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After a week of unimaginable pain in the Jewish community, I never expected I’d be driving to a large Palestinian community in the Chicago suburbs.
Yet on Monday afternoon, my colleague Rabbi Ari Hart and I found ourselves on an hour-long drive from Skokie, a deeply Jewish enclave north of Chicago, to a mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois, also known as “Little Palestine.”
We came to offer comfort to the father of Wadea al-Fayoume, a Muslim, Palestinian-American boy murdered on Sunday. Police say he was targeted by his family’s landlord because of his faith and identity, in response to the conflict in Israel. His mother, Hanaan Shahin, was also repeatedly stabbed and is hospitalized.