In Mourning for Three Young Men and For All of Us.

I join with the entirety of the Jewish people and with our many friends in mourning the senseless murders of  Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaer.  It is only right that we mourn for our own. At the same time, we mourn for a world so broken that the murder of children has really become a commonplace. If we are sensitive to the cries of mothers who look and sound like us, maybe one day will be respond to the cries of mothers who don't.
Those of us who believe ourselves to be faithful, decent people need to raise our voices, not in cries of vengeance but in prayer and words of peace. We need to own up to the fact that we are creating a world so rife with violence that it is virtually unlivable for many of its inhabitants. We are failing at our mission to be God's viceroys and stewards on earth.

Three Jewish boys dead.  Five Palestinians. Hundreds jailed. The rationalizations, the recriminations, the calls for revenge, the clamp-down, the resistance, the clamp-down on the resistance are soon to come. We can take the well-worn and easy route and spiral ever-downward or we can seek to climb the steep ladder that ascends to friendship and peace.

We do have choices. Every time we claim that we do not, we belittle the great gift of moral choice which is the common inheritance of all mankind.  When we choose good, when we choose peace and compassion we honor that same gift.

Master of the World! Please help us give the world the comfort of our best choices.