(RNS) — The cold-blooded killing of Israeli Embassy employees Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, as the couple left an event last week at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., still echoes within our hearts.
It is time to talk about another apparent casualty of that shooting: the antisemitism of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
In the wake of the shooting, Ye declared he was “done with antisemitism,” and he expressed remorse for his past actions, tweeting “I love all people” and “God forgive me for the pain I’ve caused.”
Consider that just weeks ago, he released a song called “Heil Hitler,” which got millions of views on X (Spotify, SoundCloud and other platforms have removed it), and hawked T-shirts with swastikas.
Or that in October 2022, he threatened to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Or that he has repeatedly said Jews control the media, finance and entertainment industries.
Or that in an interview on the Infowars talk show, hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and alongside white supremacist Nick “Trump’s guest at Mar-a-Lago” Fuentes, Ye said people should “stop dissing the Nazis” and praised Adolf Hitler.
You can read a more complete list and analysis of his crap here, but that would be a short list of Ye’s offenses. When you consider he has an X following of more than 33 million people, his hateful rhetoric — which has become increasingly unhinged — has become the COVID-19 of Jew hatred, infecting untold numbers of people, which has real-world effects.
At least some of it has come with costs. Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and CAA, his talent agency, all dropped him.
As for Ye’s apology, the Anti-Defamation League isn’t buying it.
“We’ve seen this kind of attempted apology from Kanye before, only for him to back down over and over again,” an ADL spokesperson told Billboard. “As the Jewish community mourns the deaths of two individuals outside of a Jewish museum in yet another horrific antisemitic attack, it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of tweets to repair the damage of his antisemitic speech.”
Like the ADL, all of us should deny Ye the cheap grace he seeks.
Even though we have a few months until the High Holy Days, and their theme of introspection, let us ask: What does it mean for someone to repent — to really repent, to do teshuvah, to turn away from the person they have been to the person they are supposed to be?
The great Maimonides puts it this way in his Laws of Repentance, found in his classic law code, Mishneh Torah:
“What constitutes teshuvah? That a sinner should abandon his sins and remove them from his thoughts, resolving in his heart, never to commit them again. He must verbally confess and state these matters which he resolved in his heart.”
Maimonides makes it clear: Confess what you have done and resolve never to do it again. He adds:
“Among the paths of repentance is for the penitent to: constantly call out before God, crying and entreating; to perform charity according to his potential; to separate himself far from the object of his sin; to change his name, as if to say ‘I am a different person and not the same one who sinned’; to change his behavior in its entirety to the good and the path of righteousness; and to travel in exile from his home.”
Ye can certainly cry out to God (he can rap it, for all I care). He can separate himself from antisemitic acts (and antisemitic people). He can totally change his behavior, which will only be discernible over time. He can go into exile (that’s not going to happen). He can change his name (he could easily go back to Kanye, I assume).
And he can perform charity according to his potential. He says his net worth is $2.77 billion; Forbes says it’s more like $400 million.
If Ye is truly repentant, there is a lot he could do with at least some of his money.
You are probably expecting me to suggest Ye donate the money to the ADL or other institutions that fight antisemitism. Nope.
The best thing Ye could do now, and which matches the needs of the Jewish community, is to give money to Jewish educational institutions — in particular, Jewish day schools and summer camps.
I would urge those institutions to take the imagined Ye bucks and use the money for scholarships. Let’s educate and inspire more Jewish young people to embrace the joys of Jewish life, and not merely the ubiquitous “oys” of Jewish life.
In Proverbs, we read: “Charity redeems from death.” Not a physical death, but a moral and spiritual death. In the face of Jewish deaths, we need more Jewish giving.
You are repenting, Ye? You aren’t going to go down Jew hate avenue again? Good. Show it.
We are waiting.