The other day in the park, someone whacked me on the side of my head.

I had just passed these two young boys as they ran up behind a woman.

She spun around quickly just as they reached her.

She gave them a menacing look.

They backed off.

I kept walking, very conscious of how I carried myself.

Not to look weak.

Not to be a victim.

I heard footsteps racing up from behind.

I stiffened (but in a casual way) as I maintained my stride.

I refused to turn around.

I wasn’t afraid of them!

They were young, skinny things in their early teens.

Pipsqueaks as far as I was concerned.

Harmless.

And I could be tough.

I had gone to public schools in New York City!

I had taught kids like them!

Poor. Black. Tough.

I would show them.

As they skidded by, one on either side, one of them whacked me on the side of my head.

I yelled out.

“WHAT THE F**K!”

(I could say that because I wasn’t their teacher.)

The one stopped and looked at me as the other bounced off.

“Sorry! It was an accident!” he called out.

“Oh, really!!”

”Yeah,” he said. “He pushed me,” pointing to his friend. “I’m sorry.”

I knew he was making it up.

It was such a weird mix of young innocence and a hardening meanness.

I turned silently and kept walking, holding my head high, my neck stiff.

No real damage had been done.

My glasses were still on my face.

But I was shaken.

I could feel my heart pounding.

I was angry.

It brought me back to my junior high school days where I was beaten up almost daily in school.

By Black kids like them.

Kids who looked at me and saw all that was wrong in their lives represented in this one white girl with blonde hair.

A feeling of utter helplessness—maybe for both of us.

But I had also been a teacher.

I’d seen and experienced at least as much, and more.

Once, pushed to my limit, I grabbed a student almost twice my size.

He’d threatened me, leaning relaxed against a wall.

I was having none of it.

I pulled his collar up close around his neck, and slammed him against the wall, my protruding belly almost touching him.

I put my face up close enough to smell his breath:

“Don’t you dare threaten me!” I said.

The kid stiffened.

All of his bravado was gone.

He looked at me, terrified.

Where had that nice, caring, dedicated teacher gone?

The one who would never give up on any child, not even on him?

The teacher who didn’t believe in punishment.

Who carried the weight of society’s ills on her shoulders.

The chairman of the department was there and witnessed the whole thing.

I could have gotten myself fired.

I’m pretty sure he gave me a pass because I was pregnant.

Very pregnant.

And because he knew me.

But when you don’t have time to think, and you’re scared and angry, you do and say stupid things.

As I walked away from the kids in the park this week, I yelled out, “Go find something more productive to do!”

I was embarrassed for myself as soon as the words left my mouth.

Stupid-White-Lady thing to say.

What was there for them to do, after all?

Summer in the city for poor, Black children doesn’t offer a lot.

This week, I read an opinion article in the New York Times about the dearth of public pools in the United States.

It’s titled, “When It Comes to Swimming, ‘Why Have Americans Been Left on Their Own?’”

I learned about the public health crisis of drowning.

It’s really real, and I had known nothing about it.

Black children are the most likely victims because they don’t know how to swim.

Every year in New York City, a few teenagers drown in the murky waters of the Bronx River.

Every city and town has its murky waters.

And the public pools?

There used to be many of them, and they had huge capacity.

Especially in big cities.

But most closed their doors during the Civil Rights Movement.

It was preferable to integrating them.

But with summers getting hotter, this is a real issue.

Especially for the poor, who have no air conditioning.

So my comment to these children was utterly stupid, and I knew it.

In this week’s Parsha, Eikev, Moses speaks to the Israelites (as per the usual):

“What does God command you?

“Only this: to revere your God, and to walk in God’s paths.”

How should we do this?

By cuttting away “the thickness around your hearts and stiffening your necks no more.”

News came this week about the shooter that attacked the Pittsburgh Synagogue five years ago.

He will get the death penalty.

Antisemitism is not to be tolerated.

It was decided he should die for his crime.

But will this do anything to solve the problem of antisemitism?

What about racism?

Will any of society’s ills be solved through this kind of punishment?

Or through any kind of punishment, for that matter?

Has it ever worked?

Long after I had left those boys in the park, I continued to reflect.

The teacher in me wanted to make a difference.

Maybe I should have said,

“You keep this up, you’ll end up getting shot by a racist cop!”

“Or you’ll join the ranks of the mass incarcerated!”

I don’t know if it would have made a difference.

If it would have given them pause.

Even for a moment.

Later in the day, I encountered them again.

“Are you still picking on people?” I asked the same one as had whacked me.

He was the one willing to look at me and engage at all.

Again, the innocence, as if he could fool Stupid-White-Teacher:

“He started with me!” he defended himself as he pointed towards a man that was long gone.

I shook my head and walked away.

Either way, they’ll end up as just one more statistic in a society of crusted-over hearts.

A society of stiff-necked people.

Towards the end of the Parsha, Moses quotes God again:

If we do not love God with all our heart, if we do not follow God’s paths, the rains will not come in their time, the fields will not yield, and we will all perish.

We are to impress these words upon our very heart.

As we experience increasing temperatures—whacky weather more and more—we’re clearly missing something.

This is why we are to bind God’s words as a sign on our hands, let them serve as a symbol on our forehead, teach them to our children, recite them at home and on our way, when we lie down and when we get up, inscribe them on the doorposts of our houses and on our gates.

What it means to love God and walk in God’s paths clearly needs reinterpretation for our times.

I saw a posting on Instagram this week about Ubuntu.

This is the South African practice of showing compassion and humanity to a person who has acted badly.

It is to bring that person into the middle of a circle where they are surrounded by their community.

Then they are reminded of all the honorable qualities they possess—of all the goodness that they are.

My prayer for this week is that we have the ability as a society to cut the scabs that covers our hearts, and create another type of society.

This practice of Ubuntu may be a good place to start.

Shabbat Shalom.