The Battle For The Confederate Battle Flag

"We have been servants of bad causes." - Yom Kippur Confession"No army ever went into battle in support of a worse cause than the Confederates." – Shelby Foote, Civil War HistorianIn 1981, the German film, "Das Boot" (The Boat) was released. It was the story of a battle-damaged Nazi-era German submarine enabled to return to port only by the courage, heroism, and self-sacrifice of the gallant crew. At the film's end, the submarine and all its crew are killed in an Allied bombing raid on the submarine base to which the boat and its crew had returned. The moral was obvious: great human qualities can be employed in greatly wrongful causes deserving destruction.In Germany, display of the Nazi flag is prohibited by law: display of it in public is a criminal offense – with good reason. While millions of German soldiers who died in service of the Nazi cause often displayed noble qualities and aspects of human greatness – those unknown like the crew of Das Boot, and those whom history remembers, like General Erwin Rommel – all served and died for a cause as bad as any humankind has known. The reason no one sane in Germany displays the Nazi flag on Germany's Memorial Day, called Volkstrauertag (National Mourning Day), is because the Nazi cause was a moral horror deserving of no presence on any level in any honorific memorial. The old Hebrew curse upon such levels of evil is, "Yemach shemo u'zichrono." (May his/its name and memory be erased.") The swastika defiles anything it touches. It is the icon representing the person, ideas, and goals of Adolf Hitler – and all the atrocities committed in support of him.No one begrudges The American South its positive traditions or aspects. I am married to a woman who grew up in The South. The emphasis given to courtliness, to mannerly conduct, and genteel society is truly uplifting and charming – and along with grits for breakfast, and the existence of Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee sour mash, are among the many positive sides of Southern culture; but the Confederate army went to war under the "battle flag" (which is the specific Confederate flag now in debate) to preserve a civilization based upon, inclusive of, and supportive of human slavery.

Slavery is the buying and selling of human beings into captivity against their will – it is a felony we now call "kidnapping." In Scripture, it is called "human-stealing" – and is a capital offense. (Exodus 21:16). "Any one who steals a person, and sells that person, and is proven to have done so, shall surely be put to death."

Scripture confines slavery, as The South practiced it, to be a means of criminal punishment; for military aggression, and mass practice of atrocities. If you attack and lose, or if you make a national mass practice of deeds like burning human newborn infants alive – you become enslaved. All other servitude for which the Bible uses the Hebrew word for "slavery" was voluntarily-chosen temporary self-sale (or of one's own children) to remedy economic destitution – and had strict limits on its practice, and a maximum time limit, after which the self-sold had by law to be freed. The often-spoken idea in mass-media,  "The Bible supports slavery" – is simply wrong.

Scripture does not at all advocate, or approve for tolerance, slavery in the form it was practiced in the pre-Civil War American South. Scripture condemns it as kidnapping.

The entire Southern slavery economy was based on kidnapping.  There is no defending it, except by the vain attempts made in the past to argue that Africans – or Jews, Asians, or whoever it is one seeks to enslave – are somehow less than, or other than, human. Genetic science has established beyond realistic refutation that all humans are African by origin. The arduous tracing of the human genetic mutation-trail by Dr. Spencer Wells in "The Journey of Man" project, has proven with little room for doubt, that all humankind originated in Africa; and every human on the face of the earth can trace his or her origin back to the original African migration that went north along the fresh-water path flowing from Lake Victoria we call The Nile River – into what we now call Egypt, and then into the Plain of Shinar in what we now call The Middle East – and from there, into dispersion across the rest of the planet.

There is no human being in existence without human rights. Only as punishment for criminal misconduct proven by due process, do we diminish or remove from any person rights like life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. The argument Africans are not human is as absurd as any argument ever made by any sector of humankind seeking to advance its own community's interests by violating the rights of another tribe, race, or sector.

The pre-Civil War Southern Society represented by the Confederate Battle Flag was as tainted by its willful practice of the evil of slavery as Nazi Germany was by its "master race" ideology.  Both civilizations practiced levels of criminality, barbarity, and violent abusiveness to a level removing from both civilizations the right to anything like "national pride" in regard to the symbols it used in the advancement of its cause.The lives or gallantry of the countless Confederate soldiers lost or harmed by their service are not the issue.Whether Robert E. Lee was a great general is no more relevant to the matter than Erwin Rommel's prowess or character is to whether or not the Nazi Swastika Flag should be displayed on a flagpole in front of some German city's courthouse.

I offer that the point in the current debate is, "Woe to those who call evil, 'good.'" (Isaiah 5:20)

The Golden Rule expressed in Judaism by Hillel in TB Shabbat 31a and later by Yeshua of Nazareth in Matthew 7:12 is the core-idea: that which is hateful to you, do not do to someone else: as you want your neighbor to treat you, so you should treat your neighbor."

It is not possible to imagine any circumstances by which any Southerner would not hate having himself or his loved ones approached by stealth, kidnapped, carried away against their will to a location far from all known or loved, then being sold for money to be the possession of another person, and spending the remainder of life in unpaid, forced labor.

The military symbol of a civilization esteeming human slavery as proper deserves no place of honor.

Everything else is just conversation, is it not?The misled, but sincere and patriotic, soldiers of the cause can be mourned by those who loved them; and the positive cultural aspects of the civilization can be preserved and enjoy in the same way Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Hofbrau Bier are still enjoyed around the world today. I studied the German language to the earning of an academic prize, I have German friends, and enjoy German food and beer – but cannot imagine any German establishment of any kind flying the Nazi Swastika flag on a flagpole outside its facilities.National pride and honoring fallen comrades are not the issue: honoring humanity itself, and helping humans capable of being deceived to recognize and avoid supporting bad causes – are far more at the heart of it all. Kidnapping/slavery is and always will be evil – and no symbol of an army committed to their preservation and advancement should be displayed in public in any way evocative of respect or honor.Oh, yes – and Chicken Fried Steak. Forgot to include  Chicken Fried Steak in my cultural hall of fame. Whenever my family is down South, we never miss the chance to have truly Southern-cooked Chicken Fried Steak.One rabbi's opinions, for what worth the reader might find in them. Shalom y'all.Rabbi Bruce CohenManhattan • 23 June 2015