Hatred

Around half of adults across the world hold antisemitic beliefs and deny the historic facts of the Holocaust. This is according to the latest edition of the largest global study of anti-Jewish attitudes by the Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based advocacy group.

The study surveyed more than 58,000 adults from 103 countries and territories representing 94% of the world’s adult population. It found that 46% of them—which when extrapolated to the global population would equal an estimated 2.2 billion people—display antisemitic attitudes. A fifth of the respondents haven’t heard of the Holocaust, during which six million Jews were killed, while 21% believe it has either been exaggerated by historians or it never happened.

According to the survey, the level of antisemitism in the global adult population has more than doubled since it was launched in 2014. The report is the latest among a number of surveys charting a steep rise in antisemitism across the globe.

As a prisoner in Nazi death camps during World War II, Lily Engelman vowed that—if she survived—she would one day bear witness to the systematic slaughter of Jewish people. After the war, she emigrated from Hungary to Israel, where she found sewing work in a mattress factory. She married another Hungarian-speaking Jew, Shmuel Ebert, who had fled Europe before the war.

Despite her vow, however, she found herself rarely even mentioning the Holocaust after the war. People noticed the number tattooed on her left forearm but didn’t ask questions. They could never fathom the horrors she had endured, she thought. As for her own children, she preferred not to terrify them.

Only in the late 1980s, spurred partly by questions from one of her daughters, did she begin to open up. Resettled in London, she told her story in schools, in gatherings of other survivors and even in the British Parliament. Once she sat in a London train station and talked about the Holocaust with anyone who stopped to listen. In one video recounting her experiences, she says the Holocaust was the first time factories were built to kill people.

Lily Ebert, who died October 9, 2024 at the age of 100, once summed up her mission as trying “to explain the unexplainable.” But one of her obituaries noted that according to Ebert, words really matter. As she explained, “The Holocaust didn’t start with actions. It started with words.”

Here's the conclusion from a study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior: Watching TV programs about mean people can make you a mean person. The study focused on 250 college women who viewed clips depicting different forms of aggression, from violent fighting to gossiping and excluding others.

But here's the scary part to the study:

Aggressive reactions are more automatic and less conscious than most people assume. ... That means nobody deliberately decides to imitate a Real Housewife; the connection is more subtle and unintentional. … One of the authors points out that even TV shows depicting friends putting each other down in the name of a joke has its effects, too.

Watching a clip of two girls fighting over a boyfriend causes the same kind of reaction that watching a murderous scene would. This leads to a higher chance of engaging in aggressive behavior because the stimuli “primes” your brain for aggression.

So, anyone know of a show where everyone treats each other respectfully, don’t make jokes at someone’s expense, and no one secretly sabotages anyone?

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Brooks concludes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

Hannah Payne was sentenced to life in prison in December of 2023 for the 2019 shooting death of Kenneth Herring. Payne was officially convicted of felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment.

During the original incident, Payne chased down Herring after witnessing a hit-and-run involving him and another driver on Riverdale Road.

"I just seen her outside hitting on the window. And that’s what made me just grab my phone," recalled Cameron Williams, a truck driver who recorded footage of the interaction. This evidence eventually aided the prosecution in Payne’s conviction. Williams said that he saw Payne "yelling, hitting on the window, hitting on the door.”

According to authorities, Payne initially called 911 after witnessing the traffic incident, but ignored the advice of the dispatcher who told her not to follow Herring’s car. After pursuing Herring, she got into a confrontation with him, and eventually shot him, fatally wounding him in the stomach. Because of the footage, prosecutors were able to isolate images of Payne holding her gun, standing next to Herring’s truck.

Payne later told police that Herring had shot himself with her gun; the jury, however, did not agree with her version of events. It took them only two hours of deliberation before they rendered a guilty verdict. During the sentencing, Payne fought back tears as Judge Jewell Scott handed down her life sentence with a possibility of parole.

“Mr. Herring was a human worthy of saving,” the prosecutor said, when petitioning the court for the maximum allowable sentence. “He had a family to go home to.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Incidents of road rage are becoming all too common as people struggle with mental health issues, the deterioration of society, and taking justice and retribution into their own hands in this age of lawlessness.

