Oh, how the sky does shine tonight

Across this land, the outrage echoes, through the deserts and the wadis, in the cities and on the high ways, across the forests and over mountains.

A humbling sound, this echo as it shakes the air around us, as Israelis, stand up to condemn the hate speech, and the price tag attacks.

There’ a wholeness in the sound as Rabbis shake their heads in sadness as they lead young boys from their yeshivas to help clean up the leavings of others’ anger born of grief that were scrawled on mosque walls.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t do it individually,” they say. “One of our people did this, and we are responsible for one another.

And there’s a holiness to it as we say quietly to one another: “We can’t be like this. This isn’t who we are.”

We even are willing to go so far as to wonder aloud whether one of our own could be responsible for the death of an innocent young boy — And we say this not with jubilation and pride, but with sorrow and sickness. And how we pray it isn’t true.

Yes, there are a MINORITY of people who are acting out of rage; and after all, what mother or father lion WOULDN’T want to bare their teeth when three of their own are killed? But the rest of us — MOST of us — are condemning the hatred and the violence outloud and loudly.

And this is why I love my country: For in the darkest nights so shine the brightest stars. And oh, how the sky does shine tonight.