Orthodox rabbi urges Jews, black people to ‘stand together’ in rousing speech

Rabbi Herschel Gluck, from Stamford Hill, urged black and Jewish communities to “stand together” in an impassioned speech at an anti-racism rally on Wednesday.

“Too many black lives are being lost because society does not care about black lives, because the system is broken and does not do enough to stop the murder of hundreds of young lives that are being killed through gang warfare, through knife crime, through weapons,” he said.

Rabbi Gluck added that were this happening to “young, white middle class kids,” it would have been stopped years ago, sparking a round of applause.

The protest was hosted by the groups Stand Up To Racism and Hackney Stand Up to Racism and Fascism, according to its Facebook listing.

The 61-year-old Orthodox rabbi called for structural change at the socially-distanced Black Lives Matter vigil in Hackney on Wednesday. “We are here because we know that the shared experience of the Jewish people and the black people goes very very deep,” he told the crowd.

“We walked hand-in-hand in the civil rights movement. I cannot breathe. My grandparents and other members of my family were gassed to death in Auschwitz and in other concentration camps 70 years ago. They could not breathe,” he said. “So therefore, blacks and Jews need to stand together because we’ve such deep, powerful shared experiences.”

The words “I can’t breathe” have become associated with the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd in the United States, who died after a white police officer held him down by pressing a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on 25 May.