Kyrie Irving and the sins we commit 'knowingly or unknowingly'
On the heart, forgiveness, and the return of the Brooklyn Nets' star
There is a general principle expressed in the Talmud that one is obligated to recite a blessing for the bad that befalls you just as you are obligated to recite a blessing for the good.
Perhaps the sages knew something about the future for the Jewish people: There will be times when there will not be much of a reason to say blessings of thanks. The first blessing said at the start of a holiday, the Shehecheyanu, is simply thanks for letting me be alive to see this moment. There is a strain of pessimism that seeps into the Jewish mentality.
The true rationale is based on a line from the Torah: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart...” The Mishnah explains that the expression “all of your heart” refers to the two sides of your heart.
The two inclinations that lie there guide you and the decisions you make: Your good inclinations, the yetzer hatov, and your evil inclinations, the yetzer hara.
In late October, NBA player Kyrie Irving, 30, tweeted a link to a documentary. Early on in the film he tweeted, a fabricated quote is presented without context or comment: “The Jews have established five major falsehoods which work to conceal their nature and protect their status and power.” One of those supposed falsehoods is “that 6 million people were killed in a holocaust.”
The film, which also contains a bizarre and fabricated quotation from Hitler, leans on historic anti-Jewish propaganda like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It argues Jews control the media, and the narrator claims mass media is the “biggest tool of indoctrination, brainwashing, and propaganda that the world has seen” and it has been “helping Satan deceive the world” for centuries, Rolling Stone reported.
The film echoes the philosophy of the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group that appropriates “biblical Jewish heritage to claim an exclusive identity as the true chosen people of God and decry Jews as the impostors and thieves,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
The group believes Jews have used this stolen identity to run the world. An argument that begins with a “pseudo-historical” interpretation that “Jews controlled the slave trade or that they owned the ships that were used for the slave trade,” according to the SPLC.
The film Irving tweeted explicitly makes these attacks on Jewish identity.
The concept of sin is different in Judaism than in other faiths. Sin is not thought about as a burden one carries into the world passed down by ancestors. It is not seen as the domain of the wicked, either.
In the Torah, the word sin, chet, most often appears when referencing a slingshot that has “missed its target.” To sin is to fall short, to stray from the right path.
Judaism sees sin as the result of human nature, free will, and the course we set for our own lives. Actions that come from the yetzer hara that lies within us all. And even the most pious sin, because to sin is to be human.
To approach from the other direction: If it was not expected that people with a full heart would sin, there would not be a roadmap on how to right the wrongs we do to each other. For how to atone.
Irving deleted the tweet. He said he didn’t mean for his linking to the film to come off as offensive towards other religions. When asked about the tweet two days later, he bristled at the media members’ questions, specifically those related to the matter of antisemitism. Days later, Irving chose not to say he was antisemitic and insinuated he could not be antisemitic because he knows where he comes from.
Irving was then suspended without pay for an indefinite period by his team, the Brooklyn Nets, for refusing to “unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs” or “acknowledge the specific hateful material in the film.”
Hours after the suspension, Irving posted on Instagram that he was “sorry to have caused” pain for posting the film. He claimed earlier that day he “reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled Anti-Semitic” and he wanted to clarify where he stood in the fight against antisemitism by apologizing for posting the film “without context and a factual explanation outlining the specific beliefs in the Documentary I agreed with and disagreed with.”
There are two prayers of confession said by Jews on the Day of Atonement. The Ashamnu, the short confession, is an acrostic consisting of 24 statements. The Al Chet, the long confession, is a double acrostic consisting of 44 statements.
While reading those prayers, we are instructed to gently strike the left side of our chest with a closed fist. Not a hard hit, we are not to bruise by beating overzealously. But with each confession, we gently tap our hearts.
Why do we do this symbolic self-flagellation on the heart 68 times on Yom Kippur? Rashi, the medieval French rabbi wrote, “the heart and the eyes are the ‘spies’ of the body – they act as its agents for sinning: the eye sees, the heart covets and the body commits the sin.”
The NBA decided not to punish Irving for his tweet. He did meet with commissioner Adam Silver, who said after the meeting he had “no doubt” that Irving was not antisemitic.
The team suspension came from Nets owner Joe Tsai. As part of his conditions for return, the Nets had several stipulations. According to The Athletic, there were six steps Irving had to complete culminating with a meeting with Tsai.
He had to undergo sensitivity training the team created and antisemitism training the team designed. He had to meet with the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish leaders. He had to donate $500,000 to causes and organizations that work to eradicate hate and intolerance.
And Irving had to apologize for linking to the film, condemn the hateful and false content, and make it clear he did not hold any anti-Jewish beliefs.
The Al Chet, the long confessional, begins with the same phrase, “For the sin which we have committed before you….” With a close fist, you are to tap your heart on the word committed.
The third line reads, “For the sin which we have committed before You inadvertently.” The fourteenth is for sins committed “intentionally or unintentionally.” And the twentieth is for sins committed “knowingly or unknowingly.”
Three variations of the same theme. The accidental missteps that harm others matter. The unintended ripples that emanate from our careless actions matter. The harm that we do to people who do not know we have harmed them matters.
The result, not the intention of our actions, is what matters. We may not have intended this, we may not have known, and they may not even know we did it. But we have harmed other people. They have suffered from our actions and so must atone.
Irving’s tweeting of the film was not the first time he gave his platform to conspiracy theories. In the past, Irving had advanced theories about the Kennedy assassination, about secret societies, doubted the Covid-19 vaccine, and advanced the idea that the world is flat.
