We are all refugees

We decorated the front of our house for Halloween this year. Really, it was just a minimal fall-themed dusting compared to what some of our neighbors do.  Sweet Girl has gotten really into it, straightening the little pumpkin flag often and decorating our pumpkins. So it was natural that when we were at a craft store yesterday and saw some Chanukah decorations (amidst the onslaught of red and green), that she would ask if we could decorate our front door in blue and white.  Besides the fact that Chanukah has been blown way out of proportion recently in our country and there is absolutely no reason to decorate, I am honestly fearful of advertising my religion given the state of our world these days.

When the shooting at a Parkland high school happened last February, I wondered if I should tell SG anything about it. I decided not to. When her school participated in a state-wide minute of silence in May in memory of the victims, I wondered if she’d know the reason and if I should prepare her, but she said it was something about remembering to include all people and call them by their name. (There is a new initiative in Houston schools to promote social inclusion.)

Then there was another shooting much closer to us in Santa Fe, TX, also in May, and I didn’t mention a thing.  I have no way of guaranteeing her that it wouldn’t happen in her school, and since SG has trouble going to school on a good day, I’d have a lot more needless drama on my hands.

I served on a committee a couple of years ago that granted funding to The Holocaust Museum here in Houston to pilot a program in the schools called “Educator in Motion,” which provides educational programming on the Holocaust, genocide, social cruelty, and active citizenship.  There are a number of options depending on time available and the age of the students.  So when SG’s teacher put a note at the end of an e-mail to ask our kids about the special program they were going to presented by The Holocaust Museum, I made sure that it was the one for the young kids focusing on learning skills to identify and respond to social cruelty. I know she’s not ready to know the facts just yet.

Today, Sweet Girl and I were participating at a Girl Scout volunteer event when Mr. B texted me that there was a mass shooting at a synagogue near where we used to live in Pittsburgh.  We have many friends that go there or who live in Squirrel Hill so I immediately headed home to check on them.  Thank you, Facebook, for making that so easy. All are ok.

I have written about this before. I want SG to have a childhood free from much knowledge of politics, hatred, and violence.  I want her to learn good things about the world around her and how our society works.  What are we supposed to tell our kids when this happens?

In this case, I had the news report on in the car on our way home. I tried to explain that some people feel very strongly about things that are based on distorted thinking. I told her about how I donated money to rebuild a mosque here that was recently burned down as a hate crime.  I told her that even though we are just like everyone else, being slightly different in this one aspect gives some people a reason to hate us without even knowing us.  “How did he get a gun, mom?” Exactly.

We watched a few minutes of the coverage and then turned it off.  We answered a few questions and pointed out all the people who were helping.  We casually mentioned how safe we feel at our temple with its required ID tags and security guards and locked doors. (I hope it’s not a false sense of security.) And we were honest that this really stinks.

The reason this hits home more than even the Santa Fe shooting down the road is that we know those people. We lived and worked in that community for years.  Some of the people that the news are interviewing are our friends.  Squirrel Hill is such a special community with a small-village feel.  The sewing repair shop on the corner has been open for at least 80 years.  Walking down the street to synagogue on a Shabbat morning is such an ordinary occurrence there,  you’d not even think twice about it.  The fact that you could lose your life all of a sudden just by walking down that street stuns me.

And for what? There is no sense to these acts, yet we are all so vulnerable. I have to admit that I think about something like this happening just about every time we go to temple, and especially on holidays when there are hundreds of people gathered there.  But I do not want my child to grow up fearing being in a place where she should find comfort and strength.  I especially do not want her to be ashamed of her religion because it makes her seem different from the average American citizen. I thought all Americans were once immigrants and refugees.

Maybe there are some American families that can trace their roots back to the 16th century.  Most people I know are second- or third-generation Americans.  Some are still becoming citizens.  Unless you know that someone in your family crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago, aren’t you too a refugee of some sort in this melting pot? Everyone came from somewhere else, even Robert Bowers.

When we were living in Pittsburgh, I worked in Community Relations at the Jewish Federation.  Events like these cause a whirlwind of outreach, activity, and programming. The reactive nature of that job and the helplessness I felt despite working to change legislation, despite dialogues with every religious community leader and their mother, despite the long hours, is one reason I felt I had to leave that role.  It is not the people around the table or in the audience at our programs that are the root of the hatred. It was not productive for me to be in the middle of it all, reading multiple newspapers every day and hearing about every hate crime in the world.

What bothers me the most is that events like these are becoming more common in our country.  Maybe it’s at a school, a mosque, or a church. “God bless America?” We need a moral leader who denounces acts of hate, anti-semitism, and racism.  Why should anyone be persecuted in our safe places?

What has to happen for someone to believe in white supremacy and violence? They truly believe they are doing a good thing and helping the world.  I just don’t know what to do besides channeling my energy into spreading kindness and acceptance and raising my child not to live in fear but to be aware (as needed) and proceed anyway because there are far more good people in the world than anyone else.

May the memory of those lives lost today be a blessing.