Recently, I was having a hard time feeling hope, especially after the horrific massacre of the eleven Jews praying on a Saturday morning a few months ago at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, by an angry lone individual (or would you prefer to say something like “madman”?).  I couldn’t get over the bitter irony of death invading the Tree of Life, the name Jews give the Torah, and that Christians call Jesus. 

I learned of the massacre while I was at home, Saturday October 27, taking care of my husband who struggles with Parkinson’s Disease. I was watching Shabbat morning services of my synagogue, B’nai Jeshurun, as it was being live streamed, when towards the end the rabbi announced that the increasingly familiar phenomenon of mass murders had just come to the Jewish community.  Feeling sickened and scared, I turned on the news. How could anyone have such hatred for people they didn’t know, had never met, but thought of as the dangerous “other,” the enemy, someone they hated with all their heart, defying the teachings of both Jesus and the Hebrew Bible to “love thy neighbor as thyself?”

The following Saturday I went to services at my synagogue. It was packed as were so many places of worship around the country. Towards the end of the service, Rabbi Roly Matalon gave a brave sermon saying that he could no longer avoid politics. Anti-Semitism had to be called out as the fuel—not the root--of white supremacy as well as its companion in arms, a strident white nationalism. I felt even more despairing when I left because I knew he was right.

But soon I saw things that gave me hope, that made me begin to accept that maybe love can triumph over hate.  There were vigils mourning the victims where Christian and Muslim students joined with Jews. Overwhelming support came the Muslim American community, for they too had been the object of hatred. NBC News reported, “A Muslim American group has raised more than $200,000 through an online crowdfunding campaign to help families affected by the Oct. 27 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, which killed at least 11. Celebrate Mercy, one of the organizers of the campaign, told NBC that the money will assist families with medical bills, funeral expenses and other immediate needs. Tarek El-Messidi, the group’s founding director, says his hope through the fundraiser is "to respond to evil with good.” Some of the money may go to foster Muslim-Jewish dialogue and collaboration. 

Only if we talk to each other, when we truly meet face to face, can there be hope of change. I saw this in practice on Saturday November 10th, when I returned to services at my synagogue to find several members of the Michigan Corrections Organization who had come to express their outrage at the massacre, their support for Jews, and to witness the profound transformation they had each experienced as the result of dialogue. 

As a professor of English I’ve been teaching for decades, but never during what I believe to be such a dangerous time in our country’s history. And I can tell you that the young people I interact with every day feel the danger too.  Some feel hopeless, some disaffected and even those who forge on still worry about the future of America’s democracy. 

Increasingly, numbers of young people are suffering from serious anxiety, whereas before the major psychological issue was depression.  Time reported in March 19, 2018 that “In spring 2017, nearly 40% of college students said they had felt so depressed in the prior year that it was difficult for them to function, and 61% of students said they had ‘felt overwhelming anxiety’ in the same time period, according to an American College Health Association survey of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools.”  As a result the number of suicides or suicide attempts on college campuses (and generally among the young) is on the rise. Teaching at Barnard, I regularly get emails advising me to look out for warning signs, to attend to my students. This fall, we got an email alert about a nineteen year old student at Columbia across the street, who seemed to have everything going for him but had taken his life. Sometimes I wonder if the current opioid epidemic that’s impacting all aspects of daily life for people of various ages throughout the nation is an effort to self-medicate in a world that seems to be spinning out of control? 

So why is there this new level of concern and anxiety? Perhaps it’s because we’re witnessing increased devastation and loss of human life caused by climate change and wonder what it will really mean for the future of humanity.  Additionally, we see war and violence spreading all over the world, an increase of intolerance and extremism,  terrorism, anti-Semitism, racism, nativism, homophobia and other kinds of hatred directed at “others.” The Washington Post in November 2017 wrote that “More hate crimes were carried out in the United States last year, with a uptick in incidents motivated by bias against Jews, Muslims and LGBT people, among others” according to the new FBI data. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Semitic behavior, found the number of incidents in the U.S. rose from 2016 to 2017 by 57 percent—the largest single-year increase on record.   On October 24, an armed white man who unsuccessfully tried to get into a black church walked into a grocery store and shot two black people.  We’ve seen massacres of innocent people in synagogues, churches, malls, theaters, yoga studios, concerts, coffee houses, restaurants, promenades and grade schools.  There seems to be no safe spaces left and most people feel there’s not much they can do about it.

What can I do personally is a question and vocation I ponder as a teacher. I believe that to educate is to lead out of a narrow place.  There is (or should be) an ethical dimension to the lessons we share. Liberal education aims to liberate in some way (the word “liberal” comes from Latin “liber,” free) with the intention of opening the mind and heart. By learning things we didn’t know we are challenged to reach outside our narrow limits and comfort zones. We cultivate the ability to read and think critically and hope to carry that out into the world.  

The period I teach is that of John Milton, the seventeenth-century, a period which witnessed England’s civil war, scientific revolutions, as well as political, religious and social turmoil. This emboldened new voices to promote liberty, conscience, tolerance, the freedom to speak and publish opposing ideas, the expansion of voting franchises, and some insisting women be given the right to preach.  As a teacher, I’m always learning and approach educating in different ways.  One might wonder what that period in time (or those dominating white, male writers) have to do with our present day lives? But my students do see the parallels between that “century of revolution” and the century they live in now. And it’s very gratifying. They are surprised that early writers struggled with the same problems we are experiencing now. All this reaffirms for me that the material I teach, and how I teach it, has an increased sense of urgency that wasn’t there just a few years ago.  

And though I plant such seeds of knowledge in the hope that it will grow in my students and enable them to interpret the world they will inherit, I’m speaking mostly to students who already share my values; In other words, I’m preaching to the choir in a liberal arts college. What about the world outside those “hallowed” walls? Given the terrible, increasing polarization in America today, how do we reach people in the rest of the country who think so differently, or who think the distinction between truth and lies doesn’t matter?  How can we talk, compromise, or even change minds?   

I’m curious about your thoughts about how to overcome this challenge.