In early October, Irving posted a clip from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his Instagram. The clip was about the New World Order conspiracy, which is based on an antisemitic canard. When asked about it Irving distanced himself from some of Jones’ beliefs but said that the post “about secret societies in America and cults” was “true.”
“Conspiracy theorists begin by rejecting mainstream explanations for social and political events in favor of supposedly suppressed knowledge and hidden hands,” Yair Rosenberg wrote in The Atlantic. “Once a person has convinced themselves that an invisible hand is manipulating the masses, they are just a couple of Google searches away from discovering that it belongs to an invisible Jew.”
Atoning for sins on Yom Kippur is only part of the process. The sins in the Al Chet are committed before God, but the victims are other people.
“For transgressions between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones,” the Mishnah says, “however, for transgressions between a person and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases the other person.”
Before you can be “cleansed from all your sins,” you must seek out the forgiveness of the people you have wronged.
The Nets ended Irving’s suspension after eight games. Before his first game back, a hundred supporters gathered outside the arena in Brooklyn wearing shirts with the logo for Israel United In Christ, a hate group according to the SPLC, and distributed antisemitic literature.
The Black Hebrew Israelite movement is not a monolith and “the decisive line separating the vast majority of BHI adherents” and the BHI extremists are their views on Jews, according to a recent report from the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University. The “publicly visible aspects” of the movement are represented by that fringe.
In the last seven years there has been “an unprecedented frequency and lethality of terrorist attacks” by followers or those “inspired by the BHI movement or its ideas,” the report said. A precise cause for that increase is unclear, but it “correlates with a simultaneous rise in antisemitic violent attacks in the U.S.” since 2015.
In Dec. 2019, two individuals attacked the JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City and killed Mindy Ferencz, Moshe Deutsch, and Douglas Miguel Rodriguez. Two weeks later, a man attacked a Hanukkah party in a Monsey, New York home and stabbed five people, killing Josef Neumann. In Feb. 2022, an attempt was made on Louisville, Kentucky mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg’s life.
“These incidents and others show that elements of BHI violent extremist ideas are disseminated beyond the movement and its members,” the POE report said, and as “would-be violent extremists are broadening their sources of ideologic influence... the conspiracy theories and core views of the BHI extremist fringe are in high demand.”
“When the one who sinned implores [a person] for pardon, he should grant him pardon wholeheartedly and soulfully,” Maimonides wrote in the Mishneh Torah. “Even if one persecuted him and sinned against him exceedingly, he should not be vengeful and grudge-bearing.”
Of course, it is not improper to deny forgiveness for some time and instruct the person to come to you to seek it later, so long as that period is not indefinite.
“It is forbidden for a person to be cruel and refuse to be appeased,” Maimonides wrote. Rather, he should be easily pacified, but hard to anger.”
But, modern British Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “You cannot forgive while evil is ongoing… Forgiveness is always something that accompanies a cease… There has to be an end, a truce, let us say, in the hostilities before forgiveness can begin.”
In his first interview after his two-week suspension, Irving said he is not antisemitic: “I don’t have hate in my heart for the Jewish people or anyone that identifies as a Jew. I’m not anti-Jewish or any of that.”
Before his return to action, Irving reiterated his “deep apologies to all those who are impacted over these last few weeks.”
But Irving stopped short of denouncing the entirety of the film in his first interview after his suspension and did the same in the first press conference following his return to the court.
The documentary “ended up exploring and opening my mind to more than I could put into words right now,” he said. “So, I think there are deeper conversations that I would like to have regarding the lineage of Hebrews and regarding the lineage of more of our cultures here and abroad.”
When asked about the Black Hebrew Israelites outside the arena who were there to support him and passed out literature that echoed the language in the film, Irving did not separate himself from them or reject their support. “I think that’s a conversation for another day,” he said. “I’m just here to focus on the game.’
Moses Isserles, a 16th-century Polish rabbi, wrote that in matters of slander – if a person caused the wronged person to have “a bad name” – then “there is no necessity in forgiving him.”
Slander or lashon hara (the “evil tongue”) causes irrevocable damage, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a modern American scholar, explained. And when the damage is irrevocable; when the damage will continue after an apology, we are not required to forgive.
“Lashon hara kills (three people), the inventor of the slander, the one who relates it, and the listener,” the Baal Shem Tov explained. “This takes place on the spiritual plane, but it is more severe than physical murder.”
During his initial interaction with the media after his tweet, Irving asked, “Did I hurt anybody? Did I harm anybody?”
Irving’s action tarnished the name of Jews with false accusations – the same ones echoed throughout history by those who have led pogroms against us. And don’t think that Irving’s tweet was harmful simply because it contained a link to an antisemitic film. While much of the ensuing conversation has been centered around whether Irving holds antisemitic beliefs, whether or not Irving is antisemitic is immaterial to the harm he caused.
Irving’s tweet made it more dangerous to be a Jew. As Yaron Weitzman said, “Conspiracy theories about Jews lead to dead Jews.” Irving put our lives at risk.
This may not have been what he intended. He may not have understood the extent of his simple action. He may not have known what he was spreading were falsehoods. But Irving brought this film and its message of hate to the forefront of the sports world and an audience it never deserved.
By sending this tweet, millions of people who did not seek out this hatred were exposed to it. People who did not seek out this ideology have internalized it. And some will listen to it deeply and their hearts will harden.
The well has been further poisoned.
And, history tells us, that violence will come next.
Baruch Hashem.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives in Brooklyn, New York.