Friday Message – April 12, 2024
I had a wonderful unplanned talk this week with Einat Paz, a transplanted Israeli who has
been in Winnipeg for many years, whose “day job” with Jewish Child and Family Service has
an incredible impact on the lives of so many in our community who are living closer to the
margins.
It was her volunteer work that so engaged my attention. April 6 marks six months since that
October 7 date when over 240 people – Israelis and others, young and old, Jewish and not –
were overwhelmed by an attack they could not ever have imagined, and were dragged into
places of personal hell by complete strangers, randomly and with malicious intent.
This was before the war that followed. Since then, Einat has been organizing streetside
gatherings, week after week carrying a simple message: “Bring them home.” She showed
me photos of these gatherings with pride and earnestness, with hundreds in attendance
and returning every week. They show up simply because it is the right thing to do.
The signs and placards aren’t political. This is not about the war that followed soon after,
with all its complications. This is about gathering around a human issue, of people stolen
from their families and their lives. The hostages were taken during a time of peace. They
woke up on October 7, happy in their worlds. And then, everything shifted.
Einat is now surrounded by a close and committed community that has cause and
purpose. It reminds me that each of us has our own way of repairing the world, in keeping
with our central Jewish tenet of Tikkun Olam. She, and so many others, are quiet
champions who change the world for the better, here in our own backyards, and we are all
the better for it. This Shabbat, I’d like to honour Einat’s quiet and determined work for such
a good purpose, and may we each be inspired to, well, get inspired and inspire others.
Here, by the way, is Gal De Paz, singing Bring Them Home.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Allan