I’ve always appreciated “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” the British comedy series that delivers skits of surreal humor. As you watch, you know the sketches are packed with a form of humor grounded in incongruity, nonsequiturs, irrational or absurd situations and other intentional violations of causal reasoning — resulting in events and behaviors that are obviously illogical and often harmful to people.
Unfortunately, I found myself the unwilling live audience of an American version of this surreal circus — centered on Jew-hatred — when I attended the San Diego County Human Relations Commission meeting on Sept. 19.
I will take a moment and define two terms so we can better understand what occurred in that room, in America’s Finest City, during those nearly four hours.
The word antisemitism was created to soften the ugliness of acts and words of hatred, oppression and discrimination against Jews. There are no Semite people, but there is, in the field of linguistics, Semitic languages. The term “antisemite” was coined in Germany in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr in his pamphlet “The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism” to refer to the anti-Jewish manifestations of the period and to give Jew-hatred (which was called “judenhass”) a more scientific sounding name to better market his pamphlet.
Yes, he made up a word. We use “antisemitism” today. However, I call it what it is: Jew-hatred.
Yiddish is a German dialect of the Hebrew language and has a wonderful word for what I witnessed: meshugas or mishegoss. It means insanity, craziness, lunacy, senseless behavior or activity.
This word aptly fit the performance in that hearing room as commissioners talked over one another, squabbled about Robert’s Rules of Order and, most of all, used yet another meeting to avoid appointing a Jewish clergywoman, Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El San Diego, to the commission.
It has been doing so for a few years, yet its commissioners include clergy from the other two Abrahamic faiths that developed from Judaism — Islam and Christianity. On July 28, one commissioner who rejected a vote on the rabbi’s nomination felt comfortable enough to make a blatant Jew-hatred statement in which he voiced a common lie about Jews — claiming that the rabbi cannot be on the commission because according to the lie rabbis teach Jewish children to murder people.
When a slight protest was made, he doubled down in his mendacity and insisted his lie was true. Then the July meeting continued.
But now, onto our September absurdity. As the clock ticked, I could hear composer John Phillip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” playing jauntily with all its pomp and circumstance as it does in the opening and closing of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” programs.
As in the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch, they employed lots of circular verbiage to avoid doing the right thing. Back and forth they went, doing everything they could to not allow Jewish clergy on the commission. Yes, that’s right, the entire panel of commissioners are mostly Christian (including clergy) along with three Muslims (including clergy) and consistently for years have refused to allow a rabbi to be on the commission that is supposed to represent ALL of our community in San Diego.
The sunset came and went, the hours ticked by and after 20 minutes of public comment, they took a vote on the rabbi’s nomination and most abstained. I suspected that was because they did not want to go on the record voting against the Jewish rabbi.
But an abstaining vote is the same as a “no” and it is on the record. Then they tried to kick the chair off the commission (with a vote of no confidence) after she forced them to act on the nomination and take a vote. There was the brief debate over whether Robert’s Rules of Order were being correctly followed.
The Dead Parrot sketch is about bureaucracy taking precedence over logic and humanity, and we could all see it in the evening’s proceedings.
When I spoke during public comment time. I reminded the commissioners of the tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repairing/healing the world”) that the Jewish community does in San Diego. If it were not for the Jewish community, there would not be safe parking lots for homeless San Diego families, veterans, elderly and single folks who need to sleep and do it safely, in their cars.
The charity of the Jewish community provides those folks security, meals, transition to housing, access to showers and caseworkers to help them get stable. I reminded them that Jewish Family Service feeds tens of thousands of people through the food bank; and who kicked into action and put together programs to help Middle Eastern refugees, immigrants and refugees from our southern borders to get housing, clothes, blankets toiletries, food, job placement help and more.
I reminded them that it is the Jewish community in San Diego that has helped some of the people on the commission and people they know, to create a sustainable and meaningful life after war and terror. San Diego has been mightily blessed by the Jewish community and would be sorely hurting if such faith-based care and compassion stopped.
I stated the fact that I am an African American Jewish woman. I saw the commissioners who looked down at the floor and one whose mouth dropped open. I know what discrimination, racism and oppression look like in all their forms because I live 24/7 in my skin and gender.
I live in the intersection, and I see very clearly from micro-aggression to macro-aggression, the things that people do and the institutional structures they use, like that commission meeting, to practice their hatred. My life is about building bridges at that intersection, and with that love I am leading an initiative to center African American Jews and unite the Black Christian community and Jewish community.
Hey, commissioners. THAT is human relations.
Reflecting on that night, one thought repeatedly goes around in my head:
Ain’t nobody got time for that mishegoss!
The madness must end, and the right thing must be done. Now. San Diego is not America’s Finest City as reflected in the Human Relations Commission. What is happening is disgraceful and disunifying. We see the emperor is naked. We see the hoods are off.
We see the faces of hate and that they are on the Human Relations Commission. This commission, operating like this, is not serving me and other members of the public. It is bureaucracy out of control. There is no more time to entertain this absurd and evil Jew-hatred on the commission for one more meeting. We are out of time.
It is damaging to us as a city, county, state, country and human race. We already KNOW better, so we must DO better. The commission knows what justice and peace looks like so why is it not modeling it? The commission as it stands perpetuates hatred and hatred leads to violence. Hate crimes are on the rise in San Diego. Why welcome more hatred?
Due to this reprehensible, indefensible behavior, I see one course of appropriate action: The San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which oversees the Human Relations Commission, must act immediately.
The Human Relations Commission must be disbanded. It should have been disbanded on July 28. No meeting should have continued that night when that malodorous Jew-hatred was vomited from that former commissioner’s mouth. He resigned with protestation that his vile hatred was justified.
The commission should only be reconstituted after establishing that there will be seats for Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy. Beyond that, there should be at least one layperson from those three faiths. That diversifies the commission, provides equity and practices inclusion. The commission must also reflect the atheists and agnostics, women, the LGBT+ community, the African American community and the Latino community.
Finally, there must be a procedure in place to immediately disqualify and remove anyone on the commission who utters the profanity of racism and other forms of discrimination. Human Relations Commission meetings must not be allowed to proceed when humanity is dishonored.
Barrett Holman Leak of Mission Valley is a children’s author, resilience coach, community organizer, nonprofit leader and former professional journalist. She holds degrees in theology, cultural encounters and psychology, mass communication and French. She speaks her native English, Danish and French and studied biblical Hebrew and classical Greek.