Tim Keller, told the following story about a man named Hasheem Garrett, who learned the art of forgiveness. Hashim was a 15-year-old, living with his mother and hanging out on the streets of Brooklyn with a gang, when he was shot six times and was left paralyzed from the waist down.

For most of the next year he lay in a New York City hospital, fantasizing about revenge. He later wrote: “Revenge consumes me. All I could think about was, just wait, till I get better; just wait till I see this kid.”

But when he was lying on the sidewalk immediately after his shooting, he had instinctively called out to God for help, and, to his surprise, he had felt this strange tranquility. Now during his rehabilitation, a new thought, struck him, namely, that if he took revenge on this kid, why should God not pay him back for all his sins? He concluded, “I shot a kid for no reason, except that a friend told me to do it, and I wanted to prove how tough I was. Six months later, I am shot by somebody because his friend told him to do it.”

That thought was electrifying … He could not feel superior to the perpetrator. They were both fellow sinners who deserved a punishment—and needed forgiveness.

Hasheem said, “In the end I decided to forgive. I felt God had saved my life for a reason, and then I had better fulfill that purpose … And I knew I could never go back out there and harm someone. I was done with that mindset and the life that goes with it … I came to see that I had to let go and stop hating.”

A speeding car can be a deadly weapon all by itself, but a new survey finds many Americans make sure they’re armed when they get behind the wheel. A poll of 1,000 U.S. residents finds that a staggering 65 percent of drivers keep a weapon in their vehicle in case they need to defend themselves during a road rage incident.

The most common weapon drivers keep hidden is a knife (50%), followed by pepper spray (45%). However, 40 percent admit that they carry a gun with them while on the road. Other weapons American drivers have on hand include tire irons (39%), baseball bats (38%), hockey sticks (31%), tasers (31%), and lacrosse sticks (14%).

As for which cars you may want to stay away from if things get heated on the road, the poll finds BMW, Hyundai, and Mercedes drivers are the most likely to keep a dangerous weapon in their car.

So, what do we mean when we’re talking about “road rage”? These actions include everything from:

Speeding 40%

Honking (28%)

Brake checking another driver (26%)

Angry hand gestures (24%)

Yelling (23%)

However, things can get out of control quickly, leading some drivers to:

Chase or race other cars (20%)

Cut off vehicles on purpose (16%)

Tailgate (16%)

Point a weapon at a fellow driver (4%)

Possible Preaching Angle:

Some advice from AAA for avoiding road rage matches nicely with Scripture: Avoid honking and irritating other drivers (“Judge not, that you be not judged” Matt. 7:1). Being kind - imagine that the person ahead of you lost their job today, (“Be kind and compassionate to one another” Eph. 4:32). Don’t engage with angry motorists (“a soft answer turns away wrath” Prov. 15.1).

There is a powerful scene near the end of Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter. Hannah, the main character of the book, experienced profound mistreatment from her stepmother, Ivy. Hannah held onto the resentment for years until one day she encounters Ivy as an older woman in a grocery store. Wendell Berry writes:

Ivy was wearing a head scarf and a dress that hung on her as it would’ve hung on a chair. She was shrunken and twisted by arthritis and was leaning on two canes. Her hands were so knotted they hardly looked like hands. She was smiling at me. She said, “You don’t know me, do you?”

I knew her then, and almost instantly there were tears on my face. I started feeling in my purse for a handkerchief and tried to be able to say something. All kinds of knowledge came to me, all in a sort of flare in my mind. I knew for one thing that she was more simple-minded than I had ever thought. She had perfectly forgot, or had never known, how much and how justly I had resented her. But I knew in the same instant that my resentment was gone, just gone. And the fear of her that was once so big in me, where was it?

“Yes, Ivy, I know you,” I said, and I sounded kind.

I didn’t understand exactly what had happened until the thought of her woke me up in the middle of that night, and I was saying to myself, “You have forgiven her.” I had. My old hatred and contempt and fear that I kept so carefully so long, we’re gone, and I was free.

