By Sally Dugman

It, I suppose, is really easy to denigrate and castigate Jews as a whole after watching them laughingly slaughter Palestinian civilians of all ages about which I wrote here: Red Light—Green Light And Other Games Played by Children And Murderers Alike. Moreover, many greedy individuals are looking forward to making more literal and financial killings from the destruction of Palestine as is discussed here: https://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2025/05/20/how-can-anyone-tell-palestinians., How Can Anyone Tell Palestinians and Jews Apart and Who Should Own Palestine?

The fact, though, IS that Jews — like every other self-identified, separate, tribal group — is like all of the rest of them — meaning that they all represent a range of behaviors and aims in their midst’s. So we can easily find light and dark skinned people, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other groups with moral and kindly individuals, as well as ones amongst them, who are murderous fiends and hateful of ones designated as outliers from their own group.

So on account, we will collectively always come across a soldiers or another who looked at an obviously pregnant Palestinian and shot her in the belly such that the bullet lodged in her unborn child’s neck — the intended recipient of the shot. So she had to have both her dead fetus removed, along with her bleeding, shot through womb.This happening means, of course, that she’ll never bear a child again during the rest of her life.

So, yes, we have Jews, like some of the Israeli settlers and others monsters, willing to happily kill to steal land and resources while filled with rabid hatred of the ones from whom they are taking. However, that is not the whole picture of Judaism by any means.

For example, one of my favorite Jews ever, a childhood friend, died Freedom Riding. He, certainly, was the anthesis of the many murderous Israelites. Here, you can see for yourself his values and actions: Riding for Freedom | Countercurrents.

Furthermore, the fact is that I have highly moral and hardworking Jews as members in my family — hardworking as they purposely strive to uplift society as a whole. That is their declared plan — “Tikkun Olam. A jewish concept defined by acts of kindness performed to perfect or repair the world. The phrase is found in the Mishnah, a body of classical rabbinic teachings. It is often used when discussing issues of social policy, insuring a safeguard to those who may be at a disadvantage.” - From Tikkun Olam - Learning to Give

Now furthermore, another especially wonderful Jew was my childhood friend, Josh Lieberman. He, in fact, was born of an elderly Jewish couple with their own small farm in Russia where they had tried to have children for many years and only managed to have Josh when in their forties or fifties.

Then they were concerned that he had no other children for play or companionship. Therefore, they were very glad to give him a little, newborn lamb whose mother had died in birth and tasked him to keep the baby alive.

A sincere, serious and devoted child, he inquired to learn everything that he should to help him be the best substitute parent that he could for the little creature and he primarily spent his days tending to his new charge. But then everything changed in a flash.

Stalin’s pogroms targeting Jews and others hit the region where the Lieberman farm was located. So they had to suddenly and quickly leave. So they packed up a cart with some of their chickens in a cage, chicken grain in a bag, a small amount of clothes and bedding, assorted vegetables that they had hastily picked from their farm fields. Then they loaded them all on their cart and hitched their donkey, used to for plowing the fields, to the cart and left to go westward to escape being murdered.

The boy’s sheep followed the cart with the boy on it since they were bonded in the extreme. … So over time, the chicken feed brought along disappeared as the parents and boy traveled to get out of danger as did the chickens, themselves, that were eaten as were all of the cart carried vegetables.

Eventually as would be expected, the donkey got more and more emaciated due to lack of food except grasses while walking and pulling a cart each day. So he got slaughtered, too, and eaten.

Then, too, my future friend, Josh, was taught about the way to find edible mushrooms, berries and other wild edible plants. So when his parents fixed the daily food, they sent him out to hunt for meal accompaniments while they did the gruesome work of killing off animals and doing the cooking.

So Josh, who I only met with his wife when they were older humans in their seventies or eighties, came back from foraging for wild food, noted that his parents were fixing a delicious smelling stew, which he wolfed down fast as it is hard to gradually starve, which his whole family was doing and as is now deliberately happening in Palestine. Yes, it hurts in the extreme!

Then he went to look for his friend, the lamb, but to no avail. Then he promptly threw up since he understood about the meal being composed of his best friend.

So not many days thereafter, his parents and Josh reached a coast in their terrible trek, got food and passage to the USA to Hell’s Kitchen where many impoverished European immigrants use to live and start their new lives from scratch once again. So that’s where Josh grew up into being an adult.

However, he, being a caring and ethical individual, chose to help other immigrants. For example, he chose to never eat animal flesh again after consuming and throwing up the flesh of his lamb. He advocated for that vegetarian stance amongst immigrants on account. He, also, bought lots of acreage in Massachusetts after finding and marrying a Jewish woman.

They both, in turn, started a summer camp with tents on raised platforms having simple cot beds and they took many children from Hell’s Kitchen and elsewhere to have vacation there where they would swim, do art projects, explore nature, eat healthy food and have fun in other ways such as group singing of songs while as an added benefit, there was clever Blacky the crow, which would fly into the tents looking for treasures like a shiny watch or even just a simple piece of aluminum foil, which he would bring to adorn his nest to make it fancy in a nearby tree hole.

So in the end, the purpose of their farm and wilderness camp was to help children mostly from inner city slums to have a more natural environment in the wild world during the summer when schools were closed such that the children could leave their homes for a week or more to be overseen by counselors on the camp property. How uplifting overall! How improving of life in general for the many children who partook of the unfamiliar outdoor experience!

Both Leah and Josh were pioneers in the back to nature movement such as is described here: 'The Ego Ideal of the Good Camper' and the Nature of Summer Camp.

All considered in a total overview, there are seemingly three ways that we can treat others. We can be terrible and try to take their possessions for ourselves while getting rid of them. We can, instead, simply be indifferent to and ignore them or we can be like the Lieberman couple and uplift the quality of life for others.

So thank goodness that so many humans from a diversity of religions, cultures, customs and countries strive to make life better for others as, of course, this is the only way to express one’s humanity in the best ways possible. So, I’m honored to have known such fine people as these two who set a fine example of the best ways to treat the world — which is lovingly and with concern for ultimate wellbeing as they, for many years, brought children into the wilderness to learn and become fuller human beings.

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Sally Dugman writes from and lives in Massachusetts, USA.