Amy Schiller

ASSIGNED READINGS

Required Books (all other readings on Blackboard) W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power Adolph Reed Jr., Stirrings in the Jug Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power

CLASS SCHEDULE

1/30       Course intro, syllabus, policies In-Class Readings: Coverage of black voters’ role in 2017 Alabama Senate Race James Baldwin, “The White Problem,” The Cross of Redemption (1964)

2/1 Rogers M. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America” Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Chapter 5, “A Kind of Revolution”

2/6 Robert G. Parkinson, “Did A Fear of Slave Revolts Drive American Independence” The New York Times, "Iroquois Constitution: A Forerunner to Colonists' Democratic Principles James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, The Federalist Papers, #10, 15, 39, 51

2/8 Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia” Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, pp. viii-ix and 2-9 Short Paper Assignment Handed Out

2/13   Judge Roger Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class, Chapter 1, “The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New Womanhood”

2/15 Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” “Various Phases of AntiSlavery,” “To My Old Master, Thomas Auld” Short Paper Due

2/20 NO CLASS - MONDAY SCHEDULE

2/22 Ida B. Wells, A Red Record, Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 10 U.S. Constitution Amendments 13, 14, and 15 ("Reconstruction Amendments”)

2/27 - NO CLASS Watch Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th (2016) on Netflix (access TBD in class)

3/1 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, Preface-Part II

3/6 DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, III-VI

3/8 DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, VII-X, Afterthought

3/13 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Chapter 1 excerpt, pp. 20-40 Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Chapters 1-2 and 7-8 Short Essay Assigned

3/15 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, Chapter 2, pp. 17-39 Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, pp. 1-18, 223-225, 242-252

3/20 Judge Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter, Chapter XV, “Dress Rehearsal for the 60s,” pp. 261-276

3/22 James Baldwin, “We Can Change the Country,” The Cross of Redemption Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, pages 47-59, 82-99

3/27   Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, “Letter from A Birmingham City Jail” Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement” Fannie Lou Hamer, “Speech Before the 1964 Democratic National Committee Convention Credentials Committee”

3/29 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, “White Power" and “Black Power” pp. 2-56

3/30-4/8 SPRING BREAK

4/10 Adolph Reed Jr., Stirrings in the Jug, Chapter 3, ‘The Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraints” Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, “The Myth of Coalitions,” pp. 58-84 Short Essay Due

4/12 Shirley Chisolm, 1972 Presidential Campaign Announcement Frederick Harris, The Price of the Ticket, pp. 3-18 Reed Jr., Stirrings in the Jug, Chapter 4, “Sources of Demobilization in the New Black Political Regime”

4/17 Rafael J. Sonenshein, “The Prospect of Multiracial Coalitions: Lessons from America’s Three Largest Cities” In class: Eyes on the Prize

4/19 Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, Chapter 7, “From Protest to Politics, The Demise of Second Reconstruction, (1976-1982),” pages tba Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, pp. 40-58 Take-home midterm handed out

4/24 Jesse Jackson, Address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention Charles P. Henry, “Jesse Jackson and the Decline of Liberalism in Presidential Politics” Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, Chapter 8, ”Reaction Black Society and Politics During Reagan Conservatism, 1982-1990,” pages tba

4/26 In class: Confirmation, HBO Alexander, The New Jim Crow, pp. 60-96 Lena Williams, “In a 90's Quest for Black Identity, Intense Doubts and Disagreements” Jonathan Chait, “Bill Clinton, O.J. Simpson, Clarence Thomas, and the Politics of 1990s Racial Backlash” Midterms Due, Final Paper Topics and Assignment Handed Out

5/1   Harris, The Price of the Ticket, Chapter 5, “Wink, Nod, Vote” Rayvon Fouché, “The Wretched of The Gulf: Racism, Technological Dramas, and Black Politics of Technology”

5/3 David Covin, “Is Obama's House our House? Changing the Guard” Charles P. Henry, “Is Barack Obama the End of White Politics?” The Black Scholar, “Barack Obama and the Continuum of Black Politics”

5/8 Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power, “Notes from the Second Year/American Girl” OR "Notes from the Eighth Year/My President Was Black” Frederick Harris, “The Price of A Black President,” Movement for Black Lives, Platform

5/10 Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power, “Epilogue/The First White President” Linda Martin Alcoff, The Future of Whiteness, Introduction

I am, admittedly, not in the habit of reading the holiday Torah portion in advance. As I read the story of Hagar and Ishmael in shul on Thursday, the first day of Rosh Hashana, there appeared to me a reading of that story more topical and urgent than any other — and also more universal and evergreen.

For the story of Hagar and Ishmael is, above all else, a story of deportation.

Genesis 21:9 has our foremother, Sarah, insisting that Abraham “cast out” Hagar, the servant of her household and surrogate childbearer of Ishmael, “for the child of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

That statement cuts me to the quick. Three verses earlier, Sarah is rejoicing and a great feast is held in honor of Isaac’s birth, a moment of abundance and blessing. Yet this feeling does not last long in the text before Ishmael’s presence feels like a threat — specifically, an illegitimate claim on Abraham’s resources. Sarah’s insistence that Hagar and Ishmael be cast out for the sake of her son Isaac’s inheritance has the same vicious hostility of people who speak of undocumented immigrants “draining the system,” claiming welfare and health care that “rightfully” belongs to citizens, the “legitimate” children. This is a script that seems to only amplify the more it is refuted. Those who might be called undocumented become “illegals,” “criminals,” an abstract class of grifters. Their humanity is obscured by projections of their laziness and greed. Hagar, too, becomes an abstract symbol of illegitimacy. Sarah no longer refers to her by name, only by her status, that of “slave-woman.”

This turnaround is scary when we think of how Ishmael came to be for the very sake of Abraham and the need for his household to contain an heir. Ishmael too is defined by his role and his parentage. He came into the world because he was needed. The moment he and his mother appear to stop “contributing” to the household, they become dependents, and furthermore, threats. Ishmael too, is a child of Abraham, yet reduced to his household function.

