Bridge-Building Across the Waters of Katrina

We Americans who love and support Israel have felt our eyes and hearts diverted a bit, recently. While our life-long passions have been spent for issues related to Israel and relationships between Jews and Christians, news reports of our own nation's devastation have shifted our attention elsewhere, at least temporarily. Amid Christian media voices indicting the US for its high-pressure influence on Israel regarding her withdrawal from Gaza (and even as Israel dispatches emergency relief workers to the Gulf States), we wonder how our otherwise unwavering stand for Israel relates to our identity, pain and compassion within a domestic American tragedy. Unlike our collective national horror over 9/11, the trauma inflicted by Hurricane Katrina does not seem irrefutably linked to issues of Israel, Biblical values or militant Islam, and our prayers and donations to an organization like Bridges for Peace do not immediately appear to impact or assist our innocent and suffering fellow Americans.

As an American and as a seven-year associate with Bridges for Peace, I was thrilled to learn that BFP-USA has begun an initiative to use even this awful event to build bridges of relationship between Jews and Christians! Cooperating with the UJC (United Jewish Communities) and other American Jewish organizations, Bridges for Peace in the US is raising practical financial aid for Jewish communities harmed by Hurricane Katrina in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Florida.

More often than we realize, our Jewish neighbors live a mere stone's throw away from our houses, offices and churches. We sometimes forget that even though God and Bridges for Peace are doing in important work in Israel, what we are doing "on the home front" is vitally important too. In the middle of this national catastrophe, God is using our Christian hands of blessing extended from Bridges for Peace to Jewish communities within our American borders.

Today, I logged on to the Bridges for Peace website and donated part of my monthly tithe to Jewish victims suffering dislocation and devastation from Hurricane Katrina. With the finances I can contribute, I want to be among those American Christians standing up to reach out with love and support to our Jewish friends and neighbors. May it make a difference that will extend into a new era of interfaith blessing and cooperation.

To support emergency assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina through Bridges for Peace and UJC, go to the Bridges for Peace website (www.bridgesforpeace.com), click on the American flag, and select "Emergency Relief Needed for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina!" from the homepage.