‘Sacred Solidarity’ - Rev. Adam Slate

‘The Poem About Anti-Semitism’ by David Ebenbach

I’m going to write a poem about anti-Semitism, but
this one’s going to be acceptable. This poem about anti-Semitism
won’t take too much of your time or attention. It will skip
backward at least fifty years to discuss some things
we can all agree on. The images will be no louder than sepia.
There will be a little Holocaust in this poem—
maybe a pair of shoes, or something else you’ve seen
in a glass case. The idea is only to moisten your eyes
but not to ask you to spill over. Your name will not be in this poem.
Nothing now. You will not get tired of this poem
about anti-Semitism, and it won’t leave you angry. You won’t
want to stop this poem at the gates.
The goal of this poem about anti-Semitism is calm. It won’t say
the things. No, this poem will enter the room quietly, will
only open its mouth to mumble please and thank you
before it slips away again. This poem will work for you.
Tired people will carry their sepia suitcases
through the poem about anti-Semitism, and you’ll feel for them;
they were a long time ago.

Introduction

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Memorial Day as it is observed here in the UK, was originally conceived to remember victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Over the years it has grown to mark four other genocides since the Second World War: in Cambodia in the 1970s; Rwanda in 1994; Bosnia in 1995; and Darfur, western Sudan, ongoing since 2003.

Twenty years ago, the United Nations recognised Holocaust Remembrance Day as an international day of remembrance.

Remembering the Holocaust

The date chosen, January 27th, is the day in 1945 when the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

Most of us know that the Holocaust marks the killing of 6 million Jews by Germany’s Nazi government during the Second World War. In total, 20 million people were exterminated, including 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war; 1.8 million non-Jewish ethnic Poles; between a quarter and a half-million Romani, or Travellers; more than 300K Serb civilians; a quarter-million to 300K people with disabilities, including 10K children; tens of thousands of German political opponents and dissenters; German conscientious objectors; Black people; and gay and bisexual men and men accused of being gay or bisexual.

Due to the nature of Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is observed quietly, respectfully. The National Holocaust Memorial Day Trust calls for a national moment at 8pm for people to light memorial candles and buildings and other landmarks to be lit in purple. Local and national governmental agencies, civic groups, and schools may hold ceremonies.

Jews remember the Holocaust–what we call HaShoah, which in Hebrew means ‘the devastation’--in both public and personal ways throughout the year depending on things like the direct impact on our family. I celebrate Chanukah each year with a menorah from a German aunt who survived time in a concentration camp.

What is meaningful to me is that we not forget this singularly terrible moment in history when a country industrialised brutality, horror, and genocide as never before, as many around the world watched. I want us to learn from what we saw. I take the Jewish rallying cry ‘Never again’ seriously. Never again, for anyone.

Emboldening Acts of Hate

These days, Holocaust Memorial Day comes amidst a climate of growing religious intolerance. Religious crimes here are up three times over the past decade.

Jews and Muslims are particularly affected. In England and Wales, reported anti-Muslim hate crimes make up 45% of all religious hate crimes even though Muslims make up only 6.5% of the population. If that sounds bad, reported hate crimes against Jews are ten times higher per capita. They make up nearly 30% of all reported crimes even though Jews make up only 0.5% of the population. 

To put these in perspective, if you are Christian or report yourself to be non-religious, there is virtually no chance of you experiencing a religious-based hate crime.

The British organisation Tell MAMA–where MAMA stands for ‘Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks’--reports that religious hate crimes happen in ‘places of worship, public spaces, schools, workplaces, and private homes—and target both public figures and ordinary citizens.’ There are few if any safe spaces.

What is truly disturbing is that anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim violence can increase at times when these groups are particularly vulnerable. In the book Anti-Judaism by David Nirenberg, which tracks the causes and consequences of anti-Jewish sentiment throughout Western history, the author reports that during the Holocaust, ‘American citizens, asked to name the greatest threat to the United States in a series of polls taken… between 1939 and 1946 consistently chose the Jews over the Japanese or the Germans, with fear peaking in June of 1944, just as the Jewish population of Europe was close to fully exterminated.’ 

Tell MAMA reported an increase of 165% in incidents of anti-Muslim hatred–which is more than doubling–between 2022 and 2025. A time when a major news story was the genocidal attacks on predominantly Muslim Palestinians in Gaza, when tens of thousands of civilians had been killed and over 1000 mosques destroyed.

The group found that ‘what’s most alarming is [not the spike in hate crimes around this high-profile news event, but rather] the sustained baseline of prejudice, which the report attributes to factors such as online misinformation and disinformation, inflammatory public discourse, conspiracy theories, racialized and gendered stereotypes.’

I want to quote one more part of the report. It concludes that:

The rise in hate… has widespread implications for the cohesion and vitality of society as a whole. If unchecked, such behaviors risk normalizing intolerance, undermining efforts to cultivate inclusive, respectful communities, and eroding the social fabric. The persistence of these biases reflects broader societal dysfunctions, echoing the anxieties and prejudices of perpetrators while exposing weaknesses in the systems that fail to prevent such hatred; hatred [which] poses a threat not only to the targeted community but also to the democratic and inclusive values that sustain a healthy, thriving society.

Hatred and Fascism Today

A minister friend of mine reposted a message the other day from the Rev. Jim Foti of Minneapolis, giving an update about what has been happening with ICE agents there. He wrote:

Out-of-town friends may not understand what it’s like to have 3,000 federal agents rampaging through neighborhoods in search of non-white people to capture…

This is a siege, or an occupation. Our neighbors are not being arrested but rather abducted and disappeared… Schoolkids teargassed, parents vanished from their homes, an elderly U.S. citizen of Hmong heritage paraded outside in boxer shorts and Crocs after his front door was busted down.