So too, do the undocumented come to make contributions. They are, whether we like it or not, asked here, demanded even, to fulfill the needs of our household. And yet the idea lingers, that they will take more than they give. That they will claim what is not rightfully theirs. That their presence is a concession on our part. Since we need them, we must keep “their” opportunities for abusing that need under control.

Even more searing, the description of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, the wilderness of Beer-sheva, where she “wanders,” desperate and so, so alone, and finally as their skein of water runs dry, hides her son under a bush so she does not have to watch him die. “Sitting afar, she bursts into tears.”

In my hometown of Cleveland, a woman, Leonor Garcia, has taken sanctuary at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, just before her scheduled deportation to Mexico, which would separate her from her nineteen-year-old and three-year-old daughters. As she remained in the church, Immigration and Customs Enforcement pounded on the door of the house where her two children live, frightening them even as they were made aware that Garcia was residing in sanctuary elsewhere. Leonor had to witness her children’s fear from a distance, helpless against their intimidation. How many mothers are stuck wandering in a desert somewhere on the southern border? How many have to choose between watching their children die, and not being able to watch their children die, so great is their helplessness and grief?

Given that we read it on Rosh Hashana, what does this story actually offer to us about forgiveness? Forgiveness seems in pretty short supply here. Sure, God comforts Hagar (but opens in oblivious douchebro style with “What troubles you, Hagar?” like, “HOW ABOUT THAT BANISHMENT INTO STARVATION AND LONELINESS YOU ARRANGED FOR ME AND MY CHILD? THAT’S BEEN A LITTLE TROUBLING.”) Anyway, God summons a well, ensures that the twosome are taken care of in the desert, Ishmael eventually sires a great nation, ok fine. But these are palliative measures, happening well after the fact. There is no forgiveness in this story because there is no reckoning with what was truly *wrong.* Hagar and Ishmael present a most challenging opportunity for forgiveness: how do we deal with children, with families, who we think are not supposed to be here? Whose presence feels like a mistake?

Because when Sarah looks at Hagar and Ishmael, she sees a mistake. She sees things that are not as they should be. She sees something that has gone wrong.

And she’s right.

Something very much did go wrong.

It was wrong that Sarah could not conceive until her old age. It was wrong that she had to suffer so many years of feeling like a failure, of unmet longing, of desperate compromises.

It was wrong that Hagar’s will - her womb, her parenting - had to be subordinated to the demands of her mistress and the household. It is wrong that Hagar did not have her own domain, children that belonged to her and her spouse alone. It is wrong that she had to live a half-life.

There is very much a mistake at the center of this story. A heartbreaking, mostly blameless, searingly painful mistake.

And Sarah and Abraham’s choice — one sanctioned by God, who insists that Abraham set aside his distress and follow the orders of his wife — is to try and nullify the evidence of that mistake.

Again - Sarah reduces Hagar to her function as slave-woman. She is no longer a person, she is all but erased. Hagar is sent away to the wilderness. No other people are there to shelter her, to comfort her. Hagar no longer has a place in the world, nothing to validate or support her existence, she is a practically a ghost. All this is Sarah’s intent. To cast out the slave-woman and her son, and to move forward as if they never existed. As if they never had to exist.

As if her failure never required their existence.

As if Sarah had never failed.

How do we deal with the mistakes that dwell in the households of our souls?

I’m hard on Sarah, it’s true. This is an ugly episode for her. But my heart breaks for her too, for wouldn’t we all like to banish our mistakes, our painful histories, to the desert? Wouldn’t we all like to nullify their existence, especially when we finally do achieve our greatest dreams?

But Hagars and Ishmaels live among us. They live in our communities. Perhaps they are, in some way, a mistake. It is not they who are the mistake, though. The mistake is the desperation of their lives. The misery and fear of their original homes, the conditions so awful that they must flee or die. Either way, they too live half-lives, full of never-ending anxiety. Even as they dwell in our household they know they only get to stay as long as they do whatever we need. And stay on good behavior.

Hagars and Ishmaels dwell, too, in the households of our souls.

The remainders of our mistakes live inside us. We might like to project all of our anger, jealousy, sadness, onto some concrete being, and send it away.

But that story only ends in more tears. The saddest, loneliest, most desperate tears.

And, spoiler alert, the household of Abraham and Sarah has a lot more trauma ahead after this incident. Banishing Hagar does not exactly bring the utopian reconciliation that Sarah envisions.

What would happen if, instead, we saw our mistakes, the humans who represent all the brokenness, the wrongness of our world, and kept them as part of our households. What would happen if we found a way to let our most brilliant triumphs live alongside our greatest disappointments? For that is Isaac and Ishmael, to Sarah. And at the start of this parsha, they are playing together. Sarah’s sadness, the mistake of this son that is not hers, exists right alongside the miracle of her child’s existence. And for a moment, all are still people. No one is crying. And there is enough for everyone.

May we resist the temptation to nullify the humanity of others in an attempt to save ourselves. May we all find ways to see the people we depend on as fellow humans, rather than vessels of our frustrations. May we find ways to let our mistakes live with us, in laughter, abundance, and peace.

trigger warning: discusses Milo Y., sexual abuse.

I will attempt to bracket this commentary as best I can. I realize it's risky to choose this particular incident for commentary - but I'm also a professor who happens to be teaching some relevant Foucault tomorrow, and if I can't push some critical boundaries, who can? Brackets:1. A 13-year-old is a child, full stop.2. Sexual contact between an adult and a child is abuse, full stop. 3. Milo Yiannopoulos is a despicable person and I am glad to see his platform collapsing around him.4. Every other statement by Yiannopoulos is about getting him more attention at the expense of the safety and dignity of other human beings. 5. None of what I write below is an attempt to redeem his comments or him as a person.

