Editor's note: The author wrote this on September 15, Yom Kippur. We are pleased to publish it here today.
Yesterday, on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest of days for Jews around the world, Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic world, addressed the rise of anti-semitism around the world by saying that, unfortunately, it is becoming "fashionable" to hate Jews.
Think about that. It is becoming "fashionable" to hate a group of people less than 80 years after madmen, led by even madder madmen, in Europe slaughtered six million people, including nearly two million children of which 600,000 were under the age of five, for simply practicing a different religion.
Fashionable after an American madman walked into synagogue in Pittsburgh and wiped out 12 innocent people who were there simply to pray.
Fashionable after an attack on a Jersey City grocery store killed three innocent people. Or fashionable after regular attacks on Jewish people walking down the street in Brooklyn.
The pope is correct. It is becoming fashionable to hate Jews for being Jews. So today, on the day that people of the Jewish faith are asked to fast to repent for past sins and hope that we are lucky enough to be written into the "Book of Life" for the next year. I ask my non-Jewish friends to stand up and say it is not fashionable to hate.
I ask all of us to take a stand, just like Pope Francis did, and say that haters will not be admired for hating. I ask you to do the decent thing, the right thing, the human thing and simply say no to hatred, whether it is against a religious group or people of color or people who are just different.
Today, on Yom Kippur, I ask you to make hatred unfashionable.
Just my angle.