Have Some "Nying Je" for South Africa

So classes have ended along with volunteering and for the next week I will be studying, writing papers and hopefully reacquainting myself with Cape Town, a city that is unfortunately quite different from the last time I immersed myself in it just a few months ago. The past few weeks in the whole country of South Africa have been pretty scary. Due to a huge influx of migrants who have recently fled from Zimbabwe as a result of escalating dangers that the ongoing election catastrophe has generated, violence and hate has broken out in various parts of the country.

First some background….For those of you who do not know, Zimbabwe’s March presidential election between one of the longest ruling dictator (28 years) in the modern world, Robert Mugabe, who has been primarily responsible for a rising 165,000% inflation rate in a once up-and-coming economy and whose actions have caused 80% of the population to be unemployed, and the head of the brave Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, has yet to be resolved. Tsvangirai originally won 48% of the votes while Mugabe won 41%. While this outcome necessitates a runoff due to the absence of a winner of a majority vote, the MDC refused to participate in one for a while because they believe that they did in fact win a majority as a result of certain votes not being counted after Mugabe’s party ZANU-PF waited many days and weeks in some cases to report the results. The Zimbabwe constitution states that a runoff must take place within 30 days of the election and 3 months later, both parties have hesitantly set a date, however, under conditions not very conducive to a free and fair election since ZANU-PF has been employing physical means to pressure MDC supporters to shift their loyalties. Violence has spread throughout the country and has spawned a huge amount of displacement, leaving tens of thousands of people with no home and very little hope.

In search of safety, many of those who were displaced migrated to South Africa. Yet upon their arrival, South Africans began to attack them for coming into a land in which resources such as food, water, shelter and employment are already quite scarce. The violence began in the Johannesburg township of Alexandria two weeks ago and has spread to Durban and Cape Town. The continuing aggression has not only dispersed geographically but the criteria of the victims have broadened. Now all refugees from various African countries who have come both recently and not-so-recently (some of the victims have been living in South Africa for decades) have become extremely vulnerable to what is being characterized as a plague of “xenophobia.” Since the start of this outbreak less then two weeks ago, an estimated 17,000 people have been forcibly removed from their homes and at least 50 have been killed. It is an extremely scary time for so many people who migrated to the Mecca of a struggling continent in search of a better life. Instead of opportunity, they have been confronted with hate and torture at the hands of other Africans, and have been confronted with violence that was called by one article the worst outbreak in the democratic era (since 1994).

I think (and I acknowledge that my opinion has many limitations due to a small scope of understanding in regard to the complexities of the specific situation and relationships between different Africans in general) that while there is clearly a great deal of hate towards and fear of difference attached to the attacks, using xenophobia as the keyword in this situation takes away from the economic implications that need to be appropriately addressed in this conversation. Countless South Africans already do not have access to the resources they need and to have newcomers invade their territory and threaten this already extremely-restricted accessibility is terrifying. Xenophobia is a glaring problem that has existed for centuries in Africa and needs to be dealt with but not at the expense of the recognition of the millions who remain impoverished after 14 years of waiting to relish in the perks of democracy and the thousands more from other countries who share the same dream, not only for their sake but for that of their future generations. This is a glaring example of the remnants of the Apartheid system still festering in the ravaged, dangerous townships and the boiling hatred between different African cultures.

The ANC government has been criticized for reacting too slowly and passively to the outbreak. The president of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki, has also been extremely criticized for his passivity and vagueness regarding the actions of Mugabe and ZANU-PF, not only in relationship to the election but also throughout all of their corrupt, violent and immoral actions that have been happening in Zimbabwe throughout Mbeki’s presidency of the supposed superpower of Africa, whose placement of potential pressures on Zimbabwe to be better might actually serve a constructive purpose. This may hint one of the many other problems emerging in this country; the unchanged disparity between the rich and the poor. While many black people have become affluent as a result of the 14 year old democratic system, many who fit into this category (government officials often included) have simply joined the rich whites who live in their own word and approach township/rural Africa as a completely different dimension that is disconnected from the world in which they live.

AAAH!! The world is drowning. “Xenophobia.” Earthquakes. Cyclones. Skyrocketing gas prices pocketed by nuclear Iran. America’s increasing trillion dollar debt and two-front war. I have started to legitimately become scared. Thankfully constructing a fear generated by all the world’s problems is not very feasible (where do you start?), so it has not been able to consume me. But is it fair that because I am lucky enough (at the moment) to not be directly impacted by any of these things (not to mention poverty, war, hunger, abuse, loneliness and all the other wide-spread tragic circumstances that are rampant wherever you are)? Is it fair that I can discuss the AIDS epidemic that is estimated to kill 6 million Africans by 2010 with the protection of education and money (though these two things do not make you immune obviously)? I feel so patronizing writing these things down being almost certain that I will not be the victim of this xenophobia, and that I am not actually a member of a vulnerable population to so many other problems in the world. I feel so patronizing because as much as I don’t think I am and don’t want to be, I am the oppressor, I am taking resources away from millions and millions of people who need them, even though I do not mean to.