<deep breath>

Some of the takes I've seen about Milo Y's alleged defense of sex between thirteen-year-old boys and adult men say his comments "resurrected a dangerous myth about homosexuality and pedophilia." There's certainly historical precedent for that ugly smear. (To be clear, his statements are exaggerated for effect, the Breitbart podcast co-hosts are horrified as he says them, and he later condemns pedophilia.) But it also says quite a bit about the institutions who were until now willing to tolerate his open racism, his threats to "out" trans and undocumented students on their campuses, his vicious online harassment campaigns against women, and more, who are now canceling his book deal and speaking engagements. I don't just mean that it reveals their pathetically low standards for human conduct, so long as they're getting money or publicity. That's obvious.

I mean that it's telling that what are perhaps Milo's least disgusting and most truthful comments are bringing him down.

Here's an activity to blow your minds: Attribute the following three quotes to Yiannopoulos, Dan Savage, and James Baldwin. "I had sex with a woman when I was 15 years old. She helped me figure out what I wasn't. I had sex with a man when I was 16 years old. He helped me figure out who I was. I was and remain grateful for both experiences—and I've written about both experiences, which they may or may not be grateful for. Yes, I was under the age of consent both times but I didn't feel violated."

“In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationships — the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable sort of rock.”

"...I was, in peculiar truth, a very lucky boy. Shortly after I turned sixteen, a Harlem racketeer, a man of about thirty-eight, fell in love with me, and I will be grateful to that man until the day I die. I showed him all my poetry, because I had no one else in Harlem to show it to, and even now, I sometimes wonder what on earth his friends could have been thinking, confronted with stingy-brimmed, mustachioed, razor-toting Poppa and skinny, popeyed Me when he walked me (rarely) into various shady joints, I drinking ginger ale, he drinking brandy. I think I was supposed to be his nephew, some nonsense like that, though he was Spanish and Irish, with curly black hair. But I knew that he was showing me off and wanted his friends to be happy for him -- which, indeed, if the way they treated me can be taken as a barometer, they were."

I posted on Twitter and Facebook yesterday that television should now consist only of shows about working class people, both white and POC. Right now I’d be happy to pre-empt all shows about white people living in nice houses for repeat airings of Roseanne (it happens to be a much funnier show than, say, Modern Family). I realized that maybe putting some actual characters’ faces to the idea of who is a Trump supporter, or a third-party voters, or, most importantly, a NON VOTER in 2016, might be an important exercise for preparing our coalition strategy.

So here are my best guesses for what’s going on with our beloved characters from Gilmore Girls, Friday Night Lights, and (just for fun) The West Wing, to be expanded as suggestions come in.

Friday Night Lights:

If Tyra voted, she voted for Trump. Assuming she heard about the “grab em by the pussy” tape (NOT a given), she was turned off from Trump, as a survivor of sexual assault. But Tyra also really dislikes Hillary, and the rest of the political establishment. If she didn’t hear about Trump’s assaults, she may well have voted for him. “Drain the swamp” worked for her.

Lorraine (Matt Saracen’s grandma) would have voted for Trump. She would have, guys. The woman watched TV news all freakin day.

Riggins did not vote. Vince did not vote. Smash only voted because his mom got on his case about it and drove him to the polls.

Mac McGill voted for Trump. Mr. and Mrs. McCoy voted for Trump. OK that’s easy enough to dismiss, they were the most outwardly defensive of white male privilege. But Jason Street’s parents, Joanne and Mitch, also voted for Trump. Tyra’s mother, Angela, voted for Trump. (In case you are wondering, i did not have to look up any of these characters’ names). Not sure yet about Buddy Garrity; my gut says Gary Johnson.

Want to complicate this even more? I don’t even think Coach Taylor was all that thrilled about voting for Clinton. Lack of trust. Maybe she struck him as disingenuous. The whole system seems pretty rotten to Coach.

And Julie voted for Jill Stein.

Gilmore Girls:

Dean voted for Trump.

Yes. He did. Breathe. Think about it. Imagine someone in an economically precarious position, a perfect target for the propaganda hose the Trump campaign pointed at people. He didn’t talk about it much, but yes. Dean voted for Trump, and maybe Lindsey did too.

Think about Dean every time you picture Trump voters as some alien masses of hatred.

Kirk voted for Gary Johnson.

Luke voted for Bernie in the primary and did not vote in the general.

Luke is not a Bernie bro. He didn’t trust Hillary’s connections with Wall Street. He liked Bernie because he related to his blunt talk. Lorelai has lectured him many time about how both of these positions reflect misogynistic double standards. But Luke likes Elizabeth Warren and has voted for women at state and local levels. He really felt that he was evaluating the candidates on their merits.

And what of our central heroines? Lorelai is CONSTANTLY posting ranty, identity-politics-heavy articles on Facebook, in between bouts of sobbing and eating junk food with Sookie. In bed. She will do this for the next six months. Real helpful.

Emily has set a meeting with a development officer from the Committee to Protect Journalists and is setting up an endowed fund for them. She will never speak a word of this. She believes in the free press - and she is scared for Rory. After a pep talk with Logan (yes I’m Team Logan), Rory has recommitted herself to reporting as best as she can on the new administration.

West Wing:

It’s not so much that anyone on WW didn’t vote for Clinton, because even Cliff Calley got on board. Maybe the Florida governor whose ass Jed Bartlet beat in his reelection campaign. But the point is, the only people with jobs right now are:

CJ, who is trying to figure out what to do with the mega-foundation’s money (hint: not highways in the developing world)

Danny, who probably broke some major story about Trump’s foundation or taxes or legal troubles

Ainsley Hayes is the in-universe Megyn Kelly

Bey is ______ all the time

And all the time, Bey is ________

Bey is feminist 

black 

Southern 

artist

country 

slaying

and capitalist

all the time.

and all the time

Bey is feminist

black

Southern

artist

country

slaying

and capitalist.

