Soul
In his book, The Soul of America: The Battle for our
Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018), Jon Meacham discusses some of the darkest times in American
history and provides an important historical narrative about the incidents
themselves and the American response.
Meacham will have the opportunity to add yet another chapter very
soon. This past weekend, on Saturday-the
weekly Sabbath for Jews-a well-armed attacker brutally slayed 11 people and
injured several more at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. There is no debate about the motives of the
attacker. This was hate and Antisemitism brought to its most visible terror-filled violent
conclusion. Again, the combination of
guns and hatred resulted in lives lost and a beautiful community damaged. Again, our public leaders either use it for
political discussion or ignore obvious solutions. Again, the average citizen asks “how can this
happen again and again?” in the land of the free. How can this happen in the United States
where the first amendment guarantees freedom of religion?
The reality is it can and does happen, right in front of
us. According to the Anti-defamation
League (ADL), there was a 57% increase in reports of anti-Semitic incidents
between 2016 and 2017. This trend line
continues. This terrible slaughter in
Pittsburgh is now an amplification of this statistic. This is the largest murder of Jews in
American history.
These data, alarming on their own, complement the violent
racist, misogynistic, sexist events that we have observed in recent times. Think about Charleston, Charlottesville,
Orlando, and now Pittsburgh and more.
There are many commonalities.
Their uniqueness comes in the stories of the people killed and
injured. They are young and old, parents
and grandparents. Lives lost. Targeted
ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
Groups that many of us embrace for the beautiful diversity that they add
to our otherwise bland culture have to experience this awfulness on a regular
basis.
I hope that you are offering thoughts and if appropriate to
your tradition, prayers, for those lost in Pittsburgh this past weekend. Their families and their community need
us. At this same time, do the same for
those who have been victims of events of the past few years. Dozens of victims and their families have
been innocent victims of violence and hate. For survivors and families, the hurt from
these isolated events is persistent and should also be remembered.
The reality of all of this is that any targeted violence against
any group of individuals is just wrong.
There is no reason to think otherwise, and there is an opportunity to
speak out and bring change to this narrative. What is to be our collective response to
this? As a first step, using the themes
Meacham raised in his book, we can ask “where
is our soul? Where are our better
angels?” We need to find them now. Thanks for the inspiration, Jon Meacham.