The Oregonian, Oregon’s most prestigious and longest-running newspaper, recently launched a special project entitled “Publishing Prejudice,” examining its historic complicity in reinforcing white supremacy in the state of Oregon. According to editor Therese Bottomly, the project was launched in the wake of the 2020 public demonstrations against racism after the murder of George Floyd.

Bottomly said, “Some institutions, including a handful of newspapers, responded to the moment with sustained examinations of their histories in pursuit of strengthening the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, The Oregonian looked inward as well.”

Part of the problem is that many residents aren’t aware of Oregon’s history. Bottomly continues, “Oregon was founded as an exclusionary state openly hostile to people of color, and Portland today remains the whitest major city in America.” Investigative reporters were dispatched to review the archives and document the various ways that the paper has reinforced the ugly stain of racism as part of its legacy. The series of articles reviews the paper’s coverage of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s, and many other contentious issues in its more than 170 years of existence.

Bottomly said, “I thought we would find the newspaper had missed stories, ignored major cultural movements, and been behind the times. And, yes, we found sins of omission, to be sure. But the gravest mistakes were sins of commission.”

It was surely a difficult decision for Bottomly and her staff to delve this deeply into such sordid chapters of their history. But she has no regrets. “This has been a painful and necessary exercise of self-examination. This history is hard to read but you must. And you must hold us to our pledge to always do better.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Each of us bear a responsibility to tell the truth about our history and the roles we play, not just as individuals but as members of families, organizations, and nations. In situations where we've inherited a godly legacy, we should rejoice. Where there is a legacy of sin, we should repent.

Viola Davis has been hailed as one of the greatest actresses of her generation. According to one film critic, watching her act is to watch someone draw on “private hardship” and then “witness a deep-sea plunge into a feeling.” Davis claims that there is one memory that defines her “private hardship.”

When she was in third grade, a group of boys made a game out of chasing her home at the end of the school day. They would taunt her, yelling insults and slurs, throwing stones and bricks at her, while she ducked and dodged and wept.

One day, the boys caught her. Her shoes were worn through to the bottom, which slowed her down. The boys pinned her arms back and took her to their ringleader, who would decide what to do with her next. They were all white, except for the ringleader. He identified as Portuguese to differentiate himself from African Americans, despite being nearly the same shade as Davis. Unlike her, he could use his foreign birth to distance himself from the town’s racism: He wasn’t like those Black people.

“She’s ugly!” he said.

“I don’t know why you’re saying that to me,” she said. “You’re Black, too!”

The ringleader screamed that he wasn’t Black at all. He punched her, and the rest of the boys threw her onto the ground and kicked snow on her.

Davis went on to be nominated for two Oscars. But she realized that not only had she remained that terrified little girl, tormented for the color of her skin, but that she also defined herself by that fear. All these years later, she was still running. … Davis’ early life is dark and unnerving, full of bruises, loss, grief, death, trauma. But that day after school was perhaps her most wounding memory: It was the first time her spirit and heart were broken.

Marcus Doe used to dream of revenge against his father’s killer. Then he came to faith in Christ. He writes:

We had heard the distant gunshots for a few weeks. But that morning they were close. By mid-morning we were all lying face down in the house, listening as bullets whizzed through the air. In the lull between bursts of gunfire, we could hear voices shouting instructions. If they found out my name, they would kill me.

I was born in Liberia, West Africa, where my father served in the Special Security Service of President Samuel Doe (no relation), who had come to power through a violent military coup. The “freedom fighters” had come to remove him, and killing anyone who worked in Doe’s government.

At that time, Marcus was only 11-years-old. He had already lost his mother to illness and now his father’s life was in danger. The rebels were ruthless, murdering innocent people on the barest of suspicions. So, his father sent him to live with his brother, Roosevelt, and his wife.

Later that year, Marcus and his brother left on a ship for neighboring Ghana. He felt that life was just returning to normal when he received word that his father had been killed. He was now an orphan.

My life’s goal was to find the soldier or soldiers who made me an orphan and make them pay. Then my brother and his wife came to America as refugees, and in 1993 we arrived. In quiet times, I daydreamed of revenge. I cried myself to sleep most nights.

