Okay, white Jews, let’s talk. We have a lot to do when it comes to eliminating anti-Blackness in our community. I think we can learn a lot from South African Jews: both what to do and what not to do. It can all be summed up in the stories of Percy Yutar and Arthur Chaskalson.

To start, the Apartheid government of South Africa was undoubtedly antisemitic. They were Nazi sympathizers who made the very few Jewish South African lawmakers’ lives a living hell. But the white minority’s hold on power was tenuous and Jews were deemed “white enough.”

Jews came to South Africa much in the same way they came to America: as refugees fleeing oppression and violence in Europe. Some saw the comfort of white passing privilege as an opportunity for security. Others refused and fought back against Apartheid the best they could.

Percy Yutar and Arthur Chaskalson were both the children of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. Both pulled themselves up from poverty and became lawyers. Chaskalson became a human rights lawyer. Yutar sided with the state.

In 1963, Nelson Mandela was arrested along with many others at Lilisleaf farm in Johannesburg and charged with treason. Arthur Chaskalson, along with a few other lawyers chose to defend the “Rivonia trialists” as they came to be known. Percy Yutar was the prosecution.

Chaskalson and his fellow defense attorneys knew they were fighting a losing battle. They also knew that they were subjecting themselves to monitoring and harassment by the SA secret police (who were CIA backed), possible arrest, and even assassination.

Bram Fisher, another defense attorney, was later put under house arrest. They did it anyway. Yutar, on the other hand, pushed the narrative that Black South Africans wanted to commit widespread violence against white South Africans.

Yutar stoked the fires of white supremacy and gave the Apartheid government more fuel for their brutal regime. After Apartheid, Yutar claimed he went easy on the Rivonia trialists by changing the charges from treason to sabotage in an attempt to save his legacy. It didn’t work.

Chaskalson later went on to found a South African version of the NAACP, helped draft South Africa’s revolutionary new constitution, and eventually became the Chief Justice of the new South African Supreme Court. His first decision in this position abolished the death penalty.

The way I see it, white American Jews have 2 choices right now: we can be a Yutar and cling to the limited power proximity to whiteness gives us, or we can be a Chaskalson and participate actively and courageously in building a better, equitable future.

The good news is, at this point, there is considerably less danger in opposing white supremacy here than there was in Apartheid South Africa. You won’t risk losing your career, credibility, or your life. What do we really have to lose?

This is Arthur Chaskalson. Be like Arthur.