Category: Communal Tragedy

People wrote their prayers on 3×5 index cards.

Prayer can give strength to activists. Prayer can remind us of our best selves, helping to galvanize action.

There is no place that God is not / Even in the barrel of a gun

What does it look like to change curses into blessings? How might we become beacons of justice and compassion in these times?

What could we do on our little campus to foster interfaith solidarity and to bring comfort to two minority religious communities whose members are likely sad and anxious about bomb threats at JCCs and reports of rising Islamophobia?

We're surrounded by the death of innocents. Orlando. Nice. Dallas. Tel Aviv. Innocents dead at the hand of terror. Innocents dead at the hand of gun violence. Innocents dead at the hand of complacency and silence. In Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France, a priest was murdered in his church, a religious man doing holy work. Hostages were taken. His throat was slit. His name was Fr. Jacques Hamel. He was 84-years-old.

When I made aliyah to

It could have been me. I could have retreated to the safe space of a gay bar or club in order to dance with a man, to hold his hand, to kiss him in safety. One of my safe havens, a safe space for LGBT people like me, has come under attack. My lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters have been killed. And it could have been me. 

Grief begins to feel like the humidity of northeast summer: a ubiquitous discomfort that we’ve come to accept as normal. 

Our lives are stitched together with thread that is easily broken. In this time of sorrow, perhaps the best we can do is remember the promise of Elijah—and believe that redemption is near.