Too Close to Home

I feel sick. This Shabbat morning, as L looked out of our bathroom window and down at the car we've borrowed from her mother, she saw this graffiti carved in the dust on the bonnet. I've been watching too much CSI, because my first thought before cleaning it off was whether I might get a good fingerprint from the hand if I put some sellotape over it. 

Some of the symbols and meanings are clear, the cross, the swastika, and the imprecation (possibly the worst thing one may say in Italian) for sure. Not so sure about "adesso" or the hand. (and, as L said, even if I'd got a print from the hand, there's not necessarily proof that this same hand was responsible for the rest of the graffiti!)

On my way back upstairs, I stopped by Max the barber, a fixture in this neighbourhood for several years, with whom we are reasonably friendly. I showed him the photo, and asked if anything like this had happened before. He said no, and that if he ever saw anyone doing something like that they wouldn't arrive home in one piece! I reminded him that L & I are Jewish, so something like this is particularly disturbing, but he was adamant that it was a massive coincidence and that we were not being targeted.

L & I have discussed this from every angle. The few people who know we are Jewish, and know that is the car we use, seem utterly unlikely to behave in this way. In fact, we cannot imagine any way for someone to connect that car and our being Jewish. It may well be just a horrible coincidence. But it hurts, and I have to admit that I am feeling it even more when it has happened to us than the anger and sympathy I have felt when it happens to others. I hate to admit to such egotism, but it is so. 

This may also have something to do with the fact that just a few minutes earlier we were studying the weekly Torah portion, Balak. This is the one with the talking donkey (eat your heart out Shrek fans), and we got into a bit of a discussion about the power of words. I remembered that when I was little and somebody said something mean, you were supposed to throw back at them "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!" It was a good attempt to reduce the influence such words - fatso, four-eyes, Christ-killer - might have had on my psyche, at least I had a comeback, but I don't remember that it really helped much. 

In Judaism, words have great power - God used them to create the world ... throughout the Torah there are consequences for what people say as well as what they do ... lashon ha-ra was and is considered akin to murder (of the soul if not the body) - we are taught, and should understand that words - in written or pictorial form - can really hurt. Immediately after our Or 'Ammim discussion on this topic, real life bit us on the bottom. Funny how that worked out.

Nu, what now? Perhaps we will inform the local police, just for it to be on the record. As I write these words I am singing along with my favourite NFTY songs (starting with the first and second albums), trying to salve my soul. Will I develop an improved empathy that translates into a proactive response next time others are hurt? I hope so.