After Marcus graduated from high school, Roosevelt had a sudden heart attack at age 38. Marcus said, “In that darkness, I turned to God. I had one question: ‘Why?’ I listed all the things that I blamed him for: Ma, Pa, the war, separation from family, their suffering — and now my beloved brother. I blamed God. Why?”

Guilt overwhelmed me. I had chosen to nurse my desire for vengeance. I realized that I could relinquish them once and for all. I begged God to forgive me. I would let go of revenge and rage. I asked God, from the sincerest and deepest part of my heart, to save my brother.

Four days later, he got the news that Roosevelt would recover. That answered prayer was the first step in his journey to faith. He says, “I began truly walking the road of forgiveness. I decided that I wanted to find my father’s killer. I practiced saying, ‘I forgive you.’”

In 2010, almost 20 years after I had left, I made my way back to Liberia. But I did not meet my father’s killer. He had died in the fighting. Even so, I forgave him. Today, I hope to share this hard-won peace and hope with fellow Liberians, so many of whom suffered greatly during our country’s brutal civil wars. But more important, I’ll strive to bring gospel healing. Because wherever Jesus’ words of forgiveness are spoken, the future is bright with hope.

While rumors of racial slurs and other untoward behavior continued to encircle New Jersey mayor Sal Bonaccorso, he steadfastly denied any involvement, calling the accusations offensive. But once evidence proved otherwise, the mayor was forced into a quick about-face. Mayor Bonaccorso said in a YouTube video, “It was wrong. I am embarrassed and ashamed to have spoken that way about a race of people.”

His swift admission was prompted by the release of several audio recordings as part of an investigation. It unearthed not only the racial slurs themselves, but the fact that the city of Clark Township had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements and other legal proceedings to prevent them from being found.

The recordings were part of a lawsuit that had been drafted by Antonio Manata, previously a lieutenant with the Clark Police Department. He had complained for years of rampant racism and sexism in the department, but felt his progress at reporting the troublesome behavior had been stonewalled by the mayor and other top leaders. To document the behaviors, Manata made a series of secret recordings of the mayor and other high-level CPD officers. When he threatened to expose them, the town agreed to pay large sums of money to get him to drop the lawsuit and relinquish the recordings.

At a town council meeting after the story came to light, Bonaccorso tried to plead his case with the community, saying he disagreed with the decision to settle. But Clark resident La’Tesha Sampson, said she was disappointed at the mayor’s lack of apology. She called his initial response “really, really disturbing.”

The criticism after that council meeting is what prompted the mayor’s YouTube apology. Bonaccorso says he’s learned a lot from recent protests for racial justice, especially those that occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s killing during the summer of 2020. He just hadn’t learned enough to be truthful about his mistakes … at least not until he had no other choice.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for leaders who made a show of respectability but gave voice or thought to evil in private.

In an issue of CT magazine, Kim Phuc Phan Thi shares how a napalm attack in Vietnam scarred her body, but it also led her to Christ.

You have seen my picture a thousand times. I am nine years old, running along a puddled roadway, arms outstretched, naked, shrieking in pain and fear, the dark contour of a napalm cloud billowing in the distance. Those bombs have brought me immeasurable pain. The emotional and spiritual pain was even harder to endure.

As a child, she was raised in the religion of Cao Dai (pronounced cow-die). For years, she prayed to the gods of Cao Dai for healing and peace. But when her prayers went unanswered, it became clear that either they were nonexistent or did not care about her.

One day in 1982, in Saigon’s central library she opened the New Testament. As she read through the Gospels, at least two themes became abundantly clear. The first was that although Cao Dai said there were many gods, Jesus made a straightforward claim: “I am the way you get to God; there is no other way but me” (John 14:6). Second, Jesus had suffered in defense of his claim. He had been mocked, tortured, and killed. Why would he endure these things, she wondered, if he were not God?

I had never been exposed to this side of Jesus—the wounded one, the one who bore scars. I came to believe that he really was who he said he was. And most important to me, he really would do all that he had promised in his Word. Perhaps he could help me make sense of my pain and at last come to terms with my scars.