I am not here to diminish Formation. It is important. She IS that bitch; she DID cause all this conversation. The video is smelling-salts worthy. Others more intimate with the signifiers than me have heralded its black pride: its reclamation of “Negro” and “Bama,” celebration of her ancestral roots, Blue Ivy’s Afro and hot sauce (Crystal, I presume?), Bey’s own hairdos, and her sexuality that demands Red Lobster-worthy performance (this maneuver validates my choice to entirely stop keeping kosher). G O D G A V E T H E Q U E E N.

And that’s j u s t the personal aesthetic/tastes of Bey herself, although I won’t presume but can imagine that black people do not ever need to be told that the personal is already political, HELLO. As an artist, this is a culmination of her artistic collaborations with her video directors: the grainier, washed-out cinematography calls back to 7/11, the black Southern city setting is all over Yonce, the parasols and velvet bodysuits in a portrait-festooned mansion came up in Haunted, the dark-lipped regalness kicks off Partition. Damn, even the car doing doughnuts in the parking lot goes back to Bonnie and Clyde if you really want to dig deep. I’ll add only that the pale-yellow dresses and parasols must come from the same root as the “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” section of Alvin Ailey Dance Company’s “Revelations” costumes, one of my favorite pieces of art ever.

As for the explicitly political statements, the ones that show up more in the Formation video than the song itself - here I run into some trouble. Because Beyonce’s blackness - as major and dazzling as it is - is every bit as capitalist as her feminism. 

And I’m gonna quote myself here (because this is my blog and I just might be a Jewish Bill Gates in the making). A year ago I wrote this, on Beyonce’s feminism and its haters: How are we STILL just talking about aesthetics and representation and feelings when there is serious MONEY and IMPERIAL VIOLENCE on the line? 

Now - I’m chastened in this go-round, because aesthetics and representation are NOT “just” anything, as all the elation over her performance of blackness shows. 

AND.

The VISUAL PACKAGE of Formation is being hailed as Beyonce’s debut, or maybe ascension, as a political activist, particularly when viewed alongside Tidal’s (Jay-Z’s streaming service) $1.5 M donation to Black Lives Matter, and her Twitter-following DeRay McKesson, the BLM activist running for mayor of Baltimore. Harry Belafonte better be sending them a gift basket or something - he was on the Knowles-Carters’ case for years about not being more politically vocal for black people. (Maybe they should send HIM one, too.)

[ed: I thought this piece from the Daily Beast got closest to parsing Beyonce’s relative riskiness/political edge, even though I disagree with his conclusion:  Her support of Barack Obama, her seizing of the word “feminist”: these are political acts, but acts that are, truly, popularity boosters for the world’s biggest pop star, whose mission tends to be more on uniting—preferably around love of her—then being divisive or alienating. With her middle fingers in the air, Beyoncé is done with that.]

Certainly the VIDEO has all the stuff people already called out: the New Orleans police car, on which B gives a black power salut, and then DROWNS at the end, the brief shot of “Stop Shooting Us” graffiti, the hoodie-wearing boy dancing in front of the riot-gear-clad police, causing THEM to put up THEIR hands. Righteousness, urgency, solidarity. All right there, in more than plain sight. It’s coming at you so fast it might as well be slapping your face into woke-ness. 

So why, again, as in her feminism - where she “runs the world,” where she is “the boss,” where less determined women “bow down” to her - are Beyonce’s WORDS still an echo of individualistic triumph? Not that she doesn’t deserve her victory laps, all day. But I feel like we are giving Bey credit and attention for an activism that she does not fully live up to, because it is ultimately still ABOUT her, specifically, her working harder and earning more money than everyone else. Her advice always gets back to that tired American Dream myth, with a very gimlet-voiced beat-em-at-their-own-game inflection.

I see it, I want it

I dream it, I work hard

I grind 'til I own it

I. I. I. 

I’ll end where Bey does: I don’t agree that the best revenge for, say, police shooting black people, is “your paper.” I know that sentence is written by someone with the privilege of a few more generations of accumulated paper and even being permitted to FREELY PURSUE said paper. Still -- can’t everybody be Madame CJ Walker,  and with all her training of black female entrepreneurs and donations to the anti-lynching fund (sound familiar?), she didn’t singlehanded end Jim Crow with all HER paper.

I went to protest tonight with @NYCRiseUp4Tamir - and left too late to catch up to the several-hundred-person crowd.

Instead I ended up taking a solitary walk, in the sleet and fog and cold, back across the Brooklyn Bridge. At first, I felt embarrassed that I did not make sure my presence was included among those standing up against this gross injustice. But my journey ended up feeling more poignant than just logistical regret. I felt alone and sad, in a way that let me really experience my grief at Tamir's death. Trudging through the nasty weather, with the fog and the dark obscuring the path ahead, felt penitent, in a way that was appropriate for the responsibility I feel for coexisting with the inhumane systems of my country.

Walking across the bridge tonight felt spooky, with that backlit, half-mast American flag, the glaring neon WATCHTOWER sign (paging F. Scott Fitzgerald), the wind-churned East River waters, the slippery slush-crusted planks I walked upon. I felt like at any moment my umbrella, my purse, my whole body, could have fallen through or been tossed by the wind, it was that kind of dark and stormy night that transcends the cliche, back to its original creepiness. The lights of the Empire State Building and its neighbors looked decadent, carnivalesque. Somehow, that too feels a propos. We have fallen so far. We have erased the value of so many lives, it feels like we've descended into a void of humanity. Apocalypse. A pox, our lapse.

Originally Delivered at Shir HaMaalot Minyan, Nov. 13/Rosh Chodesh Kislev 5776

This week’s Torah portion is Toledot.

And my friends, this parsha is not good for the Jews. 

I say that facetiously, but this parsha actually makes me very angry. It is one of the most shameful and disturbing pieces of our narrative, all the more so because the commentary from our rabbis rationalizes the events with a self-righteous callousness that I find all too familiar.  Interpretations of this parsha and its events echo contemporary attempts to attribute acts of abuse and exploitation as characterological failures on the parts of their victims, rationalizations that usually happen when we are the ones who benefit from those very acts.

