‘Lynching’ must be used only in its historical context, not to describe the impeachment of a cabinet official
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is facing impeachment by House Republicans
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on November 15, 2023 in Washington, DC. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Re “The impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas is a high-tech lynching of an American Jew” by Rob Eshman
To the editor:
I truly love the Forward, which I first learned about from my father Rabbi Benjamin M. Kahn z”l, who was in sequence Hillel director at Penn State University, national director of Hillel, international head of B’Nai B’rith, and director of Jewish studies at American University. The Forward is my idea of a family inheritance.
But as someone who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas during the Civil Rights Movement, and whose uncle, Arnold Aronson, was a co-founder of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights together with A. Philip Randolph and Roy Wilkins (two storied civil rights activists), I respectfully request that you not use the word “lynching” except in its proper historical context.
To do otherwise diminishes the true historical meaning of the word, in the same way that using ‘holocaust” with a small “h” for any mass slaughter, no matter how horrific, undercuts the unspeakable nature of the Holocaust.
Thanks for understanding.
— Si Kahn
Charlotte, North Carolina