Things like this are happening dozens of times a day, and it’s all on video. Many Minnesotans of color are not leaving the house because they know they may never come back.

Airplanes are the new boxcars: Some 2,000 detainees have been shipped out of our airport in shackles, and we know this… because there’s an ordinary Minnesotan with binoculars counting them. Many are now in camps where hunger and death are not unusual.

I have heard people wonder aloud what they might have done if they were alive during the Holocaust. What kind of resistance we might have put up, or how prophetically we might have spoken out about what was going on.

But we do not have to ask ourselves that question anymore, because this is happening right now in a country that has been one of the UK’s closest allies. The Rabbi Diane Tracht, who serves a Reform Jewish community in the US, is quoted as asking, ‘What did we learn from the Holocaust? We have to act and we have to resist. If I’m not going to act and resist now, then I shouldn’t call myself a rabbi and I can’t be a proud Jew.’

I asked this question of myself in 2017 when the Unite the Right rally brought Nazi flag-waving mobs to my hometown of Charlottesville Virginia; mobs carrying rifles, standing watch outside the synagogue, and chanting slogans like ‘Jews will not replace us.’ 

The world of my Jewish ancestors in Europe during the Second World War had always seemed so far away, a static story in history books. But it turns out that deep fear-based hate has been here all along, right under the surface, as we are seeing around the world–for Jews, Muslims, people of colour, ethnic minorities, trans people.

Role of Faith Communities

Clergy of all faiths have descended on Minneapolis to monitor events and bear witness. These kinds of faith-led initiatives are happening all over the United States right now.

How about here at home? How do we make ourselves more resilient, more ready to combat anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and other expressions of hate that Holocaust Memorial Day calls us to be vigilant to?

We can make sure our own community is solid, stay engaged and connected to our congregation and the larger Unitarian movement. By joining Sunday gatherings; participating in a discussion group or an event like the workshop on white nationalism coming up in a few weeks at Rosslyn Hill Chapel; by volunteering; subscribing to Uni-news, our monthly denominational email newsletter. Get to know this community and this movement, and the people in it. We are going to need our communities. 

We can make sure we are building a strong interfaith network. Be curious about other religious experiences. Maybe even visit another nearby congregation once in a while. I can assure you that most places of worship are as delighted and welcoming when they have visitors as we are when a new person comes to New Unity.

When I talk about being curious about other people’s religious experiences, I mean at New Unity too. What a great opportunity we have to nurture a robust interfaith space right here. I love being able to tell other clergy that they can come to the Meeting House and worship with Jews, Buddhists, Humanists, Catholics, pagans, atheists, Anglicans, Muslims and others.

As I have challenged us before, we can interrogate our biases and obstacles that keep us from embracing the Unitarian ethos of finding wisdom and community from all faith traditions. Even as we strive to be broadly accepting of other religious practices, we can still bristle when the person next to us on Sunday talks about God, prayer, prophets like Jesus or Mohammed, or even using the word ‘church’ or ‘sermon.’ What might be fueling that? Is there a concern that if we are too welcoming of other faiths there will not be room for us and our beliefs? Are we worried about conflict? Have we experienced harm at the hands of another religion? Do we have different standards for what is okay ‘out there’ versus ‘in here’?

I appreciate that we all carry our own religious baggage and traumas that we are processing and working through. But this can be fertile ground to explore; on our own, in dialogue with the minister, or in a workshop or discussion group. The payoff is one day coming to view this mix of faith perspectives as a gift rather than a stressor. 

Finally, in addition to this work strengthening our own communities, examining our biases, and growing our relationship with a wide range of faith traditions… we need to decide where and how to use our prophetic voice. What do we want to speak up for? Not only among other Unitarians, but publicly. When I say prophetic, I’m thinking Mary Wollstonecraft asserting that women are entitled to share what had been understood to be male spaces. Or Richard Price telling his country that it’s on the wrong side of its war with its colonies.

Anyone who has tried this in even a small way… maybe pushing for an unpopular option in a work meeting, or naming something uncomfortable in one’s friend group… knows how very hard this can be. And yet it’s possible. I have been particularly impressed with the Quakers––especially as a decentralised movement not much bigger than ours––with their ability to organise themselves and speak out on a scale well beyond their raw numbers.

All of this work I am suggesting we should be working toward helps us push religious intolerance––and the hatred and the violence that often accompanies it––out of the centre and into the shabby corners where it belongs. Maybe that makes it worth considering what we are willing to do––what we can and cannot make room for––in the interest of creating a world where anyone's faith, respectfully practiced, is welcomed.

Conclusion

We observe Holocaust Remembrance Day every year, and we will continue to do so… with civic ceremonies, moments of silence, candle lighting, and other rituals. We will continue to observe it each year… but will we learn from it?

Can we learn what we need to, or will we continue to add to the list of religious and ethnic genocides that we remember on this day? What actions will we choose to take in our lives?

When will we decide to speak out, or act?... When prejudice first rears its head? When religious or racialised harassment becomes normalised? When people are deported or locked up by immigration officials and demonised by politicians? When governments begin organising raids to terrorise their scapegoats? When they begin arresting their political enemies? When people start having to carry identity papers? When violence begins, when killing becomes normalised?

How much are we willing to stick our necks out if we are not the ones they are coming for today? How will we work together? What connections will we make to help amplify our voices and our calls for justice?

These are not abstract questions. People are asking them right now. In the United States. In authoritarian countries around the world. And even here.

What have we learned from the Holocaust? How do those 20 million souls speak to us? 

And how will we answer them?

Blessed be.