Racism Takes Two

George Floyd’s death triggered a serious reckoning for many in our nation regarding an individual’s culpability with respect to systemic racism. Over the past six months,I have been wrestling with the following questions: To what extent am I, as a white person, culpable for systemic racism of which often I am unaware and by which I benefit? What is my individual responsibility to protest and change this system given the extent to which the change required is massive and beyond any one person’s capability to change? Rav Avi humbly offers reflections on these questions from her own perspective as a white person for other white Jews who find themselves wrestling with similar questions, learning lessons from Massekhet Shabbat as we close it out in the Daf Yomi cycle.