Hesed, V Emet: Compassion and Truth. I was able to bring the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt to the Houston JCC many years ago when I worked as an Assistant Executive Director. My Director, my Board of Directors, the leadership within the Jewish Community of Houston agreed that it was about time for our community to understand that we are as mighty as the strong within our community and as weak as the most vulnerable. Our presentation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, included Quilt not only from Americans who succumbed to HIV/AIDS, but in an attempt to better educate the Jewish demographic of our membership. we were recipients of Quilt from Israel, with the names of Jewish and Arab Israeli’s. Jews, yes Jews could be at risk, along with anyone else. HIV/AIDS did not and does not discriminate. (Many years ago, I remember hearing the Yiddish phrase, “A Schiker ist a Goy”, schiker translates to alcoholic and Goy meaning non Jewish…it was assumed back in the day, that certainly a good Jewish person would never be an alcoholic, that shame was reserved for the non Jews) To imagine a dozen panels of Quilt with names of jewish men and women written in English and Hebrew, all having died of this horrible disease…to imagine looking at the names and the pictures, and the design and the ornaments sewn so precisely on Quilt…and then to imagine as a heterosexual Jew, being someone so removed from the lives of the homosexual community, to look and say, that could have been my son or my daughter. As the official staff person, along with my Chairperson, we would be the first people to answer questions. Often times we heard, “i didn’t know”. "I always thought it someone else” “How does this happen”, and “Oh, my God, so many” (and this were just a dozen panels)
I bring up this memory of presenting the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, because, I too even as an LGBTQ person had no idea of the devastation. I had read about the Gay Cancer, I had listened as common citizens begged the government to care. I had wondered, just who were the people infected, and since they seemed anonymous to me, how deep should my despair delve. But here I was reading the information of babies dying, of parents dead, of average men and women in the energetic hopeful hours of their lives, gone. We had the Quilt on display for at least a month, and when the time came to honorably fold the Quilt and place each unique story into its safe space, I cried. I had NEVER known anyone to die of HIV/AIDS, but now I knew hundreds of people, and I grew sad, I grew, angry and I said Never again on my watch.
If and when the GOP, under the tutelage of Mitch McConnell and his band of 13 old white men, decimate Obama Care (because Trump hates anything with the name Obama as a part of it, and people like the Koch Brothers pay Senators to vote for special interests) millions will die. First they will suffer, people we don’t know, but like the QUILT, they have names, they have family they have a purpose. We may say 26 - 30 million may not be able to afford Health Insurance. But they are not just numbers, using anonymous numbers is not good enough. When I saw the names Shirley, Jorge, Issac, La’Shanda, Philip, Andrew Rebecka followed by Doctor, Toddler, Musician, Teacher, Coach, Teenager, Mother, Father, I began to understand who died, not just the fact that many died, but individuals died. Shame on the Senate, but a bigger cry of SHAME to all of us who have yet to understand, we are as strong as the bravest and as weak as the most insecure. We need COMPASSION and it must speak the TRUTH. AMEN!
