Between Rebel & Ashkenazi: Reflecting on My "Racist" Roots

Here’s a riddle: The mascot of my high school was a confederate soldier, our sport’s teams were called The Rebels, and the confederate flag was often featured on our school letter headings and yearbooks. So where did I grow up?

Deep south? Civil War border state?

Nope – Southern California.

It really is quite puzzling. How could such a thing sneak underneath the fervently inclusive California radar?

To tell you the truth, I never gave much thought to my school identity, outside of it being cool to be encouraged to be rebellious in a kosher way. Which probably prodded my choice to join the football team. You know, ra-ra-sisboom-ba, we’ll show them yankees on the other side of town who are the real men! All the while I, the lone Jew on the team, would somehow believe that my Jewish spunk would only gain from it.

Yet I was not at peace. The way they’d chant in the huddles “kill-kill-KILL!” would curdle my blood. Perhaps that was more about football than rebelhood, but it felt at odds with the liberal ethics at the heart of our education.

To be sure, I was never taught how racial tension had played a formative role in shaping the character of the United States. I did know that the confederates had defended the institution of slavery and that antipathy between blacks and whites, similar to the sickness of antisemitism, had occasionally flared up down there, and to a much lesser degree throughout the country, including my town. But all that appeared as the scourge of individuals and small groups; nothing systemic. I certainly never imagined that the confederate trappings of a high school mascot had any bigoted implications. It was just a quirky, American cultural thing. As apparently the founders of this high school, in 1964, also thought.

The school is called Quartz Hill High, for the name of the tiny little town (5,000 plus, in those days) within which it’s nestled. This town was adjacent to mine, Lancaster, which was larger but still a pueblo (around 40,000). Shortly after I left, in 1979, the whole region began to expand, in leaps and bounds, becoming of late a 150,000 substantial spot on the map. But back then it was really a hick town. The wider region, known as the Antelope Valley, is located within the south-western part of the Mojave Desert, which straddles the north-eastern edges of L.A. county. My father worked at the famous Edwards air force base out there, but many of the residents had come for agricultural work, ranching and cheap housing.

That is, the demographics of this school had always been on the conservative end of the California spectrum. Still – Rebels?? Confederate soldier?? How in the world could they not know this would conjure up political tension?

According to the numerous articles presently flying around the net on this topic (for starters: Quartz Hill High School drops 'Rebel' mascot - New York Post), due to the school’s post-Floyd decision to purge themselves of any possible associations with racism, the school was founded through a bureaucratic struggle with local authorities who stubbornly questioned the need for another high school in the region, considering it a break-away venture. The idea of dubbing the school as The Home of The Rebels thus totally made sense. The mascot suggestion of “Johnny Rebel” respectively clicked, and when a perky confederate soldier was presented as a spirited way for representing ole Johnny – the ball got rolling.

During my years there, we embraced ole Johnny. My mother was actually the chair of the foreign language department, for decades, and my three older siblings attended the school – giving me ample reason to believe in Johnny’s cause as that of normative, homegrown pride. Me and one sister even had the honor of being Senior Class presidents. In my case, this required not only adding hype to our rebel identity but to address a major Christian convocation for our graduation, with everyone knowing full well I was Jewish. You see, no one took very seriously the history of these institutions. What was important was here and now inclusivity.

I’ve seen some articles which decry the fact that QHHS had an annual “Slave Day,” which was all about selling virtual teen slaves to one another as part of the homecoming fundraise drive. What I remember is that it was a completely voluntary activity that was charged with hilarious adolescent romance in that it was usually the opposite gender that would “buy” the slaves and then proceed to dress them up in ridiculous clothes, insist they carry the master’s books and shine his or her shoes. I, myself, was one of those slaves (and fetched a nice price, I’ll have you know). And here’s the thing: There were plenty of blacks who would buy whites.

It was great fun.

Then I grew up.

I pursued my Jewish heritage, relentlessly. I would become Orthodox, marry, and move to Israel. She, like I, was from obviously Ashkenazi (Jewish western European) stock. The fit seemed so natural. I mean not just us, as people, but us as Ashkenazis. While neither of us would ever consciously think of rejecting a marital option due to a different hue of Jewish ethnicity, still – after being raised within the depths of melting pot America, something deeply resonated about building a family with a fellow Ashkenazi.

Some twenty years later, after we had made our way into an Israeli hassidic community which was like 95% Ashkenazi, it was time to help find a marriage partner for our oldest son. Because our family stood out by our coming from non-religious backgrounds, we were often presented with options off the beaten track. I was told, on more than a few occasions, with a disarming chuckle, that the only reason this wonderful girl is not being hotly pursued by “normal” families is because there’s a Sephardi (Middle Eastern) element. Sometimes it was only the grandparents who had any connection to Sephardi culture. “It’s not rational,” the shadchanim (matchmakers) would unabashedly emphasize, “but our community is kind of racist. For YOU, however, you don’t need to limit yourself that way.”

The word racist was actually used, with a self-deprecatory tone. They obviously didn’t mean it in any classic sense of put-down and discrimination. They simply felt more comfortable with families who come from similar ethnic backgrounds. As it worked out, while we did consider some non-Ashkenazi families, all of my children ended up marrying totally Ashkenazi thoroughbreds. Which just felt right.

But IS it?

With all this post-Floyd talk of ridding enlightened society of any and all vestiges of bigoted thinking, I can’t help but wonder if there’s some of that embedded within my subconscious. Am I a rebel with an Ashkenazi cause? Do I harbor any notions of religious supremacy in my being a hassid?