My salvation experience happened on Christmas Eve. It was 1982, and I was attending a special worship service at a small church in Saigon. How desperately I needed peace, love, and joy. I had so much hatred in my heart. I wanted this Jesus. So, I made my way to the front of the sanctuary to say yes to Jesus Christ. I experienced the kind of healing that can only come from God. I was finally at peace.

Nearly half a century has passed since I found myself running—frightened, naked, and in pain— down that road in Vietnam. I will never forget the horrors of that day. (But) my faith in Jesus has enabled me to forgive those who have hurt and scarred me. Today, I thank God for everything—even for that road. Especially for that road.

Spokane County prosecutor Larry Haskell has been put on the defensive because of increased scrutiny surrounding his wife and her online commentary. According to the Spokane alternative weekly The Inlander, Lesley Haskell has been outspoken in her beliefs on the social networking platform Gab, which was established as an alternative to sites like Twitter and Facebook that have rules prohibiting hate speech and/or threats of violence.

Leslie Haskell was reported as using several slurs for Black, Jewish, Latin, and other ethnic groups, which she defended under the banner of free speech. She also referred to herself as a “white nationalist,” and defended the Ku Klux Klan as an example of “white culture.”

On the official prosecutor’s website, Larry Haskell was forced to disavow these views. He wrote:

I do not and will not tolerate racial bias or discrimination in any form. People that know me fully understand those are not my views. I do not tolerate racial bias or disparate treatment of any kind as proven by my words, deeds, and treatment of others during my tenure as prosecutor.

In their defense, Larry and Leslie Haskell have good company. Plenty of high-profile couples on differing sides of the political aisle have prospered over the years, like former Trump administration spokesperson Kellyanne Conway and her husband George, who co-founded the anti-Trump advocacy group The Lincoln Project.

Still, critics point out that public confidence in Larry Haskell’s ability to be unbiased is undercut when his wife spews out racist rhetoric. William S. Bailey of the University of Washington Law School agrees. He said: “There is no doubt in my mind that if Larry Haskell was a judge and this information about his wife came out, he would have to recuse himself from any case if asked to do so by an attorney for a party.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Regardless if we agree or disagree with other’s political and social views, we must never descend into racial slurs and judging others. We should be careful that the negative views of those we associate with do not affect us.

Wendy Wein visited the website RentAHitman.com to attempt to arrange the murder of her ex-husband. But she wasn’t corresponding with “Guido Fanelli,” the sites ostensible owner, but a man named Bob Innes, a California man who works in internet security.

Innes initially built the site for his internet security business back in 2005, but over the years, he’s received several inquiries from people who take its name literally and think he’s offering murder-for-hire. To engage, site visitors are asked to fill out a service request form with a name, email address, and phone number. Each time it happens, Innes turns over the contact information to local law enforcement.

Thus, when Wein was contacted for a sit-down at a local café, it was not with a shadowy assassin, but rather, an undercover police detective. Wein repeatedly told the detective she wanted her ex-husband murdered, and paid $200 as a cash down payment on a $5,000 fee. As a result, Wein was arrested several days later, and charged with using a computer to commit a crime, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and solicitation of murder, which has the potential for a life sentence.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Evil deeds committed in darkness will eventually be brought to light, and evildoers will face judgment; 2) We may not be guilty of attempted murder, but many of us have harbored anger towards another. The Lord said that this is also a sin (Matt. 5:22).

Thomas Tarrants shares his testimony of being a former hate-filled Klansman who was saved by God’s grace:

I came of age in the early 1960s in Mobile, Alabama, which had been segregated since its founding. In 1963, reacting to the federally mandated desegregation of Alabama’s public schools, Gov. George Wallace uttered his infamous pledge of “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

I read some white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist literature that was circulating within my high school. Then I met the people who were advocating these ideas. The civil rights movement, they said, was part of a Communist plot, and the US government had been infiltrated by Communist agents.

