Bending The Arc toward Justice after Trauma
Reflections on Martin Luther King Day in the Wake of Colleyville
“We may debate over the origin of evil, but only the person victimized with a superficial optimism will debate over its reality. Evil is with us as a stark, grim, and colossal reality.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1956.
Martin Luther King reacted to the moment when the Israelites witnessed the Egyptians dead on the seashore, a moment read in this past Saturday’s Torah portion, by expressing a belief in the inevitability of evil. We need not look to the Bible, though, to establish the reality of evil, he said. These words feel deeply resonant to me in light of the events in Colleyville this past Sunday. By reading King’s remarks about the Egyptians drowning on the seashore in dialogue with the events of this weekend can offer wisdom for people of faith in responding to this inevitability in a trauma-informed way that advances justice, rather than further divides.
It would be easy to focus on the armed man at Congregation Beth Israel, who chose to target a synagogue. It seems that his hateful actions are the immediate cause of so much suffering. Yet King reminds us: “no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being.” The story of the Red Sea, he says, symbolizes “the death of inhuman oppression.” How, then, do we shift the focus towards the way evil functions on a societal level–antisemitism, racism, white supremacy–especially when so many of us feel the reverberations of Saturday’s trauma? If we want to effectively respond to the inevitability of evil in our world, we must look at what connects these individual acts of violence in houses of worship across all faiths.
The Israelites witnessed the death of their oppressors having just fled hundreds of years of suffering and slavery in Egypt. While Rashi and other medieval Biblical commentators read the physical evidence of their safety in the form of Egyptian soldiers drowning as a relief to the Israelites, I have to imagine that witnessing mass death would compound the trauma many of them experienced in Egypt. Yet right after this moment comes the Song of the Sea, in which the Israelites praise God for their redemption. How were the Israelites able to separate out the miracle from the destruction itself after being on the receiving end of violence for so long?
This is where the leadership of Moses–who led the Israelites in song–comes in. How could people who had experienced violence themselves all their lives while enslaved see violence, even if it was for their own liberation, as something in which to rejoice? It took Moses, who had been one degree removed from the experience of slavery, growing up in the halls of power as Pharaoh’s adopted grandson, to lead them. Moses helped the Israelites process their fear and respond with faith, showing that the events of the Exodus--even the most complicated--were, in fact, miraculous.
Psychologist Bessel A. van der Kolk teaches that people who are traumatized continue to organize their lives “as if the trauma were still going on--unchanged and immutable--as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.” In leading the Israelites in song, Moses helped the Israelites realize the trauma was behind them. Moses offers a different way of responding to God’s power, or, what Rabbinic pastor and spiritual guide Estelle Frankel would call a “new coping mechanism.” Frankel highlights how these coping mechanisms become “strengths we might never have come by otherwise.” Through song, Moses empowered the Israelites to begin to see their lives as changed. The Israelites respond to God’s physical strength with a new type of spiritual resilience. In Egypt, the Israelites cried out to God. Now, having been liberated from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, they could sing.
Like Moses, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker helped lead his people safely out from the narrow place. Though he himself is most proximate to the trauma, he has set an example that I urge us to follow in the days and weeks ahead. Rabbi Cytron-Walker welcomed the man who ultimately took him hostage into his synagogue because he thought he needed shelter. He has been in deep relationships with leaders of other faiths in his community for years. He has, as I know from lobbying for immigration justice with him and his students on Capitol Hill in 2019, understood the importance of systemic change.
In the wake of Colleyville, many of us are also dealing with trauma, though the particulars of our situations differ. Who among us might be too close to the suffering to know the way through? Who are the people who can help us? And where are the moments in which we, like Moses, are just enough removed from suffering that we can help others unlock their own songs of liberation?
In the days to come, there will be continued calls for higher walls and for more police as a reaction to the hostage situation in Colleyville. We must be attuned to our trauma, being gentle with ourselves when it comes up, knowing when we can help others and when we ourselves need help. We must ensure that our painful experiences move us to build longer bridges, not taller walls. In the words of King may the “Red Sea in history…carry the forces of goodness to victory.”