Presby-Musings

When I was in seventh grade there was this kid named Tim, who annoyed me.  Truth be told, Tim annoyed everyone.   One day Tim and I got into a fight in class.  It wasn't much of a fight, honestly.  Tim said something insulting to me for like the fourth time that day, and I jumped out of my desk and tackled him.  By the time the teacher pulled me off of him, I had been pounding on Tim's head pretty good.   We both got sent the principals office and we both got paddled, which still happened back in those days.   I had to shake Tim's hand and act all buddy-buddy afterward, but when we were walking down the hall back to class I told him, "You keep mouthing off to me like that, and I'm going to kick your butt all over again." Tim looked at me blankly and said, "If I get paddled at school, I get way worse when I get home. Way worse."  At that moment, for the first time since the beginning of the fracas, Tim began to cry.  ...

I've led four trips to the Holy Land over the last few years, and each time I have had the opportunity to visit Israel's moving and inspiring Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.   The name Yad Vasehem comes from the prophet Isaiah chapter 56:4-5.  The verse reads, "I will give them in My house and in My walls a yad veshem  (a place to memorialize their deeds), and thus their name."  One of the many things about Yad Vashem that wounds my spirit deeply is an exhibit of all of the countries of the world that either actively participated in the Holocaust, or who passively participated because of their general antipathy toward Jews.   The United States is among the latter group of nations.  In fact, one of the darkest moments in U.S. History during the World War II era was the sad tale of the refugee ship, the St. Louis .   The U.S. government refused to receive nearly 600 Jewish refugees from Germany, who were on the St. Louis , and who fled that co...