I don't know why there is national pickle week but only one Mother's Day

By Gary Greene

A teacher gave her class of second-graders a lesson about the magnet and what it does.  The next day, in a written test, she included this question: “My name has six letters. The first one is m. I pick up things. What am I?” When the test papers were turned in, the teacher was astonished to find that almost 50 percent of the students answered the question with the word mother. Yes, mothers do pick up things. But they are much more than “magnets,” gathering up clothes and picking up toys around the house. As willing as many mothers are to do such chores, they have a higher calling.  A good mother loves her family and provides an atmosphere where each member can find acceptance, security, and understanding. She is there when the children need a listening ear, a comforting word, a warm hug, or a loving touch on a fevered brow.

Jewish mothers are just like all other mothers only more so. A young Jewish Mother walks her son to the school bus corner on his first day of kindergarten.   " Behave, my bubaleh" she says. "Take good care of yourself and think about your Mother, tataleh!"  " And come right back home on the bus, schein kindaleh." "Your Mommy loves you a lot, my ketsaleh!"  At the end of the school day the bus comes back and she runs to her son and hugs him. " So what did my pupaleh learn on his first day of school?"  The boy answers, "I learned my name is David."

Jewish mothers have many roles in the family. One of them should be her greatest joy and that is teaching her children to love God and encouraging them to study Torah.  I’m sure you know that famous Yiddish lullaby oifen pripishek.

On the hearth a little fire is burning,

And it is hot in the house,

And the rebbe is teaching the little children.

The Aleph Bet.

See now children, remember dear ones,

What you've learned here;

repeat it again and again

Aleph with kametz is "o"!

Study, children, with great interest,

That is what I tell you;

He who'll know his lessons first,

Will get a banner for a prize. (Refrain)

When you get older, children,

You will understand that this alphabet

Contains the tears and the weeping

of our people.

When you grow weary, children

And burdened with exile,

You will find comfort and strength

within this Jewish alphabet.

When I was working in Springfield, MA, my houses back yard abutted the local Day School play ground.  Consequently, my boys would hear the first bell and walk to school and still arrive in the classroom on time.  As our children left for school my wife Judy would lean out the back window and say, “We love you.  Have a good day. Learn a lot of Torah!”

These kinds of Jewish mother deserves to be honored—not just on one special day a year but every day. That recognition should involve more than words.  It ought to be shown in respect, thoughtfulness, and loving deeds.  Every day should be Mother’s Day.

If Jewish mothers are so important sometimes Jewish grandmothers are even more crucial.  Sometimes modern Jewish mothers don’t have the Jewish skills to raise their child or lacks the inclination. Sometimes Christian mothers are raising their Jewish children.  That’s where Jewish grandmother’s come in.  They are more important than they realize. Grandparents are the doorway to a loving Jewish home atmosphere. Grandchildren and great grandchildren’s early and informal Jewish education in their home has been proven to have a profound influence on their behavior and on the religious character of their future household.

On behalf of all Jewish educators I want to thank all Jewish mothers and grandmothers for being their children’s very first and most important transmitters of Yiddishkeit this Mother’s Day and every day of the year.

Showing Up is 80% of Life

By Gary Greene

One afternoon we toured Jaffa looking at it through the lens of leadership.  Jaffa’s history can be divided into two periods.  Until the 19^th century, Jaffa was a gentile port city.  Its leaders were divine right kings who had absolute power.  Not a very good model for us in the 21^st century no matter how we might fantasize about it.

The second period is the Zionist era.  Our tour guide Steve Israel suggested that Jews demonstrated three different types of leadership while developing Jaffa. Life in Palestine was bone crushing hard during the Second Aliyah.  “Many despaired of the difficult economic and health conditions and returned to Russia.” (Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 9 page 302)  Over 50% of these Jews left Palestine, but enough persisted to lay the foundation of the modern State of Israel.  Many of the future leaders of Israel like David Ben Gurion came from this era who showed up and remained.