But let me back up and tell you the plotline first. This is the parsha where Jacob steals his older brother Esau’s brithright, first by exploiting an opportunity and then by outright deception. Or, to use Marx’s phrasing, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.

Genesis 25 finds a starving Esau relinquishing his birthright to his brother in exchange for a meal (25:29-34.) Esau comes in from a hard day hunting and working in the fields, so faint he cannot even ask for Jacob’s red-lentil stew by name, calling it Adom Ha’Adom, that “red-red” as in “that good-good.”

Jacob’s immediate response to his brother in such distress was to drive the harshest possible bargain: sell me this day your birthright - meaning, sell to me, the right to inherit our father’s property, to be head of the family, to exercise authority over you as the patriarch, and to be the family liaison who communicates directly with Hashem.

Esau says, “I am going to die. What use do I have for a birthright?” He is desperate. The urgency of his hunger overwhelms his ability to think clearly. Yet Jacob doesn’t let up. He insists that Esau “swear to him this day” before he concedes to feed his starving brother the lentil porridge and bread. Esau’s oath of transferring birthright was as binding as any legal document today.

Later, in Chapter 27, Rebekah overhears Isaac asking Esau to hunt and prepare game meats before Isaac gives him the fatherly blessing, a last will and testament of sorts. Rebekah and Jacob conspire to have Jacob slaughter goats from the flock, prepare them as a meal, and pose as his brother by wearing the skins of those goats as his brother’s hirsuteness, all in order to fool his father who, crucially for this story, is blind. Jacob pulls off this caper - though Isaac harbors some suspicious as to whether the son claiming to be Esau is in fact him, Isaac is finally taken in by the smell of the goat skins, like the fields where his wild boy goes to work off his energy. Isaac gives Jacob a blessing that rightly belongs to Esau, of divine protection, prosperity, and power over his brothers and other nations of the earth.

Jacob, to me, does not come off well at all in this story. He appears manipulative, exploitative, a heartless trickster. It just doesn’t sit right knowing that one of the forefathers of the Jewish people could be so cruel to his own brother. A brother who is less cunning, and who ends up broken by his family’s betrayal. Esau’s pain upon realizing that both his birthright and his blessing have been taken from him, his feeling of abandonment, fear, isolation, breaks my heart.

He exclaims a “great and bitter cry,” the Torah says. ‘Have you no blessing for me?” A cry of desperate need, of being discarded, of having his claim to protection ripped out from under him. Do I count for nothing?

How many times in the last week have we heard that cry, throughout our lives but especially in the last weeks? How many times have we been told that the Jacobs of the world have their rights, which must be respected. Their rights to protection, at the expense of that of the Esaus of the world. Their right, for example, to dress up as Esau as a costume, to impersonate him for their own gain, without any reprisal. It’s a matter of “free speech” for Jacob, right? We tell Esau that to expect a blessing is to deny Jacob’s right to pursue it at any cost.

Yes, there are explanations in the Torah itself for this outcome. From their very conception, God says to Rebekah that the twins in her womb represent two nations, and the older will serve the younger. This fate seems so arbitrary that it requires some further elaboration. 

And that is where things get truly disturbing. 

The justifications for Jacob’s actions throughout rabbinic commentary are deeply troubling. First, the Gemara claims that Jacob did not take readily to deception, based on his protest to his mother that dressing up in goat skins would not fool his father. Yet, it is difficult to read this as an ethical objection, rather than a tactical one, as Jacob’s earlier behavior shows he had no compunction about exploiting his own family members’ weakness for his own gain.

Esau, on the other hand, is said to be cavalier about his birthright and ill-suited for the responsibility that it would entail. In this reading, Esau is the guy at the bodega buying cigarettes and a forty, someone who validates that the house of Jacob deserves prosperity and protection, because we would not waste our birthright in this way. 

But one explanation is perhaps worst of all. Rabbi Eleazar taught that Isaac’s blindness was actually caused by his looking at the wicked Esau.

Let me translate that for you:

“She provoked the officer.”

“He had no choice but to forcibly restrain her.”

“She probably said something he shouldn’t have, it’s just not on the cell-phone video.”

“He appeared to be a threat.”

By this logic, twelve year old Tamir Rice had the same wickedness, in his case the wickedness to have a toy gun and wave it around while playing by himself in a park near his home. It was his wickedness that caused the blindness of the police officer who shot him. Tamir himself caused the blindness that erased his identity as a young boy, a child, a son with his own claim to a birthright and a blessing.

How could Isaac, Avinu, our father

our great rabbis, our fathers,

our residential college master at Yale, our father,

How can they all be so cruel as to deny what all of their children are due? To blame Esau for their own blindness, to discard their children and then say that Jacob’s right to exploit their weaknesses trumps their right for justice?

How can our fathers all be so blind?

Often our job as readers and teachers of Torah is to uncover some secret redemptive lesson, some buried cosmic logic that validates for us that these actions are holy, divinely intended. We twist and dig and construct rationales because to read at face value sometimes means to see that our power has come at the expense of others. It has come from abuse and theft.

This week I ask that we not try to suss out the secret redemptive code. I ask that we not be blind as we read. That we see exactly what is written, that what happened is 

I’m not being glib. Of course, these are two of the most iconic symbols of power, both hugely popular cultural figures. Arguably, what we know of Beyonce is almost as much a work of fiction as Don Draper’s character.

Make no mistake, though: they are identical packagers of our most visceral aspirations, both doing so to sell soda pop. 

1. Look at the last scene of Mad Men, when Don transforms world peace and earnest self-discovery into the iconic “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” ad.

2. Watch Beyonce’s 2013 commercial that was part of her $50M deal with Pepsi.

"Embrace Your Past. But Live for Now.”

Those words are Don Draper’s entire character trajectory. They contain everything he bottled into that Coke ad. 

