ORLANDO
JUNE 12, 2016

How we think about the world matters. The first two stories in the Bible are telling.
First, God creates human beings from a single creature, to teach that no one's ancestry is preferred over another person's. We are all created equal in God's eyes.
The next story, Cain and Abel, teaches that we are our BROTHERS' keepers. And for the last 3,000 years we have debated who are our BROTHERS.
In the Cain and Abel story, there are OTHERS who will kill Abel. Cain is his BROTHER'S keeper, but the OTHERS can kill him with impunity. Ever since, we have debated who is the OTHER, and who is our BROTHER.
Deuteronomy expands the definition of BROTHER to our kin. Talmud states, "All of Israel is responsible for one another." There are those today in Israel who have left the definition right there. If you are not Jewish, you are the OTHER.
But history continues to expand the definition of BROTHER. Now we are faced with this question: are all humanity to be considered equally our responsibility, just as God in Genesis teaches that we are all equally the divine image.
Orlando, ISIS, Islamaphobes, homophobes -- all these and more teach us that the debate not only continues as a raging river, but its ferocity engulfs lives. This is not the Middle Ages. We have progressed.
But do we accept our role, difficult as it is, with the world fighting constantly to define one group or another as OTHER, to stand up and demand: no, we will not hate. We will not succumb. Though you insist on defining me as OTHER, though you insist I define your OTHER as my OTHER, though you try to kill me, I will live insisting that God created us in God's own image, and with all the courage God implanted in my soul, stand up and say in response to your hate, "You are still my BROTHER, and I am my BROTHER'S keeper."

Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL