The only rabbi in Springfield, Ohio, has expressed regret and said he will meet with local Haitian leaders following widespread criticism of his remarks disparaging the city’s migrant community.
Rabbi Cary Kozberg will remain employed with his Reform congregation, Temple Sholom, whose president said Kozberg “has come to a better understanding of the situation here in Springfield.”
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week, Kozberg said the city’s Haitian migrant community lacked “Western civilized values,” and implied they were undeserving of Jewish support. He made the comments after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance spread false stories about Haitians in Springfield eating pets. The national attention has exacerbated months of right-wing rhetoric and activity over the city’s immigrant population, and led to bomb threats and demonstrations by far-right protesters.
While many national Jewish leaders and groups condemned Trump’s comments and expressed support for the migrant community, echoing an American Jewish history of speaking up for immigrant rights, Kozberg did not.
Instead the rabbi, a Trump supporter, told JTA that Springfield was undergoing a “culture clash” and that local white residents were being “disenfranchised” by the newly arriving Haitians, whom he accused of not assimilating to the United States as well as Jewish immigrants have done.
Speaking to the Dayton Jewish Observer on Friday, Kozberg said he “misspoke” and that he “deeply regret[s]” making those comments.
“I don’t believe all Haitians are bad,” he said. “Most people don’t know me as a racist.”
He noted that he lives in Columbus and is a part-time rabbi to the congregation of around 30 households in Springfield, about 50 miles away.
“I was not well-informed on the situation with the Haitian immigrants,” Kozberg said. “Since the interview, I have learned much more about the immigration situation in Springfield. My opinions have definitely been modified.”
Kozberg made his statement alongside Temple Sholom’s president, Laurie Leventhal, who told the Observer that her rabbi made a “mistake” and would be pursuing teshuvah, or the Jewish process of repentance.
“We are not giving him a pass,” Leventhal said. “He has asked lots of questions and learned lots of stuff about what’s going on in Springfield, and he has changed his views. And that is how human beings grow. And that is what we are about. And I hope that you will not go on a witch-hunt and take a situation in a city that is so hurting and make it worse.”
Kozberg’s comments were condemned by Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, as well as by the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive group, and prominent Jews on social media including TV producer David Simon. (While Temple Sholom is affiliated with the Reform movement, Kozberg has personally left the movement over what he said were political disagreements.)
Several of Temple Sholom’s own congregants also told the Observer they believed his comments were racist, yet they wanted him to stay as their rabbi.
“I’m not a believer in throwing Rabbi Kozberg under the bus for one interview,” one congregant said. “I’m not happy about it, but the survival of our temple is critical, and Rabbi Kozberg plays a critical role in that.”
Following his comments, other Jewish groups issued statements supporting Springfield’s Haitians and condemning the “demonization” of the group without naming Kozberg directly, including the American Jewish Committee and a delegation of 41 Ohio rabbis, who published an unsigned letter with HIAS, a Jewish immigrant aid group.
“As Jewish clergy in Ohio, we stand in solidarity with the Haitian community in our state who have been slandered in ways that impact their safety and the safety of our shared communities,” the rabbis wrote. “Jewish tradition has long understood the direct line between speech and violence, placing lashon hara — evil speech — among the most grievous of sins for the life-threatening harm it can unleash. For these reasons, we come together to stand against xenophobia and for immigrant communities. We demand our political leaders do the same.”
Viles Dorsainvil, a local Haitian community leader in Springfield and the executive director of the Haitian Community Health and Support Center, told JTA on Monday he hadn’t been aware of Kozberg’s comments and hasn’t received any communication from the rabbi. But he said he had been glad to receive a letter of support from the Dayton Jewish Federation, which the federation had sent to him on the same day JTA published Kozberg’s interview.
In their letter, the federation heads introduced themselves as “your Jewish neighbors to the west” and added, “It is a core tenet of our faith to ‘welcome the stranger.’ We, along with so many others of different faiths and cultures, whose ancestors made this journey before you over the decades, support your quest, and welcome you. We are sending all our virtual thoughts of goodwill your way, including our prayers for your safety.”
The letter was touching, Dorsainvil said. “We’re so happy that the Jewish community in Dayton reached out to us,” he said, adding that he, too, saw similarities between what Jewish immigrants to the United States experienced in the past and what Haitian migrants are currently experiencing.
“When you first get to a place, you are just being denigrated,” he said. “Not only the Jewish, but other communities as well, went through the same thing.”
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