In Jaffa there was a grocery man named Yechezke’el Sokovolsky. He was the community’s connector represented the second type of leadership.  When he saw a need, he immediately filled it without a moment’s hesitation.  He volunteered his services, his connections, and his money to make sure that Jaffa would become a thriving Jewish city.  The third type of leadership became the elected official like a city council person and mayor.

I appreciated the different kinds of leadership because not all of us can be an elected official. I also realize not all of us have the time, money, and inclination to step up to meet every need.  Nevertheless, everybody can just show up from time to time and that too is a form of leadership.  The Celebrate Israel Parade is a wonderful example.

At least in my community, too many parents with their families are reluctant to participate in the Celebrate Israel Day Parade for many reasons including the fear that such a rally will draw a terrorist attack.  Although their fears are real, they are unfounded.  There has never been a terrorist attack in all the years of the Parade’s history and the New York police force does an outstanding job protecting us and securing the parade route.

We need Jewish leaders supporting Israel.  As Woody Allen once said, “80% of life is just showing up.”  All we want are families just to show up at the Parade, Sunday, June 3^rd.  By doing so, they will step up to a valuable position of leadership in our community.  These leaders will lead the rest of us by their example.

BTW, if you want to show up at my synagogue’s screening of the Israeli movie Cables (Irit recommended this movie to me while we were in Israel), please do so.  It is free and begins at 7pm.  Marathon JCC, 245-37 60 Ave, Douglaston, NY 11362.

Let Me Show You My Portfolio...Bazinga!

Alan Rowe is an old friend and one of the principals at Torah Aura Productions. Alan has been a tech guy in Jewish education since before the internet was available to mere mortals (those of us who were not in the military or at one of a handful of universities using PLATO). He for as long as I have known him (almost 25 years) he has been beta testing one program or another. Sometimes to see how it can help Torah Aura in their work, sometimes to see how it might help Jewish teachers. And as often as not, just to see what cool things were possible. He is that kind of guy. 

A few weeks ago he sent me a link to a blog posting about using Evernote to create student portfolios. He wanted to know if I thought there might be an application for synagogue or "complementary" education.

SHAZAM! 

BAZINGA!

[GEEKY EXPRESSION OF AMAZEMENT OF YOUR CHOICE]!

GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST! [O.K. Not that one.]

As soon as you finish this reading posting - or sooner, you may not care about what I have to say - check out Rob Van Nood's blog posting "How to Create a Portfolio with Evernote."

Educational Portfolios

Dr. Helen C. Barrett maintains that one of the many purposes of the educational portfolio is "to support reflection that can help students understand their own learning and to provide a richer picture of student work that documents growth over time." We in complementary schools have many frustrations - not enough time or enough days for learning, the supply of teachers, parents who bring their children to us for many different reasons, and not always the ones we think they should have - just to name a few. I think that getting students to reflect more deeply on the learning and meaningful evaluation are two that we don't often even get to when we are bemoaning the things we wish we could do. Barrett continues:

"Artists have maintained portfolios for years, often using their collection for seeking further work, or for simply demonstrating their art; an artist's portfolio usually includes only their best work. Financial portfolios contain a comprehensive record of fiscal transactions and investment holdings that represent a person's monetary worth. By contrast, an educational portfolio contains work that a learner has selected and collected to show growth and change over time; a critical component of an educational portfolio is the learner's reflection on the individual pieces of work (often called "artifacts") as well as an overall reflection on the story that the portfolio tells. There are many purposes for portfolios in education: learning, assessment, employment, marketing, showcase, best works."

I first learned about portfolios as a graduate student in Jewish Education a long time ago. They sound wonderful don't they? Imagine if we could collect the creative output of each of our students over the course of the year. Every once in a while a teacher could ask each student to share what they think their best work was so far, or to discuss an idea they have been developing. 