People really hate the fact that Steve Schwarzman, founder of private equity firm Blackstone and notorious spendthrift, has made a $150M donation to his alma mater, Yale. Even more egregious to the detractors is the fact that the donation will go towards a capital project to showcase the performing arts. The Yale Commons dining hall will be expanded and renamed the Schwarzman Center (more on that switch later) to "serve as an educational, social, and cultural hub,” with performances, exhibits, lectures, and more.

Now, I am full-throated in my leftist political believes. I believe in redistribution of both wealth and power. I support unions and public spending on social welfare. My counterparts in that political domain groaned at the news of Schwarzman’s gift. Richard Kim, Nation editor and Yale alum, tweeted that “Yale is THE LAST COMMUNITY ON EARTH to need a new performing arts center.” My own dissertation advisor, Corey Robin, called the gift, “today’s installment of class rage.” (He will probably loathe this response, but at least the obvious Arendtian and Nietzschean underpinnings will serve as proof that I did the assigned reading in his classes.)

Perhaps the most prominent critique came from Vox, an online magazine which I would hesitate to term “leftist,” since its mission is to use quantitative analysis, rather than ideology, to make political arguments. In fact, Dylan Matthews, the author of “For the love of God, rich people, stop giving ivy League colleges money,” is the same writer who penned a recent lengthy profile of the Open Philanthropy Project, an initiative to rank every possible charitable donation using “empirical research.” Matthews’ enthusiasm was unsurprising given how closely Open Philanthropy Project mirrors Vox’s sensibility that quantitative measurement can trump emotion, instinct and rhetoric. That lengthier piece also set up the denigration of gifts to the arts, with ethicist Peter Singer labeling such philanthropy “a waste.”

In this week’s article about the Yale gift, Matthews draws on research that he presumably did for the Open Philanthropy profile. Matthews also considers Schwarzman’s gift to be both materially wasteful and ethically bankrupt, when compared to other, more cost-effective methods of philanthropy. He makes a rather broad pivot from Ivy League decadence to bed nets for African children, although I suppose such extreme juxtaposition is precisely his point. Giving to Yale, in this framework, is outrageous given the huge chasm between the number of people who could benefit from such a gift, and the comparative urgency of their needs.

My friend Josh Rosenberg summarized the premise of Matthews’ article well: “the twin ideas that donations should go towards saving lives or drastically improving quality of life,” to which I would only add, “at the most cost-efficient ration possible.” 

To Matthews, Schwarzman’s gift is not philanthropy, it is emotional indulgence, in the same category of egomania as his sixtieth birthday party, estimated to have cost $3M. Therefore, the Yale gift doesn’t deserve the pretext that it represents any generosity towards others. According to Matthews, “this gift [merely] provides some emotional benefit to him.” To which I say...exactly. That’s precisely what philanthropy is and should be.

The problem with how Matthews, and many bona fide progressives, define philanthropy is the assumption that it is philanthropy’s purpose to fix material distribution and well-being. In fact, that is the (failed) responsibility of public policy, while philanthropy’s responsibility is the complete opposite.

The whole point of philanthropy is to populate the world with precisely the institutions and practices that aren’t otherwise viable in the market or in government. That can mean symphonies or after-school programs, classics departments or cat shelters; the point is that philanthropy is where we can reveal our deepest emotions and attachments and not have to justify them, as we do in all other sectors, on a grid of “return on investment.” 

Instead, we’re asking philanthropy to fix what our politics has utterly wrecked: access to higher education, alleviation of debt, options for economic mobility and basic labor rights. In those areas, we are obligated to intervene, forcefully, but through political channels and institutions. Once we put value judgments on what constitutes worthwhile philanthropy, especially based on allegedly objective measures of effectiveness, we eliminate the one previous space for alternative frameworks for the exchange of resources.

But, one might ask, haven’t we already mixed charity with politics with it being tax-deductible? Matthews argues that Schwarzman’s gift is not philanthropy in part to propose that it not qualify for that tax deduction. This argument echoes Robert Reich’s* idea that only philanthropic giving directed to the poor would be eligible for a tax deduction. Never mind that Reich’s distinction would be hard to uphold on a consistent basis - the real issue is the assumption, again, that philanthropy should substitute for public provisions and concern itself primarily with material well-being. So why not cancel ALL charitable deductions? That’s right, the entire tax code provision. Let’s fight political battles about basic quality of life in our democratic institutions, let’s use the revenue gained by eliminating charitable tax deductions to create robust social safety nets. Then philanthropy can operate as freely as it deserves - a space of quixotic, irrational passions, rewarding even deeper commitments that emerge in the absence of any tax incentive. On those grounds, Steve Schwarzman’s real offense, the sheer size of his fortune, could be confronted with greater directness.

Furthermore, might this approach of separating philanthropy from material redistribution, and returning that objective to the realm of politics, actually save what is politically useful about philanthropy? Is philanthropy directed to the arts, or elite universities, or houses of worship, or wildlife conservation, politically significant?

One answer comes from Ray Cockrum, a Tennessee lottery winner donating a substantial portion of his $115M windfall (after taxes, we should note) to theater companies producing large-scale experimental works. When asked why his philanthropy did not include anti-poverty initiatives, Cockrum responded,

“I think society is in trouble when culture is ignored...People can be duped by the first political wind that blows their way. They can be persuaded to vote against their own self-interest. Culture is what enriches us all. We are in trouble when the arts are not supported, when there is no seed of change.”

Without theater and other art forms largely supported by philanthropy, we may lose a horizon of critical thought.** It is precisely such economically unviable institutions that present counternormative ways of thinking, so crucial for being influential political actors.

So art, even art that appears elite and esoteric, may indeed have a political utility. But I also want to offer that emotional rationales for financial decisions have their own political valence that the left should embrace. 

