I woke up this morning like I do most mornings. About 3 hours after my husband to a friendly lick on the knuckle by my dog Scout.
It was 8:30 am and he was right, time to get up. If I chose to ignore this gentle wake up and "hit the snooze" (that is, roll over and ignore him) then the more insidious, double-dog bark alarm would go off in about 14 minutes which is a terrible way to start the day.
I reached for my phone... come on... you all do it don't you?... and oh... yes... right. My beloved Israel, being defended on Facebook by all my friends and bashed in the real world by pretty much everyone else. Another day of trying to stay away from, but being drawn into the conflict that consumes my heart, my faith and my people. And trying not to take personally the vitriol, the negativity, the biases that I am reading.
And then it hit me. I mean it really hit me.
I was meant to come back to being a religious school director at this time for this reason. To continue the path of peace.
I have always taught peace in my schools, and urged my teachers to do so as well, no matter how we may have felt in our hearts. Every generation MUST be taught peace, and the faith-based classroom is the perfect place to do it. You may think that their parents are teaching their children this lesson at home, but I will challenge you with this: if that is the case, then why are we still seeing kids bully other kids for looking different? For being gay? For praying in a different building? Parents continue to teach their own biases, sometimes deliberately, and sometimes not. It's only with mindful parenting that the cycle stops with the next generations.
But we can challenge it in the classroom. We can send those kids home with a simple question and maybe, just maybe change the conversation at the dinner table. Or at least the language.
It's time for me, and the brilliant teachers and Rabbis I will have by my side, to teach peace while we teach everything else we do. Even if sometimes we feel like we want to have a different discussion. Because that's where peace will really start.
With our children, and then, with theirs.
Not just in Israel, but in the Ukraine. (Did you see the news today?)
And on the playgrounds in the USA.
And in all places where there are people who need this now.
Today is September 12, 2011.
Yesterday the world stopped to remember a day that we still cannot get our brains around.
The very anticipation of the Tenth Anniversary of September 11 felt like a slow drumbeat to me.
It began in July, when I visited the site which is no longer called Ground Zero. I was invited in to hear strangers' stories, thanks to a program hosted by Facing History and Ourselves and the World Trade Center Tribute Center. When I arrived at the World Trade Center area I was struck by the intensity of thousands of people, moving in all different directions. People in business suits, and in shorts. Techies, tourists, teachers, analysts, lawyers, financial people, construction workers, security people, and lots of police trying to move human beings and traffic. It was a Tuesday. A beautiful Tuesday... just like... don't think like that.... I looked up. A new skyscraper was being built. I had no idea.
On that day in July I learned the power of the personal narrative. I shared mine, and got tears in my eyes as I heard others tell theirs.
Yesterday, when I watched the survivors' families reading the names of those lost I could not stop thinking that every one of the nearly three thousand lost souls has a story. Some of the readers shared tiny windows to their stories with the world yesterday. A little boy, nearly ten, had never met his father, and thanked him for loving him. A woman was still in so much pain she could barely pronounce her husband's name. A father lost his son and daughter-in-law... a whole generation gone.
Click here to see photos of the Memorial
People my age do not remember Pearl Harbor, and we are a little too young to have been felt the full impact of the weight of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. But we are the generation that will forever share this. I know that everyone goes through terrible life-changing crises ... a near death experience, an illness that leaves them changed or scarred, the loss of someone dear to them... but a catastrophe shared by so many on a such a deep level leaves a profound mark on a generation.
There is a movement to make September 11 a day of service. A mitzvah day. Will that keep the haters from hating? Of course not. Will that bring back the deceased? Nothing will, but I guess it will honor their memory a lot more than turning to hate. Every generation must become more loving, more compassionate, more tolerant than the one before it. That is the only path to peace. I know that not everyone feels that way. But it's the only way.
Give peace a chance.