Parents could be invited to review the portfolio in a conference with the teacher and student and get a real sense of what their child has been doing at temple each week instead of a progress report with letter grades and a brief paragraph that might include the phrase "I really enjoyed having Ploni in my class this year." And items from the portfolios could be displayed, celebrating each child in the eyes of the congregation!

Ah well. That sounds awesome for a day school or general education school. They have enough hours in the day and enough days in the week. They have professionally trained and licensed teachers who have more time to give. Our teachers are awesome, but they have so little time and we pay them so little. We all know that song. We sing it every time we come upon an educational innovation. Poor us. We are too small, too poor and have too little time. We could never do it.

Nonsense.
(Those of you who can remember the comedian David Steinberg know what that really means.) 

I am tired of those excuses. Saying "Yes We Can" is more than political slogan. I have spent a fair amount of time evangelizing for using Web 2.0 technologies to leverage the things we might be lacking like time, money and staff. 
We can and we should be using portfolios. They hold so much promise for making meaning. And Evernote just might be the way to do it with all of the limitations we believe we are our burden.
 
Evernote
Evernote's logo is the head of an elephant. When you got to www.evernote.com the headline is "Remember Everything."


It is actually "a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a wb page or exerpt, a photo, an audio recording or even a handwritten ink note. They can be sorted into folders, tagged, annotated, edited, given comments and searched. They can even be exported as part of a ntoebook."

What's so Shazam about it?

This is where Rob Van Nood's posting comes in. He begins: "I started teaching 15 years ago and that is when I first came across this concept of a ‘portfolio.’ A portfolio is a storehouse for projects, writing pieces, art, and performances. It can be used by students, teachers, and parents to document what they’re doing (either day-to-day things or through their best work or improvements they’ve made). I see portfolios as a way to hold onto and think about what you’re doing." He is on the same page as Dr. Barrett. Here are some the things he does:

• When our school first decided to use Evernote, we set up demos with the students to show them how to use Evernote. At their age, students familiarize themselves with technology really quickly and naturally. A few picked it up immediately and started teaching their fellow classmates. Getting everyone up to speed didn’t take a lot of time.
• Before setting students up with Evernote accounts, I created a set of guidelines for the students so they knew what kind of things to put into Evernote. We also discussed the kinds of tags that they should be using, so we’d all be on the same page.
• Students started asking, ‘How can I put this into Evernote?’  I set my classroom up with a Lexmark Pro scanner so students are able to immediately capture their work and send it to their Evernote portfolio. They can also capture using any number of mobile devices where they have Evernote installed. They’re even able to access their work on their iPod Touch in class.
• When a student comes up with an interesting strategy on a whiteboard, I have them write down their name next to it and take a picture of it, or record them explaining what they came up with. Great ideas are saved to Evernote to show progress over the course of the school year.
• I’ve actually started emailing parents with these progress notes immediately after I capture them. I’m able to show the parents that their kid had a great growth moment or did something they’ve never done before. The real-time sharing was appreciated not only by the parents, but also excited the students.
• The final ‘piece’ of the portfolio work is, of course, sharing. For our Spring conference, we asked students to have one example of work from each area (math, writing, art, kinesthetic) to share with their parents. The students actually taught the parents how to use Evernote at our conference by familiarizing them with their portfolios.

He also uses it for parent teacher conferences.


I will be spending some time with our Religious School Vision Team and some members of our faculty exploring using Evernote Portfolios. I am hoping to introduce them in one or two grades next year. In our school, our students in Kitot Alef - Vav (1 - 6) have two teachers. One is for general Jewish studies and the other focuses on Hebrew. I think that the portfolios will give the two teachers a powerful tool for connecting the learning between their classes. 

And I am incredibly excited about curating these portfolios in a way that will allow us to share students' work with the entire congregation (with their permission of course). And the opportunity for kids to share their work with grandparents will open opportunities for intergenerational learning. 

Are you using Evernote Portfolios? Please share. And contact me if you are interested in exploring the possibilities with me. And also check out Van Nood's Evernote Portfolio Blog.


