Why I Decided to Write This Blog—to Help Keep Hope Alive in a Time of Peril and Transformation

A few of you reading this may remember my lively blog published from 2006-2008 entitled Ruby Jewsday in which I ruminated on issues I covered in those days as a freelance writer for the New York Jewish Week, New York Daily News, and other media; especially the Russian Jewish community but much more. I summarized it as "Walter Ruby's Riffs On Russian Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, American Politics, the Meaning of Life and Whatever Else Is On My Mind."

You can check out the old blog here: http://rubyjewsday.blogspot.com/

A lot changed in my life around the time I stopped writing Ruby Jewsday. Around that time, I had taken a new position as Muslim-Jewish Program Director at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU) and went on to a subsequent career at FFEU and beyond working to strengthen ties of communication and cooperation between Muslims and Jews across the U.S. and around the world. I am presently preparing to publish a book with co-author Sabeeha Rehman entitled We Refuse To be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace One Friendship At A Time to be published in April 2021 by Arcade Publishing. And I have re-engaged the situation in Israel-Palestine through my work as coordinator of Project Rozana Greater Washington Chapter. Project Rozana works to save the lives of desperately ill Palestinian children by arranging their transportation to hospitals in Israel, and to strengthen the health care infrastructure inside Palestine with the support of Israeli and international NGO’s. At the moment, we are working at the request of the PA to get desperately needed ventilators to overstretched hospital ICUs in the West Bank and Gaza to combat a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Learn more about it at https://projectrozana.org

I also recently turned 70 and am increasingly coming to grips with the idea that I may turn out not to be immortal after all and might not even fulfill the wonderful Jewish imprecation that each of us should live to be 120. I have a lot to share with the world and a limited amount of time to do it. So, I have decided to start a new blog provisionally entitled Walter Ruby: Keeping Hope Alive. Folks, I realize that Keep Hope Alive—a slogan popularized by civil rights movement icon Jesse Jackson—is an idea that has been around for a while and may not be the sexiest slogan in the world. Yet at this moment of plague and grave peril to our democratic system and the very survival of our planet, Keeping Hope Alive is the essential element in equation that will give each of us the strength to make vitally important contributions to tikkun olam (repairing the world and making it whole). Without hope that we can change the present disastrous trajectory of things, all will truly be lost. Therefore, we must summon all of our strength to believe that if we act now, we can help to ensure a sustainable, and hopefully radiant, future for our children and children’s children.

What do I have to contribute to this transformation and affirmation of hope at this point in my life? I want to share some of the experiences and lessons I have learned—and my co-author Sabeeha has learned-- by taking part in a wonderful movement over the past decade and a half in which thousands of Muslims, Jews and allies have come together to build ties of friendship and trust. I want to affirm the promise of America, a country I have come to love ever more deeply even as it has struggled against powerful forces sowing fear and division—including one presently encamped in the White House. located exactly two miles down 16th Street in Washington D.C. from the small apartment I share with my life partner Tatyana. That elemental promise of America is that all human beings are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It also contains the premise that America is a welcoming nation of openness and diversity, where people of all races, religions, ethnicities, orientations etc. should co-mingle fruitfully, cherishing our differences while embracing our shared Americanness and celebrating our common humanity. And that we should love one another. To cite immortal words recorded by Anne Frank in her diary at an even darker moment than this one:

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Like Anne, I too retain the conviction that the vast majority of human beings are good at heart; something I witness every day in the harried but kindly faces of people on the streets of Washington as they struggle to stay afloat and protect themselves and their loved ones from the plague and attendant challenges—including the small children they clutch by hand. I am not sanguine—I see the enormity of the challenge we face as a species--- but I also see the seriousness of purpose of the younger generation to redeem the future, which is powerfully evocative of the millenarian optimism of the 1960’s counter-culture in which I myself took part. I believe that if we step up now as individuals, Americans and human beings, we can overcome fear and bigotry and heal our sacred Earth. Yet to succeed in that existential struggle, we must keep hope alive. As long as I am around, I plan to make a contribution to that effort.

Finding Hope and Inspiration in a Native American Wetu

Sitting and weaving on a bed covered with animal furs in a wetu (wigwam) in Plimoth Plantantion,, the brilliantly recreated rendering of Plymouth and adjoining Wampanoag Indian settlement in 1627, seven years after the creation of the colony, a Wampanoag woman from a nearby reservation who has meticulously studied the history of her people, spoke poignantly to Tanya and I about Wampanoag history and culture.

Seated between her husband and niece, she spoke of the arrival of the Pilgrims and the eventual devastation of her people and all the tribes of New England despite the vital aid the Wampanoags had rendered the Pilgrims, memorialized with the first Thanksgiving, which literally saved the Pilgrims from starvation. Yet when I asked her how she sees the future of America, she expressed optimism, saying that we are presently going through the birth pangs of a new consciousness in which all Americans including the First Nations and African-Americans “ finally have a full and equal seat at the table.” She said that this time of transformation and renewal is foretold In the ancient prophecies of her people and that the Wampanoags and all Native Americans have a huge amount to contribute—especially the ability to live in harmony with nature—to the healing of our shared society.

Indeed in downtown Plymouth today near the site of Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims landed exactly 400 years ago, alongside all the memorials to the courage and valor of the settlers, is a plaque noting that for many Native Americans Thanksgiving is now observed as a Day of Mourning for the devastation they have endured in the four centuries since. Yet 2500 Wampanoag still exist, mostly on southern Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard; they have managed to bring their nearly extinct language back to life, teaching it in their schools, and now are hopeful for the future.

For me, it was a deeply moving and uplifting encounter. If the Wampanoags can believe in a radiant future, after all they have endured, who am I to despair? Let all the children of this diverse and vibrant land reach out and embrace each other.. Let us heal America at last.