Consider that in explaining his gift, Schwarzman described his college freshman self as “very lonely...I did not know one person when I went [into Yale Commons.” When I read that I thought of Howard Lutnick, chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, who, in explaining his $25M gift to Haverford College described his alma mater as the place that “taught me how to be a person” and “was there for me” (his tuition was waived entirely after his father died his second week of school, leaving Howard an orphan.)

The key difference between Schwarzman and Lutnick, psychologically speaking, is that Schwarzman seems to carry his younger traumas in the forefront of his mind, considering that he still publicly talks about how Harvard made a mistake in rejecting his application (I so hope he asked the dean is he works on commission.) Schwarzman’s emotional motive seems to be about exorcising his younger, lost self by proclaiming himself King of Yale. Lutnick, on the other hand, has eschewed naming anything for himself, and by the accounts I’m familiar with, seemed to give from a more grounded emotional place of gratitude and love for deceased friends and family members. 

Now, to be so taken with the idea of rewarding the places that shaped donors like these men invites the response that these universities ultimately turned out rapacious capitalists, and to exhibit any care for their feelings indicates some form of Stockholm syndrome. Indeed, in my career as a fundraiser I have personally watched and been moved as financiers close to Lutnick’s (and a few close to Schwarzman’s) level of wealth, acknowledge that the world needs the worship, study, music, playgrounds, birds and trees that, unlike every other one of their decisions, are valuable unto themselves without any promise of concrete financial return. I think the ability to make that distinction is crucial to a gentler and more human world. A world that can resist the trend towards omnipresent quantification in which market viability is our only measure of worth.

There are, I grant, ways in which that emotional responsiveness can translate with greater humility. I wish Scharzman had been willing to fund the more modest renovations that Yale initially envisioned for the Commons, without turning it into a flashier project. I wish his familiarity with undergraduate loneliness led him to fund mental health services on campus, particularly for low-income students most likely to feel isolated. 

I’m also persuaded by Freddie deBoer’s account of universities building shiny empty buildings while ignoring basic capital needs like working toilets in the English building. I think it’s painfully ironic that the Yale Commons - a space held equally, in common - now is held by one person in particular. As do for so many institutions, I wish the Yale Institutional Advancement office had the courage to negotiate for a gift that would fill more urgent gaps.

But ultimately, criticizing gifts to the Ivy League, to the arts, and to arts at the Ivy League, either because they don’t resolve issues of material equity, or because they could be put to better use elsewhere in the Maszlow pyramid, totally misses the point of what philanthropy is supposed to do. It ignores the possibility that a fierce progressive political movement also needs philanthropy as a special form of resistance. After all, philanthropy means “love of humanity,” so let’s preserve philanthropy as an oasis of humanity, and use politics to protect humans beings.

*another former professor of mine!

Perhaps my #1 Pro Tip for writers covering fundraising (or anything, really): Don’t use a drug analogy if you’ve clearly never used drugs.

Specifically, don’t do what James LaRose does in his in-process book, Re-Imagining Philanthropy, and call feasibility studies “crack cocaine,” a drug analogy that fails to support any of his points of critique. (This is like the dad in 10 Things I Hate About You, referencing “Those Dawson’s River kids, sleeping in each other’s beds.”)

If you wanted to criticize the expense of feasibility studies, as well as the false sense of confidence they can engender, you’d refer to them as ACTUAL cocaine. If you wanted to refer to them as a gateway drug to the more hardcore substances, like long-term embedded campaign management consultants, you’d equate them with marijuana. Crack is both too cheap and too hard of a drug to fit the feasibility study scenario, therefore this title already is making me roll my eyes at LaRose’s clueless sensationalism.

But, as I would with my own dad, I will generously set aside pop culture obliviousness to see if he makes any valid points. Full disclosure, conducting feasibility studies used to be my full-time job.

Continuing his clumsy gateway drug analogy, LaRose points out in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that feasibility studies can pave the way for ongoing consulting partnerships once the campaign is underway. Citing conflict of interest, LaRose cautions against hiring the same consulting firm to both run your campaign and conduct your feasibility study. 

While I see his point about overselling campaign readiness to start collecting campaign management fees, it can also be a real advantage to have the same firm do both. Think about it: firms’ reputations are based on success rates. They’re not going to inflate a campaign goal if they think they’re eventually going to be hired to execute the campaign - it harms their credibility with the client and their reputation for success. I’d be much MORE concerned about a firm that only did studies and left the work of fundraising for another firm, with all kinds of caveats and minefields buried in the report for someone else to deal with.

Furthermore, it can be really useful to have the consultant who interviewed your donors participating in solicitation strategy conversations. She might be able to recall comments, body language, and other soft intel that might inform the approach, as opposed to a consultant who knows nothing about the donors or their personalities.

That all being said, to LaRose, feasibility studies are pointless anyway. According to LaRose, "Eighty percent of nonprofits don’t need to spend $25,000 to $50,000 to find out what they already know, that they aren’t ready [for a campaign].” 

Now, I hear this all the time. “Are we going to learn anything new from the study? I could go down our list of donors and tell you who’s going to give what.”

Yeah, you could. And you’d probably be 70-80% correct. Maybe that margin of 20% new information isn’t worth, in itself, $25-50K.

But here are the three reasons I tell people to do feasibility studies even though I agree that they’re often redundant to internal knowledge:

1. There are always surprises. You want to know if some middling annual donor is willing to consider a six-figure gift. You also want to know if your largest annual donor will absolutely not make a campaign gift. These have both happened to me. DO NOT make a gift pyramid, do not set a goal, do not even cast your gaze towards “Go” without scoping out potential upsets - which is where a confidential third party can be most useful.

2. Speaking of goals: When you need to go to your board, and then to your major potential donors, you want to have a rationale for your campaign goal. “Back of the envelope estimates” is not a rationale. “We talked to 70 potential donors and think we can raise X” IS a rationale. Transparency and due diligence go a long way in infusing credibility to your campaign.

