A Debate Means there are Two Sides

I was blessed by parents that could afford to send me abroad during my junior year of college.  They thought having an experience where I fended for myself, explored a new culture and language, all the while continuing my education was an amazing opportunity.  It was on so many levels.

I went to Israel to wrestle with what being Jewish meant to me.  I never felt God or spirituality in the kind of Judaism that was offered up in my childhood. My twenty year old soul was longing for some nourishment from the only tradition I knew.  I craved answers.

A famous professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem recounted a story one day in class.  He was an older scholar, not particularly religious, of European descent, and himself a survivor of Auschwitz. His family was captured by Hitler's army in the early 1940's.  He was ten years old.  I will spare you the gore and horror that he told us about life in a concentration camp. 

The part of the story that sticks with me today is about a local television station.  They had contacted him to "debate whether the Holocaust existed".  He paused and asked the producer to repeat herself because he was so stunned.  She repeated herself.  He said, "Madame Producer, if I were to debate whether the Holocaust existed, that implies two sides to the debate".  Then, he hung up the phone and spent countless days and nights imagining a world where people did not believe that the Holocaust existed.  At the time, there were many survivors alive that could personally recount how millions were slaughtered in unimaginable ways.

I always remember before I approach certain conventional doctors and others that debating whether vaccines cause autism implies that there are two sides to the story.  I don't engage.  I know my truth, which may or may not be yours.

Vaccines did cause autism for my daughter.  The flu shot in particular.  They caused autism for hundreds of your children. If our children could talk as eloquently as my professor in Israel, they might also hang up the proverbial telephone.

I’m fourty-two now.  I still struggle with nourishing my soul spiritually.  I will take wisdom derived from any tradition these days if it feels healing. Although I am very grateful that I had the chance to figure out what being Jewish meant to me at twenty years old, it is surely fluid.  What I wrestled with then pales in comparison with now.

 

Comments

[Mom of recovered child age 13 did not start protocol until 10 it's never to late]

Wrestinling with injustice is always hard. Figuring out life is doubly hard. We meet people who have it all; we meet people who have nothing. Same with autism. Why does it even exist and why now. We have to double up our faith and believe that God is there to help us even through the worst of times. I get angry, fustrated and always want to do more for my daughter to completely heal. Its totally not even fair that our kids are affected by autism. I don't think there is a pain that runs any deeper than your own child's life and future is at stake. I encourage her everyday that she can be anything she wants to be in her life. No limits. Use your abilities. I pray everyday that I can say or do something that will help to increase another persons faith. And make someone's life a little easier. I also pray that not another child has to afflicted with autism. Have a blessed day (comment edited for legnth)

[Royce]

Thank you for your blessings.

We all need to figure out our truth related to vaccines. The "Green Our Vaccines" rally happened this week. Go Jenny & Jim! My husband attended the rally in Washington DC and said it was the most spiritually fulfilling use of time since our daughter's diagnosis. God bless America where we can all have an opinion!!!