On May 25, many Black communities and their supporters commemorated the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd. I participated in the local candlelight vigil at the Clinton Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Greenport. It was a well-organized and respectful gathering, presided over by Pastor Natalie R. Wimberly. It included several local clergy, a mufti, and Christian and Muslim lay leaders. The charge by Pastor Natalie was “The time is now for uncommon courage.” She added that we should never stand idly by, that we should mention the victims’ names, not forget them. “Say my name, say her name, say his name, say our name,” she called out.

The vigil took place just a couple of weeks after I had returned from my trip, driving almost 13,000 miles across America. Seeing police all over the country, I often thought about the expression, “Driving while Black.” How awful it is for someone to have this feeling of constant exposure and vulnerability. I thought of my relationship with God. As a faithful man, I don’t want to be afraid of God; I am in awe of God. Similarly, I don’t want to be afraid of the police; I want to respect them. We need the police, of course, and we need them to be confident. The police should see themselves in us and we should see ourselves in them. They shouldn’t see anyone as “the other,” and we shouldn’t see them as “others.” It is a vast and beautiful country. One of the reasons it is beautiful is because of its godly diversity.

The vigil happened to coincide also with the conflict in Israel and the Guardian of the Walls Operation. I suspected that a connection would be made between the two, just as I had heard had happened in similar gatherings. At the end, as it was starting to get dark, windy, and chilly, Habeed Ahmed, chair of the Islamic Center of Long Island’s Board of Trustees, spoke. Quickly, he drew a parallel between what he perceived as the oppression of Blacks in America and the Palestinians in Israel. This, of course, is an ignorant, offensive, and dangerous comparison. It is ignorant because it is a different conflict, impossible to judge from afar, as impossible as making a judgment based on a person’s external look or skin color. It is offensive because educated Jews, who largely support Israel and the historic and current struggle of Jews to live peacefully in their land, also support the Black outcry of injustice in this country. And it is dangerous because this false parallel has provoked acts of anti-Semitism in streets across America—from NY to LA.

I spoke last, to chant Psalm 23 and make a few comments. Pastor Natalie’s call for “uncommon courage” resonated with me. Something had to be said. I began by sharing my thoughts about what it would be like to “drive while Black,” also our journey through Birmingham, our visit to the site where four girls were killed in the 16th Street bombing of the Baptist Church in 1963, our drive from Selma to Montgomery, and our walk with my friend, the Rev. Jerria Martin, across the same bridge where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel locked arms in 1965 during the Civil Rights protests. We visited those sites to show our support, even six decades later. Seventy percent of non-Black supporters of the Civil Rights Movements were Jews, among them, the current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s own parents.

It is a welcome development, finally, to make Juneteenth a national holiday, to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., and the 700,000 who lost their lives in this battle. We should denounce prejudice in any form — anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-any particular group. In the words of Dr. King, “Injustice somewhere is injustice everywhere.” It was important for me to reiterate that Jews identify with this discrimination out of their own struggles, that there are always reasons to hate Jews and Blacks if one is looking to hate. All of us need to understand that we are in this together.

I concluded my remarks at the vigil by saying that I am visibly Jewish because of the yarmulke I wear. Many Jews now are afraid to be visibly Jewish, that all of us should be outraged at the surging anti-Semitic violence. Let us not allow this country to become a place where it would be dangerous to be “walking while Jewish.”

May the light of this summer shine upon all of us,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela