Where It Hurts

“It hurts so bad. I just don’t understand.”

I haven’t actually uttered these words. But these last days my soul has been howling as news stories reported acts of deadly violence driven by searing racial and religious hatred.

Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lees Jones had each made a routine grocery-store run. They were gunned down in the aisles by a stranger intent on killing black people for being black. Confronted by another customer, the murderer reportedly said, “Whites don’t shoot whites.”

On the following Shabbat, the congregation of Living Tree Synagogue had gathered for worship. A man opened fire, killing eleven of the faithful. Among them was Rose Mallinger, a survivor of the Holocaust. A regular at an alt right web site, the shooter had posted that Jews are a mortal threat to the white race.

“It hurts so bad. I just don’t understand.”

Still reeling with emotional vertigo, I…