You'd Do the Same for Me

The Squirrel Hill community stands together at Murray & Forbes

So far the echoes from the gunshots that killed 11 in Squirrel Hill continue to reverberate and dominate.  I've begun hearing personal stories of current and former residents, and media stories bare the unspeakable and the unbearably poignant.

The Washington Post notes, concerning the shooter Bowers:

"Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat representing the Pittsburgh area, said FBI Special Agent in Charge Bob Jones told elected leaders Saturday evening that Bowers possessed 21 firearms. The tally included the semiautomatic assault-style rifle and three handguns found in the synagogue, as well as a shotgun that Doyle said authorities recovered from Bowers’s vehicle. Other weapons were found in his apartment."

CNN reproduced the comments of a first generation American Jew whose parents were caught in the Nazi horror called the Holocaust:

"We all felt the same thing: how glad we were that our parents weren't alive to see this happen in America; how we always felt safe as Jews living in the US and going to services, and how we must be the voices for our parents to make change and hold those who incite hatred accountable..."

USA Today described one of many memorial gestures and events in Pittsburgh:

Jewish girls from a nearby Chabad orthodox school had walked to the Tree of Life Synagogue, prayer books in their hands and blue ribbons tied to their hair and wrists, to sing. They harmonized in Hebrew about how Jews have prevailed despite persecution through generations. They wrapped each other in their arms. They swayed. Their music, from the Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith, told of a time free of war and full of peace.

The story quoted one of the young participants:“I don’t want to be hated,” Talia said. She wore blue bows in each of her pony tails and a ribbon around her neck.“I know how it feels to be hated, and I don’t want that for other people.”

It is a dark moment in America.  When I started calling the resident of the White House by the name of Homemade Hitler, and illustrated posts with photos from Nazi Germany, something like this was part of what could be foreseen.  When the highest official in the country foments hate and incites violence, it focuses violent feelings and gives them permission to be expressed.  This is, as it was for Hitler, a source of his political power.

But the contrast is not only, not chiefly, with songs of peace and love.  The contrast is with a certain kind of civility, that was defined for me in Squirrel Hill more than 20 years ago.

I was reminded of that moment again when I read accounts of most of those who were murdered as they prayed in the Tree of Life synagogue.  I've since learned that the degree of separation between me and several of them is no more than two. All of them were old enough that I may have passed them on Murray Avenue, held a door open for one at the Post Office, or been at an event with others.  A couple sound familiar, though I didn't know any of them well.

My lesson back then also came from a stranger, though not any of these.  It came from a black man who worked at the Eat & Park on Murray Avenue, half a block from the corner with Forbes Avenue where the first memorial vigils took place.

That was my air-conditioned refuge in the sweltering summers of the early 90s, and at any time I could talk myself into a piece of their strawberry pie.  But mostly they kept filling my coffee cup, as I sat at the counter or a table, reading and writing.  For a few years at least it was my clean, well-lighted place.

On one such afternoon I knocked a pen off my table as I read.  Before I could bend down to get it, a black man who worked there had picked it up and returned it to me.  I thanked him.  He was already on his way when he said, softly and simply but with quiet meaning, "you'd do the same for me."

I'd heard the phrase before (just as I've told this story before) but at that moment it hit me with particular force.  I realized that it was nothing less than  a summary of the social compact, of human relationships among strangers.  The Golden Rule doesn't quite cut it--it's a formula that is essentially self-centered.  "You'd do the same for me" says much more.

It is not only a moral formula but a statement of faith, not only in the principles of kindness and helping as automatic responses, but faith that this principle is shared.  It's the faith of every day.  It's how a complex human society works--perhaps the only way it can work.

Reading what others said about the victims suggests to me that they all shared this faith.  It was a basis of their daily lives in the Squirrel Hill community and beyond.  It was certainly something I felt present every day on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill.

Political action is necessary, voting on Tuesday is necessary, symbols of community solidarity are necessary.  But so is the civility made real by the daily assumption of "you'd do the same for me."

Civility isn't always polite silence, and it isn't ignoring the realities of politically or economically motivated violence--let alone ignoring the reality of evil.  It isn't only a live and let live tolerance, though this itself is clearly endangered.  The only way people in this country are going to get through the challenges of the next decades is if "you'd do the same for me" is the motivating center of  how we live with each other.