My Friend Is That Jew. And Today, I Am Too.

Last night, Daisy and I had a GNO – both our husbands were out of town – and we had a nice meal downtown, and then sat front row at the Jim Gaffigan show. When we first met each other in the parking garage, it was sort of a flurry of conversation about the events of the day, and naturally the horrific shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue came up right away. Maybe it sounds selfish and shallow, but I couldn’t talk about it. Not last night, which was supposed to be a fun-filled, light-hearted evening out with my BFF. And I said as much, so that we could move on to the topics that you’re SUPPOSED to talk about during a GNO – family, kids, friends, gossip, etc. We ended up having a complete blast, but I knew once I got up this morning that it’d be time to face what had happened. Confront the evil. Read the news. Learn about the evil beast who decided that people who didn’t share his religious views deserved to die.

I’m so heartbroken that people like him exist in the world. That there are still people who consider themselves proud Nazis. How is that even possible today? And how can people be so completely, wholly, purely evil?

One thing that helps me cope with tragedies like this is to think about the opposite side of the humanity scale. A few years ago, I found an article on line written by a Jew in Israel about his recent defriending of an acquaintance on Facebook who was posting incessant anti-semitic propaganda. The piece was SO POWERFUL. If you’ve never read it, you must. It’s called “Shalom, Motherf*cker.”

Soon after I posted that, we got in touch with the author, Eitan Chitayat, and had him on our radio show. And since then, Eitan and I have been in semi-regular contact, connecting in the way that so many of us do nowadays – on social media. We look at the photos we each post of our families, we send each other notes from time to time. Eitan is one of those “opposite side of the humanity scale” people for me. He’s like a goodness touchstone. (BONUS: He’s also a fellow Robbie Williams fan.) 🙂

Not long after Eitan’s Shalom Motherf*cker article was published, he wrote a follow up piece about the symbolic Jewish yellow star. It’s also a must read.

And then came his video, “I’m That Jew.”

That one exploded, y’all. With good reason.

Eitan was recently asked to give a TED Talk about his inspiration for creating that 6 minute video, and he sent it to me, asking if I thought it was shareable. AS IF IT WOULDN’T BE. Hello – of course it’s shareable. It’s fantastic, like everything else he does.

And it’s a message that reminds me of the goodness of humanity, when so much of the news is focused on the worst of us. Watch.