Today I, as Rabbi Lev B’esh said, I wish Jon Stewert were my rabbi. Because in the face of tragedy sometimes only silence works. Jokes, as Jon Stewert announced do not. I’ve got nothing,” he said. And then he stared at the camera. Rabbis all over the country threw out the sermons they were working on. We all feel the need to say something about Charleston.

I am sad. I am angry. And I have wrestled with what to say to you this morning.

There is something that is broken here in America. It is about how we welcome the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the most marginalized amongst us. It is how we think of the other. And in this country, it is wrong. After almost three centuries, it is still wrong. And we, those of us of white privilege of which I am lucky to be, need to own it and need to name it.

This is not just about Treyvon Martin or Michael Brown or Eric Garner. And there are nine new names to add to this growing list.

This is not just a story about Charleston or Baltimore or New York or Ferguson. It is about right here, right now.

Yesterday I signed a petition to remove the Confederate Flag from public spaces. It seemed easy, almost too easy. Some have argued that flying a Confederate flag is a symbol of their freedom of expression, guaranteed by the US Constitution. It seems to me it is too loaded a symbol. And I use that term guardedly. It is like yelling fire in a theatre and then actually starting one.

A recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll says that 49% of Americans believe the symbol is racist and 49% believe that it is southern pride.

So I asked a question after I signed. What do we do about the Confederate flag that hangs at a private home in South Elgin? Yes, there is one. And I doubt that it means southern pride. Then I asked more questions. Why do they fly it? What does it represent to them? And why after the events in Charleston is it still up?

There have been many pundits that have jumped in to tell us how to interpret the events of this week.

The “child” was just mentally ill. My own physician said that was appalled by that. It was an affront to her. She wanted me to convey this message clearly and strongly. Most mentally ill people do not become violent. Period. And while we need better mental health care and better access to it, in this case the underlying case is racism and hatred.

This child, older than Michael Brown, was given a gun for his 21^st birthday. 21 in this country is the age of majority. This was no child. And he knew what he was doing as he sat there calmly and calculatingly at the Bible Study on Wednesday night.

Others have argued that we need gun control. I, personally, would argue for that. The statistics are overwhelming that there are more incidents of gun violence here in this country than in any other similar country. That is an argument for another time.

But underlying this most recent tragedy was hatred. And racism. And fear. And that is the boil that we in this country need to own and lance. When I spoke with Traci O’Neil Ellis, one of our school board members, she said that no individual could do this alone. It is a community wide problem. A national problem. I believe she is right.

But I can only work as an individual and locally, very, very locally.

This is not a new phenomena. It goes back hundreds of years. We can talk about how the Declaration of Independence stalled because of a debate about slaves. Did the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mean all people or just white men? And this was not just a southern issue. In Chelmsford, MA, my previous hometown, in order to vote you needed to be a white, male, Christian, landowner. So had I lived there in at the town’s founding I would not have voted.

But I don’t want to talk about Philadelphia or Plymouth or Chelmsford. I want to talk about right here. Right now. When I first came to town here. Right here at CKI, there was a family who wanted to be a member or at least check us out. The mother, a black woman, had recently died and the Jewish father wanted to provide some structure for his kids. Someone here, no longer a member, told them they couldn’t join because the kids were….dare I even say it…mulato…a dated, pejorative word I hadn’t heard since the 60s meaning multiracial. This made no sense to me at the time because we have other multi-racial families. And we are proud of our diversity and we embrace it.

And lest you think that has been the only time I have heard the word here at CKI you would be wrong. What was going on here? In this case, it was the mother who wasn’t Jewish so the person was afraid that the children weren’t Jewish or wouldn’t become Jewish. Let me underscore that, the person who made the comment—not just to me but to the family—was afraid. Afraid of the other. Guess what, we never saw that family again at the time they probably needed us most.

We’ve gotten better through the years. But we are not perfect. Not yet.

Fear does powerful things. It prevents us from being who we are meant to be. When Baltimore erupted the news media talked about the thugs who were responsible for the looting. Make no mistake. Looting and arson are wrong. However, at the same time the kids in our religious school were reading a Choose Your Own Adventure story about coming to America. They were at the point in the book where they were deciding whether to continue a strike to improve working conditions for garment workers. The organizers of the strike who were preventing crossing the picket line were called in the book thugs and I wondered about the usage there and in the current media. Could they both be thugs?

The Jewish history in this country and the African American history in this country are linked. We have both been called thugs. We have both been marginalized people. Jews were at the vanguard of the Civil Rights movement and I am delighted that we have a strong partnership in this congregation with Second Baptist and with Martin Luther King jr. Celebration. Singing We Shall Overcome at Hemnes or here at CKI gives me goose bumps.

Some of you were concerned when I went to Ferguson. Would the rabbi get arrested? Would she get hurt? Why is she supporting those hoodlums? Yes, it was that word that was used that time. Can’t she just leave it alone? I don’t think I can.

I am not sure I ever explained why I went. I went because I have always gone to things like that, when I can. Simon and I have been members of the Southern Poverty Law Center since before we were married. They released a study this week saying that the average number of hate crimes EVERY year in this country is around 260,000. The FBI on the other hand tracks only 6000 for 2013 the last year the statistics are available. Why the discrepancy? Because many hate crimes do not get reported and then do not get prosecuted.

The glaring reality of Ferguson was not in the fact that a kid, remember, younger than the perpetrator in Charleston, got shot. Police officers are under pressure every single day. As a police chaplain I know that what they most want to do after their shift is go home. Black, white, Latino, Asian, they just want to get home to their families. And none of them ever want to draw a gun. But in the instant they feel they must, mistakes can be made.

The problem of what happened in Ferguson, unfortunately wasn’t that Michael Brown got shot. The problem was he lay on the cement for 4 hours and 32 minutes and no one came to his aid. The problem was that the mayor never was out in front of the story. The problem became an over militarized police force responded to a problem that spiraled out of control.

I went to Ferguson because I was asked to go. I went to Ferguson with the Chief of Police and the mayor, knowing I was going. I went to Ferguson because I wanted to be a witness. I went to Ferguson to deliver a message that there are other ways of policing. Because here in Elgin, the clergy, the police and the Mayor were already involved in a conversation about race and the police. We still are. Because I believe here in Elgin we have already found better ways of policing with the resident officer program, with the commitment of the police to prevent such things from happening here.

But Ferguson is not an isolated incident. We have seen it over and over again this year. And Charleston is no exception. We are at a cross roads again. And while Elgin is ahead of many communities, we are not perfect and something can happen here too. We are naïve if we think that is not the case. On Thursday morning the first call I made was to Pastor Nat Edmond at Second Baptist. How was he, I asked? He replied he was sick watching CNN News. I asked him whether there was going to be an Elgin response. He told me he sent an email to his staff reviewing security procedures. We each reviewed ours on the phone. Because we both know that a similar kind of thing could happen here, at either place, even if we are prepared. I promised that the Jewish community stood in solidarity and support with him and his community.

Make no mistake. This is a Jewish issue too. Not just because we are commanded to welcome the widow, the orphan and the stranger. But because if a black pastor and eight others can be attacked in a church during Bible study, we can be attacked too. Already we know that the perpetrator was a white supremacist. I imagine it will only be a matter of time until we hear that he hated Jews too.

In the Haggadah that Simon and I use at our home there is a famous quote:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemoller

It is our job as Jews to speak up. That is what I am doing. And while sometime silence is enough or words are enough, sometimes they are not. Sometimes it requires action. And that is the point.