JULY 28 • 2022 | 11
pages that the concurrence
devotes to analyzing the
constitutional issues belie
the conclusion that they are
frivolous.”
Yet, in the face of the
Supreme Court’s precedents
discouraging the award of
attorney fees to prevailing
defendants, and in the face of
the Sixth Circuit majority’s
express statement that the
lawsuit was not frivolous, on
Jan. 25, 2022, Judge Roberts
issued her decision, stating
that the lawsuit was “frivolous”
and awarding attorney fees to
the protesters in the amount
of $158,721.75, to be paid
“jointly and severally” by
myself, Miriam Brysk and
Mr. Gerber, which means that
the protesters are entitled to
obtain the complete amount
from any one of us.
MY NEW APPEAL
I have filed an appeal of this
outrageous decision, and have
filed my appellate brief, in
which I state the following:
“[W]hile the principle
that the First Amendment
affords protection even to ‘the
thought that we hate’ Girouard
v. United States, 328 U.S. 61, 68
(1946), quoting from United
States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S.
644, 655 (1929) (J. Holmes,
dissenting), entails that we
must tolerate hate speech,
it does not entail that we
must reward and champion
hate speech by requiring
that its purveyors’ attorney
fees be paid by those who
seek to limit — not entirely
expunge, but limit — the
contexts in which it may be
purveyed, by requiring that
an 87-year-old Holocaust
survivor compensate a group
of neo-Nazi antisemites their
attorney fees. And given the
centuries of antisemitism in
which the use of such hate
speech — speech claiming
that ‘Jewish Power Corrupts’
and demanding ‘No More
Holocaust Movies,’ because
we have heard enough
of Jewish whining — has
resulted in the torture and
murder of millions of Jews,
to hold that Plaintiffs’ legal
claims filed in court in an
effort to limit the use of such
hate speech in proximity to
their house of worship as they
enter their sanctuary in order
to exercise their freedom
of religion, were ‘frivolous’
is a reprehensible affront
and defilement of the Jewish
people …”
This is not an issue about
which Jewish Americans
can afford to be complacent.
American Jews are always
ready to stand up for the
rights of others. It is about
time that Jewish Americans
start standing up for their own
rights.
I have no regrets for
having filed the lawsuit
against the protesters,
notwithstanding the
outcome. If I had to do
it over, I would do so. I
continue to believe that the
Sixth Circuit’s decision was
erroneous, that hate speech
expressed in proximity to
the house of worship of any
religion is not impregnably
protected by the First
Amendment.
Marc Susselman is an attorney based
in Canton Township.
the sky, and to look deep
into the past, with a golden
vessel like the altar of incense
overlaid in gold, burning
through time and thick with the
fragrance of memory, hiding
its illuminations somewhere
beneath the smoke. And we
come to understand what and
where and when we are. And
we will see the moment that
we’ve been reading out for all of
Jewish history: “Vayomer elohim
yehi or, vayehi” or — God said,
“Let there be light and there
was light.”
We cannot — and perhaps
will never — be able to
see further, into those 250
million years after the Big
Bang but before the stars,
when all was a dark, hot
soup, unformed and void,
tohu vavohu.
Like you, perhaps, like
everyone in the world who
has ever looked seriously into
the thermodynamics of man,
I don’t know what to make of
all this. I don’t know what to
do with the knowledge that I
was forged in starlight or that
the space between my atoms
is empty, a vacuum, like the
void into which, according to
the Kabbalists, the Unending
poured first light. I don’t
know what to make of the
fact that every piece of me has
existed and will exist for all
time.
And yet, it seems as though
the fires of my imagination
are endless, that my capacities
of love and hate, laughter and
tears, are endless and abiding
and real. And I believe that
I am indeed looking out on
the world through the eyes
of God and, as the great
Christian mystic Meister
Eckart famously said, that “the
eye with which I see God is
the same eye with which God
sees me.”
I don’t know what to do
with the knowledge that all
the electrons in my body
hum and create this divine
illusion of being which is the
same as the divine majesty of
nonbeing.
But when I imagine
myself one day returning
to the stars — and when I
looked at the new images
of the universe released
this week by NASA — I am
indeed filled with a sense
of wonder and humility
and comfort and gratitude.
Maybe someday we will
build a telescope even more
mighty. Maybe we’ll go
back farther and marvel at
the dark work of creation,
the world before the letter
“bet” in bereshit, the blank
whiteness concealing and
revealing all mysteries.
Until then, each year,
we’ll roll back the scrolls,
we’ll read the story again
and, with our clumsy and
marvelous fingers, we’ll try
to touch creation.
Benjamin Resnick is rabbi of the
Pelham Jewish Center in Pelham, N.Y.
CORRECTION
In the “Best Class Ever,” (July
14, page 10) Doug Ross’
daughter Julie’s name was
inadvertently left out. We
apologize for the omission.
THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE continued from page 4