For a little while last week, I felt hopeful about the world.
There was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, honoring the man who shared his Bible-based vision of peace and justice, achievable through nonviolent means. I felt hopeful being reminded that despite the continuing racial problems in America, we have come a long way indeed since Dr. King’s time.
My hope was also nourished a day earlier, when Pope Francis made his first visit to Rome’s synagogue, the oldest synagogue in the diaspora. Located just across the Tiber River from the Vatican, the synagogue bears many symbols of historical Jewish persecution. For about 300 years, until the mid-19th century, Roman Jews were forced to live in the neighborhood, the first ghetto ever, which is still called by that name. But on this particular January Sunday, the Pope called for Jews and Christians to “feel like brothers united by the same God and by a rich common spiritual heritage,” He urged Christians to take pilgrimages to the Holy Land to visit Israel. And he spoke out strongly against those who use religion to incite and justify acts of barbaric violence.
The two giant religious figures, Dr. King and Pope Francis, spread life-affirming messages of peace. Today, Pope Francis is one of the world’s favorite religious leaders. Politically and diplomatically savvy, the Pontiff is also the authentic article. He is a pastor who’s been in the trenches, and an international leader with the courage to face the blemishes and failures of the Roman Catholic Church he now leads. The 21st century Vatican is building on work that began 50 years ago with “Nostra aetate” (In Our Time), which redefined Vatican ties with Judaism. Its recently published document, “The Gifts and Calling of God are Irrevocable,” appears to be a theological breakthrough, eliminating the Catholic mission to the Jews and affirming “that the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable…” It calls on Catholics to work with Jews to combat anti-Semitism.
Martin Luther King and the pope are certainly not the only life-affirming modern spiritual leaders, although they are among the most widely recognized. There are others, lesser known, who cultivate the fields of peace. Rabbi Menachem Froman of Tekoa was one of those men of peace. He lived in the town where the biblical prophet Amos was born and spoke – and lived – a prophetic message. Rabbi Froman believed that people who are authentically religious share the spiritual depth that is the foundation of peace. He was trusted and befriended by Sheiks and Imams, the religious leaders of the neighboring villages.
Inspired once again by the life-affirming words of these spiritual leaders, for a little while last week, I felt hopeful about the world.
Then two acts of grotesque violence shattered my hope.
In the middle of a quiet day, a terrorist broke into the home of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse and mother of six, and stabbed her to death, while three of her children were inside.
Dafna Meir’s life was a portrait in life-affirmation: She worked as a nurse, advised about fertility issues, and was raising a family that included foster children – Dafna was “paying it forward” in appreciation for the foster family that raised her from age 13.
One good life is so fragile, and impacts so many others; hope is so easily destroyed! The alleged killer was soon arrested. He is 15 years old, a teenager stewed in hate, stirred by a culture that glorifies death.
If this column were fiction, I would stop right here. This is tragedy enough. Sadly, though, this is not fiction; it is fact, and there is more to tell. There was a second stabbing that day, and the victim was pregnant. The pregnant stabbing victim is the young daughter-in-law of peaceful Rabbi Froman. She is expected to recover.
Like trees consumed by a forest fire, my hopefulness went up in smoke. I thought it was gone for good.
But then I read the following words and felt a faint stirring – of tiny green shoots trying to poke through the ashes. In an interview with the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth daily, Dafna Meir’s bereaved husband, Natan, said he harbored no anger toward Palestinians in general for his wife’s death. “We don’t have anger,” he said. “I am not angry at anyone. We don’t fill ourselves with that. We don’t curse Arabs. I sit and talk with my kids and I haven’t heard a single word of that. We’re not people who hate. Dafna and I weren’t brought up that way.”
When Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited the grieving family, the young widower told him, “Dafna believed, as we do, that love is so much more powerful than hate.”
These are the people who keep hope alive.
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