and ethics of American equality on their head.  In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard - the Supreme Court ended Affirmative Action.  Universities will no longer be able to take proactive steps to diversify their student body.  Another decision announced this week was 303 Creative v. Elenis.  In this case the court decided that a business can refuse service to someone based on their beliefs about that person.  The case was about a web-designer, whose company is open to the public, refusing to serve same-sex couples.  But one might imagine that someone could now say that my business, open to the public, will only be open to people who agree with me, who look like me, who pray like me.  

So as we come to celebrate the Fourth of July - a day when the entirety of our country - no matter your religion, your race or your sexuality - comes together. We are also watching our country continue to create barriers that will prevent people - because of race, religion and sexuality from studying together, working together and generally co-existing.  

I subscribe to the American Jewish Archives Journal.  A wonderful journal that shares the history and often the stories of influential Jewish Americans.  

I opened it up this week with the hopes of sharing a piece of American Jewish history in light of the American holiday and here is what I landed on.  

The 1927 Memorial Day Address of Robert S. Marx.

Robert Marx was born in 1889 in Cincinnati.  He attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati - where he was the captain of the football team and a leading member of the debate team.  In 1910 he passed the Ohio State bar exam, but shortly thereafter he, like many of his peers, served in the American Armed Forces in World War I.  He was severely injured and in fact he was reported to have been killed.  But he in fact survived.  Marx was awarded the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Cross and the Verdun Medal for bravery and valor in battle.  When he returned from the war, Marx focused his efforts on creating Disabled American Veterans organization that remains today and he eventually became a judge on Ohio’s superior court.   

This is all to say that this young Jewish Ohioan from a century ago was strong physically and mentally.  And our country honored him for these traits.  

But what I find more important are the way that this Jewish American leader approached his country and defended his minority status.  

During his time as a trial lawyer in the 1920’s, Marx was known for having some flair in the courtroom.  During a trial involving a Jewish client, an antisemitic comment was made.  When Marx had the opportunity to address the jury, he dramatically took off his shirt, pointed to his scars and said . . . “nobody asked in battle if I was a Jew or a gentile”.  The jury was said to be in tears when he finished speaking.  

In his Memorial Day speech in 1927 he used a similar tactic. 

Throughout the length and breadth of this land on this Memorial Day, there will be parades of fast-thinning ranks of soldiers who served in the Civil War . . . the Spanish-American War and their youthful comrades of the World War.  And along the streets where these parades pass there will be many a sad and many a proud mother.  And many a Jewish mother.  

It seems that one of Judge Robert Marx’s tactics in speaking as a Jewish American leader was to remind his fellow Americans that diversity is not a threat to who they are - it is who they are.  

In his speech he makes sure to point out that Jewish Americans disproportionately joined the military and disproportionately served in the infantry, despite antisemitic tropes that Jews avoided combat.  

Toward the conclusion of his speech he paints two clear images.  The first is directed at how we see the diversity of America. 

If you want to know the full story of the part played by the American Jew in the World War, you must visit the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in northern France.  Above the grave of every Christian soldier there is the cross of Jesus, and above the grave of every Jewish soldier there is the Star of David.  By, my friends, the glory is that above them all is the Stars and Stripes, and the symbol of American liberty.  

The second story, the one that brought the audience to stand in applause, was a message that one might think reaches back to his days as the captain of a football team. 

After we visited the cemeteries in France, we returned to Paris where we were invited to the Arch of Triumph to place an American flag over the grave of the Unknown French soldier who lies buried under the arch.  As we prepared for the ceremony we were told that civilians are never permitted to march beneath the Arch of Triumph.  It is reserved for victorious armies returning from battle.  So when the ceremony ended and we were standing under the arch we did not know what to do.  Our commander turned to Marshall Foch, former French head of the Allied Supreme Command, and said ‘where do we go now, do we go back, turn around, to the place where we have come?”  Quick as a flash, Foch answered in four words; “Americans never turn back.”  

Marx closes the speech on this notion saying: 

The question before this nation is whether we are going back the way we have come; whether we are going back to the days of religious bigotry and intolerance; whether we are going back to the days of Klu Kluxism . . . or whether we are going on to realize the great ideals of American liberty, of American justice, of American tolerance, for which this country was founded. . . . although our progress may be slow, I believe there is only one answer:  American’s never turn back.

As we enter this weekend - with such contrast.  On the one hand the headlines in the paper are reminding us how we are divided.  How Americans do not tolerate each other or see each other as equals in this land of liberty and justice.  On the other hand - we will hear the songs and see the colors that remind us of our unity and of our most deeply held American values.  Values like justice and liberty and freedom.  

As we enter this weekend of contrasts - I hope a little bit of Judge Robert Marx is in our ear reminding us to speak up and remind people that Jewish Americans - just like African Americans and Gay Americans have earned every bit of being fully equal in the eyes of our country as anyone else.  That the stars and stripes are intended to fly above ALL of us.  And when we feel that equality is being attacked, that bigotry is being amplified in our courts, in our colleges and in our wedding cakes . . . that our job is to keep pushing forward because we are not a people who will ever tolerate turning back to the worst of our history.  

Shabbat Shalom