What do I owe you?
I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Part of me knows it won't help. But I'm having a rough weekend and sometimes you just have to say it out loud. Today I'm angry and I'm hurting. I don't owe you this, but I'll add the caveat that I know I'm emotionally stretched thin, like most people in the world living through year 2 of this pandemic. And I don't owe you this, but I recognize that you are also stretched thin and maybe you didn't have room yesterday, as a non-Jewish person, to read the news of 4 Jewish people being held hostage at a synagogue in Texas. In Judaism we try to "don l'kaf z'chus" (Judge on the side of favor). We give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you were too tired of bad news. Maybe you just didn't have the capacity to acknowledge another tragedy. But yesterday I said havdallah, the ritual blessing with which we end the Jewish Shabbat, and I picked up my phone and was flooded with the news that the Jewish