Cross-posted from Welcome to the Next Level

Yom Hashoa here and there

by Gary Greene

3 synagogues come togther to remember the 6 million at a joint Yom Hashoa service.  I was asked to reflect upon how Yom Hashoa is observed in Israel as opposed to the way we observe it here.  Since I tied my remarks to our visit to the Israel Museum, I thought I would share them with you.  Here they are:

I studied in Israel this past February as part of the Hebrew School Principals cohort of the Leadership Institute.  We visited The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  It has just been recently renovated, expanded and now open to the public.  One of the wings contains Jewish life cycle and holiday displays.  Along the walls holiday artifacts are exhibited like Hanukiyas and Purim Megillahs, but in the center the two newest holidays, Yom Hashoa and Israel Independence Day are highlighted. 

Here in America unless you attend a Yom Hashoa service like ours, the day passes without notice.  The Yom Hashoa exhibit shows how differently the average Israeli marks Yom Hashoa than we do.  It touches every Israeli's life.  On a never-ending  video loop, we see a major highway with cars and trucks zooming to their destination.  A siren sounds and all traffic stops, drivers and passengers leave their vehicles, and stand at silent attention until another siren beckons them back to their cars and trucks.

As I stood at that virtual Yom Hashoa memorial in Jerusalem, my thoughts turned a Yizkor prayer by Jules Harlow found in Siddur Sim Shalom.

“Lamentation and bitter weeping have been ours, in refusing to be comforted for those who are no more.

Yet, we shall survive to sing, to flourish, to turn our mourning into gladness.

In spite of every obstacle we shall endure, nurturing our children to overcome despair.

In spite of every obstacle, we shall praise sustained by Your promise of redemption.

Our people survived the sword…

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, for You redeem our lives from destruction.”

Those words of prayer have taken on even more meaning tonight as I learned about our candle lighters lives (either survivors and 2nd generation) written and then delivered by our teenagers. I appreciate the candle lighters for sharing their story of triumph over despair and appreciate our young men and women for recording them to learn from those lives for us and posterity.

I conclude with the traditional words of consolation to us all: “May God comfort you along with all the mourners of Jerusalem and Zion.” And let us say amen.

Greene on greens

by Gary Greene

Nothing is insignificant when it comes to the seder.  Each symbolic food has a deeper meaning, something more than just meets the eye.  Some are more obvious than others.  Matzah is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in Egypt.  It is poor man’s bread.  A little goes a long way so matzah is a cost efficient means of feeding slaves.  It is also the bread of freedom for matzah was the first bread baked because the Jews couldn’t tarry and let the dough rise as they left Egyptian slavery.  I like what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks saw in this double meaning of matzah.  “The difference between freedom and slavery does not lie in the quality of the bread we eat, but the state of mind in which we eat it." 

Others foods’ meanings are not as obvious unless they are mined for the diamonds contained within the depths of the symbol.  Take Karpas, the greens we dip into the salt water, for example.  Karpas symbolizes spring and indeed Passover is the holiday of springtime, Hag Ha-aviv.  What is the deeper meaning of the Karpas?

For me, Karpas or spring represents God’s love for the Jewish people.  The Holy One was most thoughtful when He redeemed the Jewish people.  If he redeemed us during the raining winter months, the joy of the Exodus would have been dampened.  This past winter was one of the rainiest in recorded Israel’s short history.  It rained 27 days out of 31 during the month of January alone!  Although Israel needed the rain because the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, has been at its all time low, no tourist is thrilled to walk through all that rain and ensuing mud.  When we were in Israel as part of our Israel Seminar, we were blessed with beautiful tourist weather for the most part.  Certainly the weather added to the enjoyment of our trip.  Can you imagine how the Israelites would have complained about leaving Egypt during the rainy season?! 