All these warnings made me anxious about America’s survival, and my fears soon turned into hatred—toward those I perceived as America’s enemies. So it was only a short step to getting involved with Mississippi’s dreaded White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent right-wing terrorist organization in the United States at the time.

One summer night, as my accomplice and I attempted to plant a bomb at the home of a Jewish businessman, we were ambushed in a police stakeout. My partner was killed at the scene. Four blasts of shotgun fire at close range left me critically wounded. Doctors told me it would be a miracle if I lived another 45 minutes. Yet God spared my life—to the astonishment of the doctors and the dismay of the police. If anyone deserved to die, it was certainly me.

At the end of a two-day trial, I was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. About six months after arriving in prison, I escaped with two other inmates. But a couple of days later, we were apprehended after a blazing gun-battle with the authorities, during which one of the other inmates was killed. Had this man not relieved me from standing watch about half an hour early that day, I would have been the one killed. God had shown me mercy once more.

Back in prison, I was confined to a six-by-nine-foot cell in the maximum security unit. To keep from going crazy, I read continuously. This eventually led to the New Testament, specifically the Gospels. But as I read the Gospels in my prison cell, my eyes were opened in a way that went beyond simply understanding the words on the page.

My sins came to mind, one after another. Conviction grew, and with it tears of repentance. I needed God’s forgiveness. And I knew it came only through trusting Jesus, who had given his life to pay for my sins. One night I knelt on the concrete floor of my cell and prayed a simple prayer, confessing my sins and asking Jesus to forgive me, take over my life, and do whatever he wanted to with it.

As I read the Bible daily, a whole new world opened up to me, and I couldn’t get enough! Early on, God delivered me from hate, and I began to grow in love for others. Friendships developed with black inmates and others who were very di­fferent from me.

After serving eight years in prison, an extraordinary turn of events resulted in a parole grant to attend university. That set in motion a series of developments which, over the next 40 years, led me first into campus ministry, then pastoral ministry in a racially mixed church, and finally to a long ministry of teaching and writing at the C.S. Lewis Institute.

As I look back over the nearly 50 years since God saved me, I can only thank and praise him that he didn’t give me what I deserved. But because he is full of grace and mercy, he gave me exactly what I needed. He “is patient with [us], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

At 101-years-old, Eddie Jaku has over a century of wisdom and life experience to draw from—and he's trying to use it to help others see the world in a more positive light. The self-described "happiest man in the world" has given a TED Talk and written a book about his philosophy.

Jaku is also a Holocaust survivor. He was born in Germany and said that “I thought I lived in the most civilized, most cultured and certainly the most educated country in Europe. And I was German first, and German second, and Jewish at home.”

On November 9, 1938, after Nazi forces burned synagogues and destroyed Jewish homes, stores and other property, Jaku returned home from boarding school to an empty home. In the morning, he was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Over the course of years, Jaku and his family reunited, escaped and lived in hiding. But in 1943, they were arrested again and sent to Auschwitz.

Jaku said, "I was finally transported to my hell on Earth, Auschwitz. My parents and my sister were also transported to Auschwitz, and I was never to see my parents again." More than 6six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. In 1945, Jaku was sent on a "death march" but escaped into the wilderness. He was rescued in June of that year.

Jaku said that after the war, he was miserable—until he met his wife, Flore, and started a family. He said, “Eighty years ago, I didn't think I (would) have a wife and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This is a blessing."

Jaku said that despite his experiences, he does not hate anyone. "Hate is a disease that may destroy your enemy, but will also destroy you in the process. Where there is life is hope. If there's no more hope, you're finished.”

He added, “Family and friends are key to that hope. Friendship is priceless. Shared sorrow is half sorrow, but shared pleasure is double.” He said that he hopes his story inspires others to make positive choices every day. “I want to make this world a better place for everyone. I want everyone to take a step back and say ‘We are here for all of us.’”

You can watch his TED talk here.

The epidemic of call-out culture is very disturbing to Professor Loretta J. Ross. She is a Black feminist who has been doing human rights work for 40 years. Although she does not claim to be a Christian, she does share a valuable lesson. She writes:

Today’s call-out culture is so seductive, I often have to resist the overwhelming temptation to clap back at people on social media who get on my nerves. Call-outs happen when people publicly shame each other online, at the office, in classrooms or anywhere humans have beef with one another. But I believe there are better ways of doing social justice work.

