This is My chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke.


I post this above excerpt from Isaiah, which is read on Yom Kipper (and which I'll be hearing in a few hours), every year.

This year, I would like to add links to a few posts I've read recently that have stirred me. I can get very discouraged by the tone of the discourse at times. I also feel very strongly that the USA reaches closest to its ideals when it acts indeed as an inclusive and tolerant society (while understanding that as a nation we have all too often, and often horribly, fallen short of that).

So for instance the Park51 community center seems like a natural and very American idea to me, as I make ready to head off to my synagogue. Can we really have too many community centers? I just don't think so.

Sherwoood Smith writes on Assimilation: Assimilation has always seemed so peaceful . . .

and links to this post by shweta_narayan on Dissimilation. This is assimilation: when I was twelve, and moved to a school which had another Indian student in the year (80 students), I did not dare talk to her or even hint that I might want to.

Saladin Ahmed writes on Some Darkness, Some Light. But, to be frank, I'm never really surprised when fear and hatred of Muslims rears its head.
[and, in a seemingly odd but actually somehow meaningful juxtaposition, there are also adorable baby photos]

And Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a difficult but I think profound piece on Compassion. The point of it all is not to clean anyone, is not exoneration. The point is a deeper level of knowing.



Last night during the Kol Nidre service we said these words:

Grant me the gift of seeing other people's merits, not their faults.

I will mull them over some more today.