If God would have redeemed us during the hot summer months, the Exodus would have been just as unbearable.  I know how the heat zaps a person as he travels for when I rode my bike from Jerusalem to Eilat back in October 2010. The first day out on the road the temperature hit 113 degrees F!  I remember sitting on the ledge of the water truck for over a half hour just guzzling water so I could continue on until the next water stop. Can you imagine how the Israelites would have complained about leaving Egypt during the hot summer months?

But the spring months are a delight.  The rains have stopped falling. Every thing is green and the wild flowers are blooming thanks to the rain.  The weather is neither too hot nor too cold.  It is just right for a tiyul, hike, or an Exodus from slavery.  God choose this perfect time of year for us to leave Egypt because He loves us so and wanted us enjoy our freedom in every way.   

Disciples of Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn collected and adapted his teachings as a commentary on the Haggadah called The Kol Menachem Haggadah. They offer another Karpas diamond for our consideration.  In the commentary on Karpas, the Lubuvitcher Rebbe wrote: “According to the Kabbalah, tibul, is symbolic of bitul (or negation) of the self, which is why in Hebrew we find that one word is an anagram of the other: kuchy=kuyhc.  And one does not need to be a mystic to appreciate why.  The purpose of dipping a food into a flavoring agent is so that the food should surrender some of its own taste and “give away’ to a more desirable quality found in the flavoring agent. (page 25)”  “The only way we can transcend the limitations of our own existence is by surrendering to something greater than ourselves.  This is the inner message of dipping, where one food surrenders its flavor into the liquid in which it is dipped.” (page 23)

I quoted Rabbi Sacks in an earlier blog: “A free society is always a moral achievement.  It rests on self-restraint and regard for others.”  The Lubuvitcher Rebbe is teaching us freedom demands even more than just self-restrain and regard for others.  Free human beings who want to live a meaningful life, need to pay attention to what’s really important in life.  The focus of our being shouldn’t be on us, our needs, our ego, but rather the focus should be on the needs of the other.  When we give our lives over to a cause greater than ourselves, we achieve the ideals of Passover, living a meaningful life as free human beings.

The Karpas asks us where our true passions lay, what noble causes animate our lives, when do we do transcend our own limitations by surrendering to something greater than ourselves, and why we must take an active role in those causes for the sake of our future redemption.  These are certainly worthy 4 questions to ask at the seder table and other every night.

My Fifth Question

By Gary Greene

Every year I study one or two new commentaries on the Haggadah to enrich my seder.  This year’s Haggadah is one of the best commentaries I have ever read and one that really resonates with me after our Israel seminar.  I can’t recommend highly enough Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s Haggadah.  The religious lessons he gleans from the tradition text truly moves me.  I have already taught successfully the commentary below using one of the protocols we learned during the summer.

The Maggid section of the Haggadah begins with “Ha Lachma Onya.”  This paragraph ends: “This year we are slaves – next year, may we be free.”  Rabbi Sack writes:

There are two words for freedom in Hebrew, chofesh and cherut.  Chofesh is ‘freedom from’.  Cherut is ‘freedom to’. Chofesh is what a slave acquires when released from slavery.  He or she is free from being subject to someone else’s will.  But this kind of liberty is not enough to create a free society.  A world in which everyone is free to do what they like begins in anarchy and ends in tyranny.  That is why chofesh is only the beginning of freedom, not its ultimate destination.  Cherut is collective freedom, a society in which my freedom respects yours.  A free society is always a moral achievement.  It rests on self-restraint and regard for others.  The ultimate aim of the Torah is to fashion a society on the foundations of justice and compassion, both of which depend on recognizing the sovereignty of God and the integrity of creation.  Thus we say, ‘Next year may we be bnei chorin,’ invoking cherut not chofesh.  It means, ‘May we be free in a way that honours the freedom of all.’

