Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Michael Daly of the New York Daily News recently wrote about Rabbi Jacob Goldstein (an army chaplain), and Imam Zameer Sattaur coming together to lay to rest SPC Azhar Ali of the Fighting 69th of the New York Army National Guard. Ali was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

The article reads more like a short story than a news piece:

The moment then came when the imam asked the rabbi to give a graveside prayer. Goldstein offered one translated from the Hebrew into English.

“You are here today, gone tomorrow,” Goldstein said. “You are a flower in the morning and in the afternoon you wilt.”

The imam gave the final prayer, and the mourners each tossed a handful of dirt onto the coffin, just as at a Jewish burial.

“That’s what they do, that’s what we do,” Goldstein said afterward.

It’s a touching story and I think a wonderful example of religious tolerance and how relations should be between our two peoples. After all, we have the same father, no?

I find that there is more of this acceptance in the military because we are all bound together as brothers & sisters in arms. If only we could pass on some of this wisdom to the folks on the “outside”, the world might be a little better of a place.