Last night, talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel spoke to America about gun violence and the unnecessary loss of life that occurred in Las Vegas 48 hours ago.
The man was visibly crying and pleading with not just the ordinary citizen, but our leaders in Washington D.C. It was as if he was speaking for everyone who was watching the news and felt angry and powerless at the same time. We need sensible gun laws, now. We need to talk about this openly, we need to make sure that this epidemic of mass shooting ends with our generation. If it doesn’t, our children maybe asking us tough questions one day that we wish we had the guts to answer here and now.
One of my favorite phrases from the Talmud is as follows:
Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if they destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if they saved an entire world.
During World War II, while most non Jews either turned their backs on their Jewish friends and neighbors or openly collaborated with the Nazis, a few brave souls dared to protect their Jewish friends and neighbors. They knew that if they were caught, the punishment for not just the individual, but his or her entire family was execution. But they still put their lives and the lives of their families on the line.
Writer Yvette Manessis Corporon was raised on her Greek grandmother’s stories of saving the lives of a Jewish tailor and his children during the war. But she didn’t know much beyond the story, until she started doing some research. Her research and her experience while doing this research led to the memoir, Something Beautiful Happened: A Story of Survival and Courage in the Face of Evil. While in the midst of fleshing out her grandmother’s story and trying to locate the living relations of the family whose lives were saved by her grandmother, Ms. Corporon was hit by a personal tragedy. In Overland Park, Kansas in April of 2014, three people were killed by a Neo-Nazi outside of a JCC. While none of the victims were Jewish, two of the victims, a young boy and his grandfather were cousins on her husband’s side of the family.
The thing that strikes me about this book is that it reminds me of the choices that we have in life. We can either waste our time and energy and hate someone because they are different or we can accept someone for who they are and move on with our lives. The author’s grandmother could have easily said no to saving her neighbors, after all, she still had to take care of her own family. But she said yes and in doing so, became a faint light in the darkness of World War II and The Holocaust.
Writergurlny 