In rural Tennessee in 1992, a group of women whose partners were in the Ku Klux Klan asked me to provide anti-racist training to help keep their children out of the group. All day they called me a “well-spoken colored girl” and inappropriately asked that I sing Negro spirituals.

Instead of reacting, I responded. I couldn’t let my hurt feelings sabotage my agenda. I listened to how they joined the white supremacist movement. I told them how I felt when I was eight and my best friend called me “n---er.” The women and I made progress. I did not receive reports about further outbreaks of racist violence from that area for my remaining years monitoring hate groups.

We can change this culture. Calling-in is simply a call-out done with love. Some corrections can be made privately. Others will necessarily be public, but done with respect. So, take comfort in the fact that you offered a new perspective of information and you did so with love and respect. But the thing that I want to emphasize is that the calling-in practice means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.

Back in 1912, Willa and Charles Bruce were one of the first African-American landowners in Los Angeles County after purchasing a plot of oceanside property and opening one of the only non-racially-segregated resorts in the area.

Despite the grateful patronage of Black visitors, “Bruce’s Beach” eventually became a target of racist attacks from a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Family historian Duane Shephard said, “They started harassing my family around 1920. They burned a cross. They threw burning mattresses under the porch of one of the buildings.”

By 1924, the city used the process of eminent domain as a pretext to seize the property from the Bruce family and turn it into a public park. L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said, “These people were terrorized and kicked out of a community where they were trying to live peacefully. Here were some Black lives, and they didn't matter 100 years ago. But I think they matter now.” Hahn made those comments in a news conference announcing the decision from the local city council to return that land to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.

Local resident Malissia Clinton wonders what her community would look like had that injustice not taken place: “This community might be teeming with Black folks if we had not destroyed that family. It changed the trajectory, not only of their lives and their offspring but of this community.”

The county plans to give the property back to the Bruce family descendants, then lease the property from them, in order to keep it accessible to the community while providing income for the family. It also authorized $350,000 to spend on public art commemorating the family.

When asked what the original couple would’ve thought of this gesture, Shepard was emphatic. "Oh, they would have loved it. I'm sure they're proud of us right now for fighting to get that back.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even as the righteous pursue justice, let them not lose hope that injustices can be made right again, for with God all things are possible.

As Haijun Si and his family celebrated the Lunar New Year, the festivities were abruptly cut short when several teenagers shouted racial slurs, hurled rocks at the house, and repeatedly pounded on the front door of their home in Orange County, California.

Since they moved to the neighborhood five months earlier, the family has been targeted by a group of teenagers. “They yell, punch the door and windows, and ring the bell day and night.” He has called the Sheriff’s Department several times, and police have opened an investigation, but the harassment has persisted.

Mr. Si said, “I installed a camera and a fence, but they kept coming back. They are scaring my kids at night. They are afraid to go in their room by themselves, so we have to move them to our room for almost five months now.”

Si decided to reach out to a neighbor for support. He called Layla Parks, who lives down the street and has always been kind to his family. Parks said, “I was outraged, and I wanted to take action right away. But I knew I needed to do it carefully.”

Parks promptly came up with a plan to help protect the Si family. In a neighborhood Facebook group, she posted video footage of a recent attack, which Si provided, and asked if anyone would be willing to stand guard outside the family’s home at night. Her primary mission: “For this family to have some peace again.”

The sign-up spreadsheet immediately flooded with names. Neighbors were horrified by the teenagers’ actions, and people were eager to help. Parks said, “It was more support than I had ever imagined or anticipated, and it is incredibly heartwarming. The community has really stepped up.” The first evening watch was on Feb. 13, and since then, neighbors have stood guard outside Si’s home every night. So far, about 50 people have volunteered for at least one shift.

Mr. Si said, “The neighbors keep watching, and I am very grateful. Now we have some peace. I love my neighbors. I love my community, and I love my country.”