Exclusion & Elimination |
Exclusion In a
previous essay I discussed the Hina Ma Tov Umanayim
Shevet Achim Gam Yachad concept -
how good and beautiful it is when brothers hold hands.
Unfortunately too often the opposite occurs – divisiveness, back
biting, anger, hatred and the ultimate elimination.
Whether it is in a work setting, in a family, a school or even in the
synagogue, exclusion is a very painful process for the victim.
It occurs at both a conscious and unconscious level.
Marginalization is used. The
person is ostracized and treated with contempt. He/she feels like a non- person, someone to be loathed, to be
shunned to be ignored. Elimination
is the ultimate goal of the perpetrator(s) of
this social crime. (Ex
in Latin means “out of”;
“limen” means threshold.) It
evokes the metaphor of a house where one of those who lives is severed from the
rest of the family or group in that home and is literally kicked out or shoved
out the door into the street. To quote
the sociologist Kenneth Westhues: In
physiology elimination refers to the expulsion from the body of noxious
waste. Matter, if retained,
would cause disease and death. As
a bodily function, elimination is the process of pushing beyond the organism’s
threshold a residue from which all that is good has already been extracted.
In a social sense it means treating a human being like manure -
separated or ostracized from the group or from others. We see
and or read about lethal exclusion
almost daily by such examples as occurred in the Oklahoma killings, the
McDonald's Restaurant shootings by James Huberty in 1984, and the more recent murders committed by
Eric Rudolph. Looking at these
perpetrators, we find folk who were angry, lonely, felt abandoned, different and
compulsively felt they needed to get even with an unjust cruel world.
Timothy McVeigh had been abandoned by his mother, had not been able to
find an acceptable job, and was out of societiy's favor and norms. Huberty had
been fired/eliminated from his job, was full of anger and reacted accordingly.
This elimination caused him to have a social death which was followed by
revenge. All of these people felt no solace in this world, only anger
and the pressing urge for retaliation, which gave them the opportunity to avenge
themselves for all of the wrongdoings that they felt had been heaped upon them. We Jews
are very familiar with the term elimination and exclusion.
We were excluded in Nazi Germany bit by bit.
One of the early official signs was the order by the Hitler regime to
forbid kosher slaughtering, thus robbing our brethren of some essential
nourishment; next came many more stringent matters including disallowing our
children from attending public schools (since there were few Jewish schools in
Germany this meant traveling to other towns or not receiving an education). Then
came the boycotting of Jewish businesses, thus stopping our source of earning a
livelihood; not giving us ration stamps to buy food; also the prohibition
against permitting Jews to sit on park benches and ultimately eliminating us
completely by taking away all of our earthly goods and kicking us into cattle
cars until the final elimination of six million occurred. Our
Jewish brethren in this country are
not totally immune from exclusion from one another.
How do we manage that? First
of all most Jews live in upper middle class neighborhoods, thus leaving those
with little money to live a more isolated life in the city.
To attend synagogue is more difficult for them since they need
transportation to get them there. Secondly,
if they can get there, they feel ostracized by some since their clothing are not
as stylish as the other attendees and
they either feel embarrassed or are actually criticized or excluded by an
appreciable number of the attendees. They do not have professional jobs and thus
feel inferior to the “pedigreed” with their titles.
They may either feel
unwelcome or are made to feel that way since they are unable to afford the
membership or even the high holiday tickets to be admitted.
In order to be admitted for these holy days they must expose themselves
to “begging”, which makes their attendance repugnant to them. If they do own
a rusty old vehicle they are looked at with misgivings and gossip and they feel
or are made to feel outside of the group.
It is frequently the raised eyebrow, the unspoken word, the aloofness,
the comparison and the feeling of inferiority that permeates the very being of
the human being that even tries to fit in in order to be acceptable to those who
surround him. Since we
Jews are essentially a nonviolent group, those among our brethren who are
excluded eliminate themselves, withdrawing from
very painful exclusionary situations by becoming introverted
and depressed; dealing with outsiders i.e. non Jews; making little
or no attempts at inclusion, and always being strangers outside of the
threshold. Because of all this
there is little surprise at the large
number of intermarriages, at our diminishing census figures and ultimately at
the loss of our Jewish identity. As a people and as individuals we must make every sincere effort to practice inclusion, not exclusion, extinction and ultimately elimination. Lehitraot. Dr. Ursula A. Falk is a psychotherapist in private practice and the co-author, with Dr. Gerhard Falk, of Grandparents: A New Look at the Supporting Generation (publ. 2002) |