After reading his understanding of cherut, I couldn’t help think but about the some of the social justice issues we confronted during our stay in Israel.  I visited kav le’oved and my group learned about the asylum seekers from war torn Africa like the Sudan and Eritrea.  Our speaker took us on a walking tour to South Tel Aviv where these asylum seekers sleep out doors in the park no matter what the weather might be.  Besides no housing, hunger, employment, education, and other necessities of life which lead to human dignity are sorely lacking or at best inadequate.

The Israeli government certainly isn’t living up to the ideals of our Torah as taught in the Haggadah by creating a society built on the foundation of both justice and compassion.  Instead of giving these people refugee status which would guarantee them certain legal rights, they have no rights at all.  Instead of creating refugee camps or other living facilities for them, Israel is building a 10,000 bed prison to house them because the government has enacted laws that make the trek to safety and freedom a crime.  Thank God, individual Israelis are stepping up in lieu of the government.  But more needs to be done.

I don’t have solutions, but Passover, the Haggadah, and Rabbi Sack’s commentary challenges me.  What should I be doing to alleviate their suffering so to honor the freedom of all?  That’s my fifth question for my seder.

If you are more interested in learning more about these asylum seekers and the daily problems and challenges, I encourage you to read my friend Allen Katzoff’s blog, Seven Months in Tel Aviv.  Allen is a past director of Camp Ramah in New England and is now in Israel while his wife Joan Leegant teaches literature and writing at the Bar Ilan University.

I shall not hate

I Shall Not Hate

By Gary Greene

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t reflect upon what I saw and learned during our Israel Seminar.  Preparing for Passover was no exception.  Although this is a longer than a normal blog, I felt compelled to write and share my thoughts.    

After all that Joseph had done for Pharaoh and Egypt, the new Pharaoh didn’t remember him and enslaved the Jewish people. If Israel had reasons to hate any nation, it would expectably be Egypt.  Nevertheless, God commands Israel “You shall not abhor an Egyptian for you were a stranger in his land.” (Dt. 23:8)  Rashi explains that even though they threw the males into the Nile to drown them, we owe them a debt of gratitude “for they were your host at a time of pressing need (i.e., the time of the famine in the days of Jacob and Joseph) therefore (we’re not to hate them.). Ha-Emek Devar (Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, 1817-1893) elaborates in his commentary that God wanted to elevate our souls by recognizing the good and not become base people by denying that good.  Consequently, the Holy one wanted us to internalize this commandment.  Thanks to my time in Israrel, I was introduced to a modern role model from the ranks of the unexpected.

After the official Seminar was over, I remained in Israel instead of rushing back home.  I joined our colleague Robin and her friend, a college professor who had studied at the Albright Institute in East Jerusalem, and went on an explore of East Jerusalem.  Being academics all, of course, we had to stop at several bookstores.  Those bookstores were eye openers for I saw volume after volume of books which you never see in Jewish Jerusalem.  They presented a completely different narrative of the Palestinian-Israeli story.  One book caught my eye, I shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish so I bought it.

Izzeldin Abuelaish was born and raised in Gaza.  He was the first Gazan physician admitted to a residency program in Israel.  In Dr. Marek Glezerman’s introduction to the book, he writes, “In 1995, at about the time I moved on to a chairmanship at another hospital, Izzeldin was admitted to the residency program in obstetrics at Soroka Medical Center.  It was an individually designed residency, not aimed at board exams but at completion of the curriculum.  He completed against all-odds-all the different departments and rotations, with schedules.  For instance, if you don’t show up, someone else has to pitch n for you on short notice, and nobody likes to do that.  Depending on what was happening at the border, there were times when Izzeldin, along with other Palestinians from Gaza, were not allowed to enter Israel.  Sometimes after night shifts when the border was closed, he couldn’t get back home to his family in Gaza. But he never called it quits.  He completed the six year program, he acquired full command of the Hebrew language, and he became a skilled gynecologist and obstetrician.” (page x)

