O pinion
What ‘The Wire’ Actor Michael K.

WiIlliams Taught My Jewish Students
BY RABBI JOE WOLFSON
BETWEEN 2008 and 2011,
one of the ways I survived
in yeshiva was “The Wire,”
HBO’s groundbreaking police
drama. Tosafot and Rambam
throughout the day, Brother
Mouzone, Avon Barksdale and
McNulty late at night.

Our beit midrash had a
main lower part and an upper
part up some steps. These were
the low rises and the high rises.

The fish pond in the garden
was the docks. When one of
my rabbis asked me about
my dating life, the scene of
imprisoned Avon asking young
Marlo how things on the street
were going came to my mind.

I responded as Marlo did: “It’s
all in the game.”
I can own my weirdness,
but I wasn’t alone. A friend
who had attended elite private
schools and universities in the
U.K. before moving to Israel
to work in tech — his life was
about as far removed from the
Baltimore ghettos as possible
— told me he loved “The Wire”
so much because “I can just
relate so well to the characters.”
Ridiculous and outrageous
as this may be, it’s a testament
to the unique brilliance of “The
Wire.” I can only assume that
if Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews
responded this way to “The
Wire,” then other cultural
subgroups were similarly
riveted. Yet even amid all this
brilliance, one character
especially stood out. Omar
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Little, a frightening stick-up
artist who nevertheless lived
by a code of honor, stole
nearly every scene in which
he appeared. As The Guardian
once put it, “if ‘The Wire’ is a
cult, then Omar is a cult within
a cult.”
The actor who played Omar
Little, Michael K. Williams,
died on the eve of Rosh
Hashanah at the age of 54.

Years after the show aired, I
had the privilege of getting to
know Williams. His passing
and the memories it brought
back suggested what society
in general and the Jewish
community in particular can
learn from his life.

In 2015, I began working as a
rabbi at New York University’s
Bronfman Center for Jewish
Life. Downtown Manhattan
boasts more than its fair share
of famous folk, and one day
the man I could only think
of as Omar literally bumped
into me. Any desire to respect
his privacy was overwhelmed
by my excitement. Far from
showed him the brilliant Omar
Omer counter.

I told him about my work
with students at NYU, and he
told me about his nephew who
had recently left jail after 20
years and the HBO documen-
tary “Raised in the System” they
had made together focusing on
the school-to-prison pipeline.

He wanted to find audiences
for the documentary’s message.

I wanted to find a way for our
community to think seriously
about criminal justice. We
decided to work together.

Few of the tributes in recent
days have focused on Williams’
work as an activist, but I am
reasonably confident that if he
could choose one of his works
that people would watch in
the aftermath of his passing,
it would be “Raised In The
System.” Shortly before Passover,
in the spring of 2019, the
Bronfman Center and the
Orthodox Union’s Jewish
Learning Initiative on Campus
at NYU hosted Williams for a
[Michael K.] Williams wished to tell the story of
his own community, but simultaneously
expressed a genuine curiosity about the
Jewish community.

being annoyed at my intrusion,
he was exceedingly gracious
and even agreed to record a
Shanah Tovah greeting for our
community. We arranged to
get coffee a couple of weeks
later. Humble, gracious, curious
is how I would describe that
coffee. I asked a few questions
about “The Wire.” Was the
Sunday truce — when warring
gangs would put down their
arms — actually a thing? I
told him how many Jews were
obsessed with the show and
completely baffled him when I
viewing of the documentary
and a panel discussion.

It’s impossible to watch
the documentary and not feel
broken-hearted over the lives
of beautiful young people
who get sucked up within the
prison industrial complex. The
documentary takes a viewer
from being an outsider to the
issue to a passionate believer
that incarceration rates are a
national priority issue which
must and can be fixed.

Yet the stars of the evening
were not Williams and the
KVETCH ’N’ KVELL
An Incongruous Opinion
MOSHE PHILLIPS’ DIVISIVE RANT about Israel and rabbi
bashing (“The Real Danger of That Atheist Harvard Chaplain,”
Sept. 9) seemed incongruous on the Exponent’s opinion pages.

Phillips poo-poohed a rabbi’s credentials even though he
hides his own in public profiles. Phillips attacked Harvard hiring
a secular humanist chaplain, even though that happened in 2005.

All recent demographic studies report Jews as the least religious
group in America, thus Harvard chose someone relatable to its
students. Rabbi Epstein’s promotion to chief chaplain illustrates
his success.

I’m happy these young, bright Jews who don’t identify with
religion found an alternative role model for staying in our
community. Not my brand of Judaism either, but if it works,
great. Then Phillips attacked Epstein’s Zionism due to a tweet
labeling as “supremacists” some Jewish Israelis who provoca-
tively marched, chanting “We’re here — so suffer!” and “Death
to Arabs!”
The centrist Israeli foreign minister also commented that day,
saying “The fact that there are extremists for whom the Israeli
flag represents hate and racism is abominable and intolerable.

It is incomprehensible how one can hold an Israeli flag in one’s
hand and shout ‘death to Arabs’ at the same time ... this is not
Judaism and not Israeli and it certainly is not what our flag
symbolizes. These people shame the people of Israel.”
If Phillips’ Zionist test requires siding with those “national-
ists,” then the foreign minister’s out. Epstein’s tweet demonstrated
calling out bigotry, Jewish or not.

Finally, Phillips bemoaned Epstein’s association with J Street,
a left-wing organization espousing a two-state solution. Phillips
omitted his leadership at Herut, a right-wing group.

Such vitriol is decimating American Zionism. Publishing it
before Yom Kippur is especially discordant. As the other op-eds
noted, especially now, we need to be kinder and remember we are
one people who need each other.

No exceptions. l
F. Penina Hoffnung | Philadelphia
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SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
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