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Last update - 15:23 05/08/2009
A straight's prayer for young Israelis shot for being gay
By Bradley Burston
Tags: Israel News, gay rights 

Click here for more articles by Bradley Burston

_____________________


For Liz Trobishi, 17, and Nir Katz, 26, of blessed memory, and for the recovery of the 15 young people wounded late Saturday by a gunman in a Tel Aviv club for gay teens.
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_____________________



Lord, teach me to stand naked before you
And, in so doing, learn the meaning of modesty.

Let me stand naked, which is to say, stripped to my humanity,
And mourn these young people shot
For having chosen to practice
Their own humanity.

Cause me, Lord, to shed this defective armor,
Which we call clothing, respectability, convention,
The mask which we mistake for loyalty to tribe.
The mask which keeps me from seeing the face behind the mask of the tribe we have come to call enemy.

At the close of this dark anniversary, this time when tradition tells us, the worst of calamities were wrought by sinat hinam, hatred unbound, hatred for its own sake, teach me what I need to know about my true enemy.

Force me to see that what I am so certain that I hate, the clear, familiar targets of my fury, are already inside me.

Help me heal of this contagion, this cruel disease which scars and hardens the soul, which cores and blackens and blinds the heart, this affliction which feeds on self-righteousness and the conviction that God plays favorites, that the person whose behavior and appearance, and ways of speaking and dancing and loving are foreign to me, has less right to a true self than I.

Rock me awake, O Lord who invented the mosaic, the patchwork, the universe.
Force me to see the miracle of every life on the threshold
Of what we have come to know as
Real life.

Let me know that in the beginning, real life is created through ahavat hinam, love unbound, love unfiltered, love unselfish, love shorn of armor and unkindness and judgment and ancient rage.

Lord, whose business it is to give life, shock us, cajole us, manipulate us, bring us to heel, force us in this terrible moment to know the enormity and the necessity of chesed, lovingkindness.

Lord, whose great gift and whose most murderous creation was the human being, help us find the human in the Other, hated from habit and from afar. Help us up, the mourning, the remnant, those whom tragedy has in cruelty and in lovingkindness left alive. Teach us to honor the slain by honoring the living, their own behavior and appearance and speech, the dancing and the loving of those doing nothing more banal and nothing more extraordinary, than living a genuinely real life.

____________________


Follow Bradley Burston on Twitter

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  1.   Amen 13:38  |  Nazan 02/08/09
  2.   My condolences to their families 15:49  |  Lynn 02/08/09
  3.   The group that hates gays the most are closeted repressed gays. 16:04  |  JMK 02/08/09
  4.   Thank you Bradley Burston 16:25  |  Jan Vlaming 02/08/09
  5.   murder in TA 17:39  |  DBRossoff 02/08/09
  6.   Amen 17:45  |  gay Jew in Amsterdam 02/08/09
  7.   Prayer for that which I hate 18:26  |  English resident 02/08/09
  8.   "Imagine" John Lennon 19:00  |  Rob 02/08/09
  9.   sad 19:26  |  alan 02/08/09
  10.   Well said 19:45  |  Jane 02/08/09
  11.   made me tear up 20:17  |  paul canning 02/08/09
  12.   Most probably you are right but..... 20:55  |  NoraTel Aviv 02/08/09
  13.   Bradley is... 20:58  |  Helen Jones 02/08/09
  14.   A staight`s prayer 21:35  |  marion 02/08/09
  15.   Why do you assume it wasn`t a fellow homosexual? 21:51  |  Netanel 02/08/09
  16.   The Irony Of Humanity... 22:08  |  Yosemite 02/08/09
  17.   What can anyone say 00:59  |  Connie 03/08/09
  18.   Burston Prayer 01:49  |  Rev. Art Stanley 03/08/09
  19.   Has nothing to do with organized religion 04:51  |  Chris 03/08/09
  20.   Street corner prayer 05:25  |  Warrick 03/08/09
  21.   a shameful act of intolerance and plain violence 06:49  |  Smadar 03/08/09
  22.   We are all no more and no less than human 10:10  |  Margie in Tel Aviv 03/08/09
  23.   #7 English resident 10:17  |  Rosie 03/08/09
  24.   Are you certain... 16:46  |  Nechama 03/08/09
  25.   Gay-on-gay violence happens 21:04  |  Mikey 03/08/09
  26.   Jilted Lover Murderer 11:42  |  Sammy 06/08/09
  27.   First they came for the Arabs 18:51  |  Chris Linthwaite 07/08/09
  28.   A straight`s prayer for young Israelis shot for being gay 14:49  |  proud american 10/08/09
  29.   Don`t appeal to Muslim Siding Obama 19:13  |  ZACK. 10/08/09
  30.   Universal prayer. A candle lit in darkness of religious laws. 19:38  |  Jew-and Bookburner 10/08/09
  31.   Amen 20:02  |  Wendy 10/08/09
  32.   English Resident #7 22:17  |  Czarkazem13 10/08/09
  33.   27 21:29  |  Rachel 11/08/09
  34.   #27 & #33 22:17  |  Czarkazem13 11/08/09
  35.   34 23:21  |  Rachel 11/08/09
  36.   #27 First they came for the Jews and the antisemites rejoiced 20:26  |  Danny 15/08/09
  37.   There is absolutely no evidence that it was a hate-murder! 14:19  |  moshe 25/08/09
  38.   And most of you mock Hashem 03:45  |  prophetS 29/08/09
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