Sadly, I’ve picked up a certain persecution-envy by those who have become anti-racist warriors. They want to have their low-lifes to persecute! All them ugly, non-woke perpetrators of racist history!! Well, that’s a pendulum swing of which I want no part. We don’t need to substitute one devil for another. But I do think there’s work to be done to understand why we choose to populate our inner circles with those who seem most familiar. Is familiarity really a virtue? Could it be that fear of the other is a driving force?

*

Abraham is the beloved patriarch of many religions. He’s definitely at the root of mine. No, he was not Ashkenazi! But like the rest of the civilized world at that time, he had slaves. Shhh – saying that too loud might cause a rampage against the bible!

In all seriousness, Abraham cannot fit snugly into any one camp. On one hand, he phenomenally embraced people of all stripes and creeds, as we learn (Gen. 18): “He saw and he ran towards them (…) Please wash your feet and recline under the tree; I will bring bread…,” about which ancient Jewish commentary tells us that while these were lowly, nomadic idolaters, this was Abraham’s way of greeting all human beings. On the other hand, he insisted that everyone accept the reality of one G-d and no other and could be quite aggressive about it. His entire religious career began, after all, by smashing the idolatrous statues of his own father!

So which is it – was Abraham a moral warrior of the left or the right?

An answer comes through the story of his marital search for Isaac, his son (Gen. 24). The holy patriarch definitely did not want to consider the local population, the Canaanites. Moreover, he had a thing about the bible’s first matchmaking adventure taking place within the family. Thus he said to his chief slave, Eliezer: “Do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanite, (… only) to my land and to my kindred shall you go and take a wife for my son.” I.e. make the arduous weeks-long trek back to Mesopotamia for such a mission. Isaac deserves no less.

The really interesting thing is that Eliezer was from Canaanite stock and while he had secretly harbored thoughts of offering his own daughter to Isaac, he now had to swallow that. It’s almost as if the master wanted to sear into the servant’s soul that no matter how beloved he may be to him as an individual, his people remain in a different class.

And yet we learn that upon completing his mission, with flying colors, Eliezer is freed from servitude and his daughter becomes an eligible candidate for joining the emerging Hebrew nation (Breishit Rabba 59:9; Rashy on Gen. 24:39). So while Rebecca is nevertheless chosen, we’re obviously meant to learn something from this process of de-racism. I believe it’s the following:

Kinship is a supreme value. Sometimes that’s confused with cultural or racial bias, but at its root it’s just about working from the inside-out; with what we know best first. And so we see that the ultimate criterion for this match was not about the young lady’s lineage, but her character. Rebecca’s outstanding loving-kindness and respect for the other paralleled Abraham’s ethics, and thus sealed the deal. “The servant ran towards her and said, ‘let me sip, please, a little water from your jug.’ She said (to the servant), ‘drink, my lord,’ and she hurried and lowered her jug (…) and she said ‘I will draw even for your camels until they have finished drinking.’”

The Canaanites, in contrast, were not known for that trait. Actually, their thing was the opposite. Whereas Abraham tried to intellectually shake up his idolatrous father, Canaan raped his righteous one (Noah; see commentaries on Gen. 9:22). And yet these inherited traits are not impervious to change. Thus we see that once Eliezer the Canaanite proved that he too was animated by kindness in the way he passionately praised Rebecca’s character – voila, the barriers between him and the Hebrews melt.

So where does that leave me in reflection on my rebel past? Does it resolve the puzzle of how super liberal California could have allowed a half century of racist trappings to influence her youth (there are actually six other Southern Cal secondary schools who’ve used a Rebel, at one point or another, for their mascot!)?

I think so.

Once upon a time, people had different notions of dignity. The average southern citizen may not have been as racially sensitive as people are today, but they were not coarse nor crooked. Yes, the awful institution of slavery way too often brought that out in people and respectively needed to be eliminated, but this was no Pharoetic Egypt. There was no institutionalized murder and torture. To the contrary, deep religious faith, honor and valor characterized much of the confederate culture and in many cases those held in slavery embraced that religion. Thus the idea of emulating the spirit of a confederate soldier was not so foreign to California idealism after all. Just like the idea of owning a slave until he’d prove his ethical mettle was not at odds with supremely kind Abraham.

“Your people, they are all righteous,” the prophet reminds us (Isaiah 60:21). This means that every individual must be considered potentially righteous. No matter the skin color. No matter the political affiliation. No matter the uniform. Slaves and soldiers alike all have their redeemable sides.

Thus there’s no reason to condemn Johnny Rebel. He was not created as an anti-unionist and certainly not as a racist. He was actually a caricature of those attitudes. And lest anyone doubt that the school had no racial agendas, a few years ago he had a face lift meant to shed all direct connections to the confederate army.

Johnny in his last incarnation

But it wasn’t enough. Johnny may be cool, but his name isn’t. In the words of the official school statement last month about their decision to drop him: “This unique moment in our school history will be the catalyst to create a more unifying, inclusive culture for the future generations of students.” Alright. They’re shooting for something completely neutral. Of course they’ll never find it, but they have all the right in the world to keep trying. All I worry about is that they might do so without respect for the many healthy and robust aspects of their past.

Perhaps the school can dedicate a little mascot memorial, along with Slave Day, with appropriate explanations. Perhaps they want to re-create their mascot a third time, now in farming overalls and dub him Johnny Rugged. Either way, ole Johnny and the student body which celebrated him for half a century deserve an honorable transition.

And remember: ’78 rules!

Y Y Bar-Chaiim

A.K.A. Stephen Dashiff

July 2020