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish details the deprivations, problems, and hopelessness of the average Gazan in his book.  Tragedy struck his family during the Operation Cast Lead in 2009 when Israel invaded Gaza to put an end to the incessant shelling of Sederot and other Israeli communities.  Three of his daughters and a niece were killed when an Israeli tank fired point blank at their third floor room. Dr. Abuelaish is a well know Gazan who has repeatedly spoke out for co-existence and against terrorism both in Gaza and in the Israeli media.  His address was well known by Palestinian and Israelis.  The death of his daughters and neice was a needless tragedy of the greatest proportions.  Once again Dr. Glezerman writes that the Ministry of Defense has responded by stalling and evasion to the growing number of Israelis demanding a formal and independent Israeli investigation. (page xiii)

Dr. Abuelaish does not hate and still speaks out for peace and reconciliation between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  His words are worth reading and actualizing.

Revenge was on the lips and in the minds of most people I talked to in the days after my daughters and niece were killed…We struggled together, my children and I, and I tried to respond to the chorus of people calling for Israeli blood to atone the deaths of my girls.  One said, “Don’t you hate the Israelis?”  Which Israelis am I supposed to hate? I replied.  The doctors and the nurses I work with?  The ones trying to save Ghaida’s life and Shatha’s eyesight? The babies I have delivered?  Families like the Madmoonys (Israelis) who gave me work and shelter when I was a kid?

Still, the cries for reprisals didn’t stop.  What about the soldier who fired the deadly volleys from the tank?  Didn’t I hate him?  But that’s how the system works here: we use hatred and blame to avoid the reality that eventually we need to come together.  As for the soldier who shelled my house, I believe that in his conscience he has already punished himself, that he is asking himself, “What have I done?”  And even if he doesn’t think that now, tomorrow he will be a father.  He will suffer for his actions when he sees how precious is the life of his child.

To those who seek retaliation, I say, even if I got revenge on all the Israeli people, would it bring my daughters back?  Hatred is an illness.  It prevents healing and peace. (page 187-8)

That’s how things happen in the Middle East – the size of the rhetoric trumps the facts on the ground.  In my experience, the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians were horrified by the terrifying events of the three week war.  The reaction of ordinary people strengthens the case for our need to talk to each other, to listen to act.  And it reinforces my lifelong belief that out of bad comes something good.  Maybe now I really have to believe that; the alternative is too dark to consider.  My three precious daughters and my niece are dead.  Revenge, a disorder that is epidemic in the Middle East, won’t get them back for me.  It is important to feel anger in the wake of events like this; anger that signals that you do not accept what has happened, that spurs you to make a difference.  But you have to choose not to spiral into hate.  All the desire for revenge and hatred does is to drive away wisdom, increase sorrow, and prolong strife.  The potential good that could come out of this soul-searing bad is that together we might bridge the fractious divide that has kept us apart for six decades.

The catastrophe of the deaths of my daughters and niece has strengthened my thinking, deepened my belief about how to bridge the divide.  I understand down to my bones that violence is futile.  It is a waste of time, lives, and resources, and has been proven only to beget more violence.  It does not work.  It just perpetuates a vicious cycle.  There’s only one way to bridge the divide, to live together, to realize the goals of two people:  we have to find the light to guide us to our goal.  I’m not talking about the light of religious faith here, but light as a symbol of truth.  The light that allows you to see, to clear away the fog – to find wisdom.  To find the light of truth, you have to talk to, listen to, and respect each other.  Instead of wasting energy on hatred, use it to open your eyes and see what’s really going on.  Surely, if we can see the truth, we can live side by side.

I am a physician, and as a consequence I see thinks most clearly in medical terms.  I am arguing that we need an immunization program, one that injects people with respect, dignity, and equality, one that inoculates them against hatred. (195)

Recently, Rabbi David Wise taught me that the Hebrew word for   

Revenge (Nekamah) is only one letter away from the Hebrew word Comfort (Nechamah).  As we are at the crossroads, may the Jewish people and the Palestinian People choose Nechamah over Nekamah.