Over the course of the last few years, Americans have been encouraged by their administration to pay more heed to the Almighty, to give obeisance to God by proclaiming his name in our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag; our coins declare that in God we trust; we sing and entreat God to bless America, but what is the actual meaning behind all of these exhortations? I confess that, as a Jew, I am occasionally mildly offended by official pleas to espouse Christian values – although I wonder if the man on whom these values are based, would not in reality have found them synonymous with his own beliefs as a Jew.

I say “mildly offended” because I am deeply offended by the schism between what we are told to say and believe, and how our leaders actually put into practice what is being preached.

In the year 2000, a severely mentally ill individual with a bizarre history of childhood abuse – his sister was raped by his father in front of him, and his father had punished him for some youthful escapade by deliberately shooting him in the leg – was to be put to death for a crime about which there was doubt as to his guilt. Had he actually raped and killed a young girl? The defense found evidence that pointed to someone else as having been the killer - but the police “lost” the evidence before it could be tested. An appeal was brought to the higher courts to introduce mitigating evidence, but the higher courts, bound by the Effective death Penalty Act of 1996, claimed that it was too late for such evidence to be considered. The death sentence was briefly set aside based on what had been an erroneous jury instruction, but a three judge panel overturned the ruling and the individual was executed.

Did the above incident take place in a third world country or a dictatorship, possibly Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Oddly enough, it happened in the United States of America, under the leadership of the then President, George Bush. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case; the legal annals are filled with such stories and with similar horrific outcomes.

In the year2000, three women cut into a chain link fence and with ball-peen hammers, tapped on the lid of a Minuteman 111 missile silo buried in the ground in Colorado, and prayed for world peace. These women are Dominican Sisters who were performing a symbolic act of disarmament against a weapon of mass extinction. The federal government and the jury that convicted them called it an act worthy of at least 30 months in prison. The women will be sentenced to five to eight years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines, one of the harshest punishments ever handed down to what amounts to a trespassing case. The women, ages 68, 66, and 55, respectively, claim that they acted to symbolically stop a crime from happening and to uphold the law. The women view their convictions as part of the nationalistic fervor that swept the United Stated during the Iraq war, when dissenters were ridiculed, threatened and attacked. Their trial coincided with the peak of the war. These women believed so strongly in the sanctity of life that they were willing to make any necessary sacrifices to defend that belief.

Seemingly, we have become a nation devoid of all compassion, unwilling to support those who have the courage to speak out or act on behalf of all of us. We are becoming inured to poverty, unjust war, and the killing of innocent civilians, including children. When a nation becomes desensitized as to the value of a life, then that nation has surely lost its soul and all the empty words that call for prayer, will not restore it.

How important these incidents are – incident is too insignificant a word to apply to situations which involve the taking of a life or inappropriately harsh imprisonment – but regardless of classification, as Jews, what happens to our fellow humans, is very important to us because we believe that humans are Godlike and taking a human life is to diminish God in the world.

And God created a human (being) in (Gods’) image. In the divine image, God created the human, and God saw all that God had made and found it very good. Genesis 1:27,31

Practitioners of Judaism expect that humans will continue the creative process begun by God, and while God is the creator of the world, humans are expected to maintain and repair the world. Humans are also expected to emulate God by seeking justice and righteousness.

When one destroys a single individual, it is as if that person destroyed the while world. Sanhedrin 4:5 (Jewish Supreme Court).

According to Judaism, a part of each human being is Godlike and to murder one human being is to diminish God and destroy the world.

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all ….No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (John Donne MeditationXVII)

The thoughts expressed by John Donne, during the time of the Renaissance, echoed the earlier beliefs of the Jews, and similar thoughts have resounded through the centuries by all thinking men. We can no longer employ empty words to pay lip service to God. At this time, in our country and throughout the world, we cannot ask God to do our work for us; we may offer thanks for his goodness, but the job of providing succor and justice to our fellow man, rests entirely with us.