From the Jew to the Black American
By Jonathan Bluestein

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Our peoples have both suffered, each with its own unique misery. Slavery had been a most terrible affliction upon black people for hundreds of years, and the Holocaust genocide was but a few years long. However, the Jews in fact were the serial victims of mass segregation, discrimination and murder for thousands of years.

I must admit, that my people, the Jews, began their path as a nation as genocidal conquerors, in Biblical times. It took only a few generations for karma to catch up with us, and it unleashed its rightful wrath upon us for the next few thousand years, as we were exiled from our land, were bullied and slaughtered endlessly by jealous neighbours, and finally experienced the Holocaust, before gaining our redemption.

We Jews have earned and learned our lesson, but we only truly thrived after we were willing to forgive. Or, as we Israeli Jews like to say: "Forgive, but not forget". That is, knowing and teaching the lessons of history, but not becoming a slave to your past.

Nowadays I have German friends. I have visited Germany four times. Few are Jews who still hold grudges against the Germans. The majority of Germans living today, had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and would want nothing to do with it. No White American living today had anything to do with Slavery, and few of them would want anything to do with it. There are still German antisemites and Nazis, and there are many more racist and bigoted Americans. So what? Bad people will always exist. At best we may opt to reduce their numbers with good education and a virtuous society.

Since the Holocaust, the Jews have been thriving everywhere, famously so. But the Black American men and women, many of you are still downtrodden and beat down. There are evil, malevolent people who act to make life difficult for you with laws and policies, just as everywhere there are folks threatening to kill all the Jews (and trying), or claiming that I and my kin somehow rule the world to the detriment of all other humans. These problems have to be dealt with. But true transformation comes from within, and before we mend the world, we have to fix ourselves.

This is why I call upon my human brothers and sisters, Black American men and women, to let go of the spirit of strife and the strong emotions of resentment and entitlement over the harsh and bitter crimes of the past, so that a brighter future could be manifested for your communities. You shall not yield a great measure of prosperity by blaming and demanding too much of others. Be the nobler people, for only the strong can offer true empathy and absolution. With hate and vengeance, you continue to entrench yourselves in the inferior position, to your detriment and to the delight of the petty ignorants who dislike you for the colour of your skin. Be inspired by what the Jews were able to achieve, and remember that such feats and progress would not have been possible for us, were we to still bicker and point fingers at the likes of the Germans, or other groups who treated us in bad faith.

These things I write of here, are not an exercise in comparing collective torment, or an attempt to propose that the Jews are in any way superior to any other person, especially not the good folks whom I am addressing. Rather, it is a sincere plea from the remnant of an ancient people, aspiring to convey the painful morals of his ancestry, stories written in blood and tears, so that others could benefit from such important lessons.