Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

Zach Banner has it right, ‘Change your heart . . . and let’s all uplift each other’

Is it really so difficult to affirm that all lives matter?

Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle Zach Banner, who is black, put it a lot more beautifully and poetically when he responded to the anti-Semitic tweets of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson. Banner said:

“We can’t preach equality but in result we’re just trying to flip the script and change the hierarchy . . . Change your heart, put your arm around people, and let’s all uplift each other.”

Uplift each other.

It’s the universal love we all need, even as specific injustices require rectification.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove writes that Banner recently described his horror at the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting of 2018. The important work of Black Lives Matter, Banner said, cannot come by stepping on the backs of other people or by vilifying Jews.

Seventy years earlier in Pittsburgh, the rabbi reminds us, Jackie Robinson, the first black in the Major Leagues, laid down a perfect bunt and then collided with first baseman Hank Greenberg, who had long suffered his own extensive harassment as a Jew in the Majors.

The next inning Greenberg was walked and, arriving at first base, asked Robinson if he had been hurt in the earlier collision. Robinson said he hadn’t, whereupon Greenberg said to Robinson, “Don’t pay any attention to these guys who are trying to make it hard for you. Stick in there. You’re doing fine. Keep up your chin up.”

Robinson was deeply moved by Greenberg, who was praised in the African-American press — just as now we praise Zach Banner in the American Jewish press.

Groups that have been subjected to persecution or bias should be allies, not opponents. The way forward is to see clearly. In his 1963 address at the National Conference on Religion and Race, Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “To think of man in terms of white, black or yellow is more than an error. It is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul.”

By the way, Jackson seems to be backing off his praise of Hitler and other ridiculous tweets. It is easy to dismiss such ravings, but they affect hundreds of thousands of followers. Mr. Jackson, take a leaf from Mr. Banner.

Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply