Juneteenth means freedom for all American citizens. It is now recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in 47 of the 50 U.S. states.
On June 19, 1865, the announcement was made that tens of thousands of African-Americans in Texas had been emancipated , closing the door on one of the last chapters of slavery in the U.S.
Juneteenth traces its origins back to Galveston, Texas where on June 19, 1865 Union soldiers, led by Major Gen. Gordon Granger landed in the city with news that the Civil War had ended and slaves were now free. The announcement came two-and-a-half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863 that had ended slavery in the U.S. However, since that proclamation was made during the Civil War, it was ignored by Confederate states and it wasn’t until the end of the war that the Executive Order was enforced in the South.
Granger delivered the news himself, reading General Order Number 3: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”
The day’s name is a combination of “June” and “nineteenth” in honor of the date of Granger’s announcement and first appeared around 1903. It is also known as African American Freedom Day or Emancipation Day.
Judaism teaches that we have an imperative to support civil rights. There is a long history of Jewish involvement in civil rights and the abolition movement; it takes entire books to tell that story, but I am offering some parts of that story here –
Mikveh Israel’s Hakham Rabbi Sabato Morais, an ardent abolitionist, said winning the War of the Rebellion/Civil War meant freeing millions consigned to slavery, not reuniting with Confederate secessionists in a “Union with human degradation.” Morais today is best known as one of the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the intellectual flagship of the Conservative Jewish movement.
See his 1864 Thanksgiving Sermon “On the Nature of the Slavery of the Bible” in The Journal of law and religion, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007): 159
Rav Morais also writes
Not the victories of the Union, but those of freedom my friends, we do celebrate. What is Union with human degradation? Who would again affix his seal to the bond that consigned millions to that? Not I, the enfranchised slave of Mitzraim. Not you, whose motto is progress and civilization. Cast, then, your vision yonder, and behold the happy
change wrought by the hand of Providence. . . . Thy name shall no longer be called Maryland, but Merry-land, for thou hast verily breathed a joyous spirit into the souls of all thy inhabitants… (referencing the abolition of slavery in Maryland on Nov. 1st, 1864)
Rabbi Sabato Morais, Philadelphia, Sermon on Thanksgiving Day, 1864, Mikveh Israel Synagogue
The great prophet of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraha, Joshua Heschel, wrote on the matters of race in our time –
… Few of us seem to realize how insidious, how radical, how universal an evil racism is. Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking….
“Race prejudice, a universal human ailment, is the most recalcitrant aspect of the evil in man” (Reinhold Niebuhr), a treacherous denial of the existence of God.
What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.
Faith in God is not simply an afterlife insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy… How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person; whenever one person is offended, we are all hurt. What begins as inequality of some inevitably ends as inequality of all.
… the way we act, the way we fail to act is a disgrace which must not go on forever. This is not a white man’s world. This is not a colored man’s world. It is God’s world. No man has a place in this world who tries to keep another man in his place. It is time for the white man to repent. We have failed to use the avenues open to us to educate the hearts and minds of men, to identify ourselves with those who are underprivileged. But repentance is more than contrition and remorse for sins, for harms done. Repentance means a new insight, a new spirit. It also means a course of action.
Racism is an evil of tremendous power, but God’s will transcends all powers. Surrender to despair is surrender to evil. It is important to feel anxiety, it is sinful to wallow in despair. What we need is a total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice. God is in search of man, waiting, hoping for man to do His will.
Religion and race, Heschel, 1/14/1963
Tema Smith writes
We read in Pirkei Avot words of wisdom from the rabbis of the Mishnaic period. Many are familiar with the famous saying of Rabbi Tarfon that close out the second chapter of the book: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it” (2:16).
Fewer have likely encountered the words that follow in the opening of the very next chapter, attributed to Akavia Ben Mahalalel:
“Keep your eye on three things, and you will not come to sin: Know from where you came, and to where you are going, and before Whom you are destined to give an account and a reckoning.” (3:1).
History. Destiny. Accountability. As Professor Hill reminds us, “a Juneteenth holiday is just the impetus and enabler of the change that we want to see. The process of creating this holiday, the change that would need to occur to get people’s minds and spirits in the right place, is really what we want.”
We are presenting here “America’s Biblical Heritage” from Siddur Sim Shalom:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
– The Constitution of the United States
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive in the land which Adonai your God gives you.
– Deuteronomy 16:20
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
– The Bill of Rights
Proclaim liberty through the land for all of its inhabitants.
– Leviticus 25:10
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
– The Declaration of Independence
Have we not all one Creator? Has not one God created us?
– Malachi 2:10, Hebrew Bible.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
– Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift sword against nation and they shall not again experience war.
People shall dwell under their own vines, under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid.
– Micah 4:3-4, Hebrew Bible
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