Charles Ramsey and making the world better.
Kol Nidre 5774
Temple Beth Jacob of Newburgh
Rabbi Larry Freedman
May 7 2013
CLEVELAND – Cleveland
police said missing teens Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and a third woman were
found in a west side house on Monday. Hundreds of people gathered in the
streets near 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, where the women were discovered.
Cleveland police said Berry, DeJesus and Michelle Knight are alive, talking and
appear to be OK. “I heard screaming… And I see this girl going nuts trying to
get outside,” said Charles Ramsey, a neighbor who found the women. “I go on the
porch and she said ‘Help me get out. I’ve been here a long time.’ I figure it
was domestic violence dispute.” “She comes out with a little girl and says
‘Call 911, my name is Amanda Berry’…
Being a decent
person is not easy. Being a decent
person is really, really hard.
Sometimes, you have to realize that good people can be bad and you have
to do something about that. And
sometimes you have to realize that bad people can be good and you have to do
something about that. Being a decent
person means always trying to do the right thing and that can be very difficult
but it has to be done.
The news story
of the year, for my money, is the story of Charles Ramsey. You may remember this news story out of
Cleveland as the story of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight and a
child. These were the women who were
held in captivity for up to a decade in a dungeon like basement.
They were
rescued when Amanda Berry was able to break out, went running down the street
and right into Charles Ramsey.
Charles Ramsey
is a working class black man who told his tale with colorful details,
inflection and rhythm in his own authentic, unvarnished way. It was refreshing to hear someone speak on
camera without worry. If you haven’t
heard his initial interview, done live, with a local TV reporter, you really
should. It’s brilliant.[1] The best part of the interview for me was at
the very end. Here’s the set up. Ramsey talks about how he was minding his own
business eating McDonalds. He talks
about how he heard a scream and went to investigate. He thought it might be a domestic disturbance
that many, many people would just refuse to get involved with.
Now right there
we have enough for a sermon. Lots of us
mind our own business and then, when hearing something, we ignore it. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are all about
trying to dig deep to make ourselves better people. Most of the time making ourselves better
people involves stopping something. Stop
being rude. Stop being impatient. Stop being, in a word, mean.
And that’s
fine. That’s good. But Charles Ramsey is a High Holiday hero
because he didn’t just stop being bad.
He actively worked to be good. He
could have gone inside. He could have
just called 911 and left it at that. But
he didn’t. On a day like any other day,
he knew something wasn’t quite right and he investigated, helped get the door
open and rescued from a violent hell, three women and a child.
There are times
when we really aren’t sure what to do.
There are times when decisions have to be made in a heartbeat based on
impressions, feelings, a notion that something isn’t right. Are you ready to do that? Do you think you’re the kind of person who
will stand up, stick out, speak out?
Charles Ramsey happens to live next to a national story of monstrous
proportions. Most of us never will. But all of us have moments that call for
action and bravery. There are times we
could stand up to bullies, speak out for social justice, call out the person
who makes insensitive jokes. Being a
better person is not only about changing our bad behavior. Sometimes it requires us to condemn and
reject publicly the bad behavior of others.
And we don’t have to be Charles Ramsey to do that. You all could think of a moment in the past
12 months where you could have said something but you didn’t. Next time, do it. From this Yom Kippur to the next, insist on
good behavior from yourself and others.
But it gets
better. The best part of Charles
Ramsey’s interview, live on the air, came at the very end. Now, you have to understand that Ramsey knew
the perpetrator. They had ribs together,
he told people. They weren’t best friends but he knew the guy to be nice
enough, quiet and all that. He had no
reason to think badly of the guy. That’s
the context. The white reporter kept his
microphone in front of Ramsey scooping up all the quotes, all the little
nuggets. And then, Ramsey says this, “I
knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s
arms. Somethin’ is wrong here. Dead giveaway. DEAD GIVEAWAY. She’s either
homeless or got problems. That’s the only reason why she run to a black
man.” And at this point the white
reporter backed away and quickly did his usual, “And that’s the scene here…”
closing. Once Charles Ramsey
acknowledged his reality, of the usual way it goes when he talks about black
men and white women, once he mentioned how the behavior of a white girl convinced
him he really had to help, well, that was just too much for the reporter. He didn’t want to get into that issue. But there it was for one shining moment, an
honest, even nonjudgmental, acknowledgement of race in America. For one brief moment before the reporter
could sanitize anything, we had an unvarnished look at the way it is, at least
in Ramsey’s neighborhood. And that also
makes him a High Holiday hero because he called it like he saw it. No fault.
He wasn’t cursing America. He was
just calling it as he saw it and that’s the way he sees it every day. And that reality, the reality of an
undercurrent of racism that is pernicious and so difficult to get rid of is a
moment of honesty. We can’t step up and
fight injustice if we won’t see it. We
can’t stand against prejudice if we ignore it.
There are a lot of people who want to say that racism and prejudice is
fading away: it’s 2013 and we have a
black President and all that. But there
are problems in this country that will never go away if we won’t be honest and
discuss not only the problem but the underlying issues. We can’t solve our issues if we won’t discuss
racism or sexism or prejudice.
Charles Ramsey
could have backed off. He could have
said, “given the realities of racism in this country and the historical
frustrations black men experience when interacting with white women, I will
decline to get involved.” He could have
said that. He could have thought
that. But he didn’t. He acknowledged racist attitudes as reality,
not as a barrier to doing the right thing.
He did the right thing. We should
all be so lucky when we find ourselves this coming year in a difficult
situation to be like Charles Ramsey. Acknowledge
reality and make the world a better place anyway.
Becoming a decent
person is not about the grand gesture.
It’s not about a massive step.
It’s just doing what is right. No
doubt Charles Ramsey has opinions about being a black man in America. He just didn’t let those opinions interfere
with his humanity at that moment.
Charles Ramsey sized up an unfolding situation on the fly and did what
needed to be done. He was going to be a
decent person.
Our challenge
is to break free of what we assume is right.
Break free of preconceived notions, break free of the way we insist the
world is so that we can be open to seeing how it might be. We will never be able to have teshuva, an
honest, intense turning away from bad behavior if we justify our actions so
strongly that we won’t be able to see our own error. And we will never make the world a better
place until we imagine it can be so.
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