3. Let your donors know what’s coming. As one of the Chronicle commenters put it, “the feasibility process itself it part of cultivation: it does bring people into a campaign early and allow them to own and shape the vision.” Once they meet with your consultant (or even once they get the letter requesting the meeting), they can start planning on their end knowing they’ll be asked for a gift within the next 18 months. If staff or leadership try for an ask off the bat, it might seem presumptuous.

Then again, #3 is a courtly approach of the old school. Fundraising, under this code, is sort of a tea ceremony, with sequenced rituals designed to show proper respect. 

Which leads me to a much better critique of feasibility studies than what LaRose has cooked up like so many rocks*. (Based on his critiques it sounds like he has a real axe to grind about consulting firms, despite presiding over one himself, which, according to his LinkedIn page, has offered feasibility studies since 1991.)

The real reason not to do a feasibility study is if you’re in a fast-moving field, your donors may not have or want to take the time, and your cultivation process may be too prolonged. If your donors work in tech, or if your field is about crisis intervention, or any other factor that suggest greater urgency, then you might explore faster, sharper ways of raising money than the highly methodical and diplomatic methods of long-term cultivation and third-party research.

But if you’re a more traditional nonprofit - a hospital, university, museum, etc. - your capital campaign is a very public, flagship moment. You absolutely must succeed, and you need information that can only come from private conversations (like so much of fundraising). Yes, studies are expensive. Yes, they often confirm things you initially intuited. But they signal the start of your quiet phase, turn up surprises, and solidify your campaign goal, all in one fell swoop. Doesn’t sound so whack to me.

I have 5 truly phenomenal yoga teachers, all now at Twisted Trunk Yoga in Soho, who have been in my life for years (Sara, Laura, Susanna, Dana, Vanessa. Also Andrea Frade is emerita on this list). Several friends of mine are also very strong new teachers. Then there's almost everyone else I've ever taken a class with, who should read this. These rules count triple for subs. 

1a. It's Not About You

Have you been incorporating a lot of twists into your practice lately? Maybe you recently mastered tricky inversion, or discovered an expansive variation?

That's great! Good for you!

However, this is an OPEN CLASS. I am (I'll just speak for myself but I believe I have the people with me) here to do my practice, NOT YOURS.

Before class, look at your sequences, and pull a Coco Chanel - remove one layer of difficulty. Think to yourself, is this a practice that meets my students where they're at? Or is this a practice for me?

I just experienced a class where every standing pose involved either a one-legged balance or a deep twist. You're a yoga teacher, not a bartender. Not everything needs to be shaken with a twist. There is PLENTY of challenge in most of the asanas, particularly if we're all still learning how to inhabit and transition between basic poses.

Want to build towards a big pose? No such thing as too much handstand prep. L-pose is pretty foolproof AND plenty challenging. Heck, Warrior Three is big time for a lot of us. Aardha Chandrasana was the bane of my existence until literally a week ago. Sorry, am I boring you? Oh well! It's NOT YOUR PRACTICE.

1b. Teach Your Students

Which brings me to part two of this rule: Maybe you had visions of a really kickass practice as you planned out this class. But if people are falling over in triangle pose, MAYBE take it down a notch! Perhaps instead of side crow, just have us try regular crow! NotSorry that doesn't match your perfectly planned theme! You might just have to...what's the word?...ADJUST.

Here's the other thing: You are in a position of great power. A dozen people have consented to do whatever you tell them to do for 90 minutes, without a lot of space to speak up or push back on your instructions. What you need to do with that soapbox is normalize and validate whatever we need to do to engage with the practice. This includes:

- Don't merely introduce but celebrate the use of props. You should emanate genuine appreciation and delight that I am using blocks. It means I have ownership over my practice (which, again, is not yours). 

- Sticking with basic poses long enough that I truly feel it's ok to remain in them, not just a stopover en route to the "real" pose.

- Spend a lot of time explaining setup for major poses. When you breeze through setup, it makes me feel like I should just slide right into these QUITE ADVANCED poses. Get granular, explain different techniques of getting into the pose, affirm again and again that even failed or stalled attempts are important methods of doing the pose.

- Pace rests generously in the practice - put them earlier than you might take them for yourself. This way, you build our trust that you understand how much we are challenging ourselves and you honor that effort instead of taking it for granted.

- End poses when the majority of people seem ready. Don't have us hold for "one more breath" because your machismo/a demands it. This only builds resentment towards you and self-consciousness within me. 

Tip: How do you know I'm starting to resent you? You've heard of hate-fucking, I'm here to tell you that hate-breathing is a thing.

2. The Asana is the Message

You can talk all the talk you want about sweetness/kindness/playfulness/forgiveness/you name it. 

But if you are too eager to up the variation ante, or if you are too focused on the outward performative manifestations of asanas than whether or not people are breathing, you are not communicating those principles.

You have to show that you get the practice, not just mouth the nice-sounding principles while otherwise communicating that you expect athletic dedication.

Just as the inner and outer body need to be connected, your words need to be manifested in how you instruct and guide our physical movements. Laugh about falling. 

3. Be Funny

Which brings me to my last substantive point. Personally, the more humor, especially self-deprecating humor, that you bring into the room, the more I connect with you as an authentic human who I trust to guide my body into a deeper connection with its capacities. Get in touch with your inner Hanuman. Self-seriousness (or oblivious chipperness) belies disconnection. We're all here to play and feel good about what we're allowing ourselves to do and feel. We all look like idiots, albeit sacred, glorious idiots.

4. FFS Let Us Do Savasana Already

Let's say you've led a gratuitously difficult practice with a saccharine demeanor, completely disconnected from the needs and presences of the students in class. Subsequently, it is AWFULLY presumptuous of you to say "we" are going to meditate for several minutes before savasana. 

Nah, friend, *you* can do what you feel, but honestly, a nice long savasana goes a long way in rebuilding good will. 

Say what you will about Chait, I'm inclined to side with someone who tells jagoff techies who want to take the world of ideas and turn it into data points for no reason other than their own machismo to go fuck themselves.