Yet at the same time, these issues are pressing in every circle for different reasons. This past Friday night, the sermon I heard exposed me to exactly why acknowledgment is so necessary. The rabbi began by speaking about the escalating violence that is happening so close to us and I expected an exciting “social justice with sprinkles of Torah” speech. Instead, without ever referring back to this situation, the rabbi discussed how we can react to these situations by appreciating the privileges that we have access to as Jews. The three examples he gave were Shabbat, family and affluence. Besides for the fact that these things are not criteria for being Jewish and thus not all have them, the main problem was that he was basically saying that the circumstances that those people experience are pretty crappy, but look at what we have. What happened to loving your neighbor as yourself? I mean out of all the quintessential Jewish ideals we have, that’s got to be pretty high up there right? I do not know if this is the message that he meant to get across but to me this clearly demonstrated the same type of gap between the rich and the poor of this country; white Jews have the luxury to look at massive crime, poverty and displacement and see it as a sign of how lucky we are to be members of the chosen people. Personally, I think that being Jewish should make us realize that everyone deserves to have the blessings that we have, not just as Jews, but (for a lot of us) as members of a privileged population. We are all God’s creatures and if we do nothing else, I think we should acknowledge these horizontal relationships and internalize the suffering of others and the awareness of how terrible it could be to be forced to leave your home and be consumed by the uncertainty of where you will be sleeping the same night or if you will have food to eat or any job to ensure subsistence for the coming week.

This reminds me of a really beautiful concept I have recently read about in a book written by the Dalai Lama. He discusses the difference between the popular understanding of the virtue of compassion and Buddhism’s interpretation of their equivalent, nying je. Compassion is about internalizing the plight of a sufferer. Because compassion is often used as a synonym for sympathy, it connotes a feeling of pity for that sufferer. Yet the Dalai Lama says that this pity creates a sense of condescension, of hierarchal distance between the sympathizer, the subject and the object that is suffering. But he describes nying je as a feeling of gentility, generosity, affection that is rather a form of empathy that links the person who is suffering to the person who has it. Nying Je is not felt for someone, but rather with someone. Because Buddhism teaches that all is vanity until we are stripped to our naked existence and thus we are all the same for all beings possess no more or less than anyone else, no physical items, no status symbols. We are all essentially the same and as result we are connected to every person, we are the same. So nying je is the acknowledgment that we are responsible for each other not by choice but by our very essence as living beings. The Dalai Lama also says that this term strattles the line between empathy and reason which are often seen as mutually exclusive but in Buddhism, they are dependent upon each other. True empathy allows a person to be honest, and experience a process so that righteous emotions are not spontaneous, but rather a product of reason and honorable exploration.

I thought this was such a beautiful idea that really allowed me to understand what my primary problem with the rabbi’s speech was. Humans so often sympathize and create a distance between themselves and the person whom they direct their compassion to. But that seems to be a pretty self-absorbed way of thinking when in actuality we are all responsible for one another and cannot be separated.

Hmm…so I can’t come up with any forced connection between all of this and the next paragraph that provides necessary sensitivity and practical linkage between the two and for that I apologize and hope you might still read on….So I found myself randomly reading a book a few days ago written by contemporary Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim. Specifically I was intrigued by an essay he wrote about self-actualization and human understandings of God. He said that most people view themselves as a subject in the world. As a result everything has to be incorporated into their life, modified and judged by the subject to serve a purpose as an object. Often people treat God in this fashion and decided that they need to incorporate God, as a malleable idea, into their lives. This leads people to think of self-actualization as a process reliant upon one’s own ability to be inspired by different aspects of God and Judaism in their own terms. Yet God is not an object, an idea that we can rework to feel closer to realizing our true selves. By definition God is everything and defines everything. So how can we define God? God is the subject and we are the objects. If we believe in a being that created the world, how can we decide how God functions within that world? If we view God as an idea that we can adjust to our own inspiration we contradict what God is. Thus, self actualization happens by acknowledging our status as objects that are not the actors but that which is acted upon. Now I do not think that this understanding is correct for everyone, but I do feel like it spoke strongly to me because for a while I have taken it upon myself to create my own understanding of God while still believing in a God that is responsible for the world and all that resides within it. But that does seem strange and self-important to me since God cannot be all-powerful yet subject to my judgment. I think the subject-object difference connotes a certain level of accountability. If one is only accountable to him or herself then it is easier to justify one’s actions, even if they are questionable. But if God is your ultimate Judge and thus the Torah is a blueprint of how to be judged favorably and live a good life, then it is easier to understand the difference between right and wrong (though this is not the only way to know the difference but I think it can be a successful tool in my opinion, but its totally ok if you disagree because I respect your entitlement to your own opinion). I do not know how this new way of thinking will present itself in my own life and thoughts but I think it is quite an interesting paradigm shift.

So instead of Ulpan, I have a question that I would like you to ponder….

How are Nying Je and Ubuntu (the shared humanity I discussed months ago that Desmond Tutu referred to in his book about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission) similar or different?

See y’all in 3 weeks..and by you all I guess I mean Amercia…Cheers!

p.s. so the new pictures are stolen...but I promise I did so legally and only because I wanted you to see Robben Island and Khayelitsha (I have stopped taking my own pictures because I am too cheap to buy batteries, so this is quite a good method)