A Straight's Prayer for Young Israelis Shot for Being Gay

For Liz Troubishi, 17, and Nir Katz, 26, of blessed memory, and for the recovery of the 15 young people wounded late Saturday when a gunman invaded a Tel Aviv club for gay teens.

Lord, teach me to stand naked before you
And, in so doing, learn the meaning of modesty.

Let me stand naked, which is to say, stripped to my humanity,
And mourn these young people shot
For having chosen to practice
Their own humanity.

Cause me, Lord, to shed this defective armor,
Which we call clothing, respectability, convention,
The mask which we mistake for loyalty to tribe.
The mask which keeps me from seeing the face behind the mask of the tribe we have come to call enemy.

At the close of this dark anniversary, this time when tradition tells us, the worst of calamities were wrought by sinat hinam, hatred unbound, hatred for its own sake -- teach me what I need to know about my true enemy.

Force me to see that what I am so certain that I hate, the clear, familiar targets of my fury, are already inside me.

Help me heal of this contagion, this cruel disease which scars and hardens the soul, which cores and blackens and blinds the heart, this affliction which feeds on self-righteousness and the conviction that God plays favorites, that the person whose behavior and appearance, and ways of speaking and dancing and loving are foreign to me, has less right to a true self than I.

Rock me awake, O Lord who invented the mosaic, the patchwork, the universe.
Force me to see the miracle of every life on the threshold
Of what we have come to know as
Real life.

Let me know that in the beginning, real life is created through ahavat hinam, love unbound, love unfiltered, love unselfish, love shorn of armor and unkindness and judgment and ancient rage.

Lord, whose business it is to give life, shock us, cajole us, manipulate us, bring us to heel, force us in this terrible moment to know the enormity and the necessity of loving kindness.

Lord, whose great gift and whose most murderous creation was the human being, help us find the human in the Other, hated from habit and from afar. Help us up, the mourning, the remnant, those whom tragedy has in cruelty and in loving kindness left alive. Teach us to honor the slain by honoring the living, their own behavior and appearance and speech, the dancing and the loving of those doing nothing more banal and nothing more extraordinary, than living a genuinely real life.

For the original post, please see Haaretz.com

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Comments

[PlaceboStudman]

Fear ignorance and hatred of others is born from the denial of weaknesses we see in ourself. When we muster the courage to face that weakness, we must look, not only at those we target with our ignorance and bigotry, but we must also look within ourself and analyze what strengths our enemies show that mirrors the weaknesses within each of us.

Ignorance, fear and bigotry may never be eliminated, as they are all a part of the human experience, but if we do not try, we cease to evolve, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and if we do not evolve, we die

[scarejack]

Well said, my friend. You continue to amaze me with your humanity. Fanned.

[Geowar]

This is the result when powerful elements in society (I'm speaking generally of all countries) claim they have nothing against gay people but ...... go on to state that homosexuality is intrinsicly evil (the pope), gays shouldn't serve openly in the military (John McCain) or that marriage has to be protected from gays (W) or any other disparaging remark presented as a truth or righteous opinion. They are sending the message that gays are less than their straight counterparts, are less than human, deserve less respect and as a result, dangerous elements in society feel that they are doing a good thing when they attack gays.

[LMPE]

The enemy consists not of a different skin color, but of hate within one's own people.